In my company, E-web Marketing, we do not use the term ‘Performance Review’ because it gets people nervous and overly concerned about it. Instead, we call it ‘Personal Growth Projection’ or PGP. I love it when each person in my team strives to become the best version of themselves. And with that, PGP helps me determine my team’s targets and the relevance of those targets to their role in the company, which gives them the freedom to choose what they want to achieve and empower them to do what they can to achieve their goals. Read on to know more about our version of performance review–the PGP.
Gary Ng:
Performance review; so who loves a performance review?
When you hear the word “performance review” what’s the sound that you make? Is it woohoo! Or is it (sighs)? And most of the time when I ask people it’s more the latter (sigh)
People have a negative connotation associated with performance review. Why? Because in most organisations it’s usually like show me your report card and I’ll see whether you’ve done your job, and if not you’re in trouble.
One of the ways we’ve built our workplace is that we love our team to grow; an individual to become the best version of themselves. So in e-Web we don’t have performance reviews. Instead we have something called ‘Personal Growth Projection’ PGP for short.
So with a personal growth projection I’ll ask my team, I’ll say, “Ok in the next six months what will success look like? Do you want to be achieving the same result that you’re achieving today? Or do you want to be growing?” and most of them will say that they want to be growing. They want to challenge themselves. And the perfect example I can give you is imagine what you’re doing right now. If I can give you a 50% pay rise in your job but every single day all you will be doing is just counting apples. All you do is count apples, nothing else for the next five years, but every year you’ll get a 50% pay rise. Would you take this job? Most likely not cos you want to grow, you want to challenge yourself. That’s innate in a lot of us, in human beings.
So we’ve gone over personal growth projection. How does it work? We ask the team what do you think the target is that is relevant to your role that needs to be set. They may need some guidance. So in some cases, they will know what the different targets are. They’ll tell you these are the different targets I want to achieve in the next six months, or the next three months or the next twelve months and usually it’s growing from the previous quarter or the previous period.
The next question you also want to ask them is if you achieve this how would it make you feel? And get them to really understand that what that really means is not just a target, to actually have meaning behind it.
There may be certain teams or roles that need certain targets defined. That’s ok as well as minimum targets, but people still want to perform beyond minimum targets as well, so let them set something at a higher bar. They know what the minimum targets are but set something higher to challenge them if that’s what they want.
So give people the freedom. Give them the ability to choose what they want to achieve and empower them and get their buy in to achieve the goal versus this is what you need to achieve and just telling them what to do. People want to own their own goals and if you get them to actually own their own goals and responsibility you’ll find that you won’t just get the body cooperating with you, the heart and the soul will actually work with you to achieve the best result for your company as well.
Have a great day.