It’s that time of the year ! for most folks caught in the performance management cycle, it is time for scrolling e mail folders, inboxes, out boxes, archives, and of course, PPT files, Just in case, caught in the mundane, the repetetive , we miss highlighting the bright sparks, the unique pieces of solutions, the fantastic customer experience, the unthinkable solution we implemented, all in all, everything that helped make our role exciting, and kept us ” Engaged” vs satisfied. Everything that broke the monotony of work and helped us use our grey cells. But, why are we doing this ? Personal satisfaction ? Helping Jog the Bosses mind ? Helping jog our mind so we can remind the boss who, by now has lived three quarters of business and organisational turbulance, just like us, and may have, of all the things ” Lost track” of our contribution, ensure we get the bigger job, or, show everyone else we are better ; possibly all of the above, and most importantly, ensure we land at the right spot , in? In the Bell Curve Of course !!!!

THE CIRCLE OF LIFE : The bell curve is not truely a Bell curve. It just looks like that. It is like a circle….the circle of life which runs year to year, a circle that has no past and at times no future. You are either born, reborn, rise, fall, get compared, go though perceptions, facts, are spoken with or spoken about, invested in (read fed-including your ego), dumped, buried or resuurected and celebrated. Somewhere, in this entire journey, the intent of performance management, specific individual goals and achievement, specificity itself can get marred by the concept of RELATIVE CONTRIBUTION if there are no rules. Mature organisations have built a lot of science and art around this process, more Art than science frankly, but people struggle to build, and accept a big change that has taken place in a so called annual process. Organisational ( and hence people ) performance has moved to surviving quarter to quarter ; gone are the days where 3 year views were important; now shareholders need returns every quarter, guage progress and pull up or pull down leaders based on a few quarters performance. In this scenario, memories are short and achievements, even more shortlived. That reality check is key as we guage ourselves and the need to Brand and market ourselves or “Jog the memory” of Bosses even more necessary.

TRANSFORM, OR, WELL, REMAIN ORDINARY : The other key change is that the word “transformation” has taken over all aspects of what we do. Transformational projects, transformational leadership behaviour, transformational solutions have “transformed” what was asessed. Even if goal sheets do not say so, 9 out of 10 times that is what divides the good and the percieved great. So, as you start the next performance year, keep these aspects in mind : Have a quarterly view of “transformational work”, talk about it, remind people about it, and better still, share it if sharable and replicble, on your office communities. That way others will talk about it ( or “Transform it” for thier use :-).

CHANGE TO SURVIVE : Times are tough out there : so be flexible and ask for change or better still share solutions to drive change ; transformational leadership. And most important ; figure out which projects help you learn, but most importantly are more visible so your effort to “jog Memories” are utilised better.

And by the way ; remember, that inspite of this OR because of this, the bell curve which has transformed itself into a shape very flexible, will drive where you land : ) . This one is called Leadership Maturity.

Watch out, sharp curve ahead ! Note : A lot of lessons in the note are useful if you keep the pun aside. That is just to keep the note entertaining enough for you to keep reading