You have great ideas.  You're going to decentralize the whole performance management process at your company.  Power to the managers.  Real conversations.  Let them run their business.  The way it ought to be.  The annual review, if it exists, is an afterthought.

Then, a funny thing happens on the way to the forum.  A manager with 10 reports turns in their annual reviews with no ratings separation.  No narratives written to reinforce the behavior.  Or, they have separation related to the ratings they provided, but everyone got a 3% raise.  Or both.

You know why that happens?  Because the manager can't deal with conflict.  Instead of having a tough conversation with the bottom 30% of their team related to their performance and the raise that follows, they make the whole thing generic and lacking "separation".

The goal is to avoid conflict.  The problem with Performance Management isn't HR, it's the manager.

So the cops come in.  They're from HR.  They're here to help.

Good luck with that, HR comrades.  You're not the problem.  Command and control is just the wrong solution.  

You know the right solution.  It's just hard as hell to execute.

Here's a dirty little secret of basketball everywhere:  By the time February rolls around, a lot of basketball coaches don't like being around their teams anymore.  I've actually heard it referred to it as "I hate my team", quickly following by "will this season ever end?"

The cause is pretty understandable.  Sports is a pretty intense experience where wins and losses go up on a standings board.  Basketball runs from October/November to February/March, and by the time you get to the fourth month, everyone is a little fatigued.  You (the coach) are tired of saying the same things.  They (the players) are tired of hearing you say the same things.  You know where you fall in the pecking order, and while everyone wants more, it's not always possible based on the talent you have.

Summary:  Everyone's a little bit sick of each other.  Practices get shorter, because well, what's the point?

The point is the coach is responsible for learning.  Just like you are as a manager.

Here's 3 ways for coaches (and you) to stop hating their teams (it works at your company as well):

1.  Get out of your rut and get some new freaking coaching techniques.  If you find yourself hating your team, you might just be hating yourself.  Get some new game - learn new things that are going to help you be a better coach/manager.  Try to implement some of those on the fly.  Shake it up.

2.  Actually give a S### about the development of individuals.  See that midling contributor who's a good person?  You've been so focused on your macro results that you've treated him like a transaction ("if I tell you to do this, then I get that").  Stop hating your team by taking a personal interest in the professional development of your mid-level talent.  Watch them grow once they understand that you're interested in making them better and more successful, regardless of what happens related to team results.

3.  Get a better definition of what success is.  Not everyone is going to make it to March Madness or the corporate equivalent of that.  Some of us have teams that can only deliver a .500 season.  Worry about that in the next recruiting cycle - for now, your job is to do a better job of defining what a stretch goal is for the team you have - and then coaching them up to get there.  Stop whining and complaining that you don't have enough talent.  Set a goal you can achieve with improvement that's realistic for the group you have.

It's normal to start hating your team if the goals you are chasing are difficult and the competition is intense.  The problem isn't them, it's you.  You're responsible for breaking out of the rut and the self-pity cycle.

Wake up, it's February.  You'll be sorry you gave up on this team in May.

Then go get some better players this summer.  You know what's common among the best coaches?  They all have great players.  Wooden would have been .500 at Seton Hall.

Look at this photo.  This is a CEO being embarrassed in a very public way by a loose cannon that could have been avoided, if only the CEO's handlers had cared enough to determine the probability (hint - it was waaay too high) that the person in question would try to show up the CEO.  Which in this case is the President of the United States.

The picture shows Jan Brewer, governor of Arizona, wagging the finger at President Obama.  Here's the details from the New York Times:

"President Obama’s visit to Phoenix got off to a rough start on Wednesday afternoon when Air Force One was met by  Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona — she of the book “Scorpions for Breakfast,” in which she accuses the Obama administration of turning a blind eye to illegal immigration because migrants will help Mr. Obama register more Democratic votes.

Mr. Obama stepped off the plane and was greeted by Ms. Brewer, who handed him a handwritten letter in an envelope that she later said was an invitation to discuss the “Arizona comeback.” The two had an intense exchange for several minutes; at one point Ms. Brewer pointed her finger at Mr. Obama.

Afterward, she told reporters that Mr. Obama “was a little disturbed about my book.”

OK, let's do the math.  She wrote a book that's critical of the president.  The title of the book underscores her "scrappiness" and willingness to take on the big issues, regardless of risk.  She's willing to discuss their conversation on the record after the photo opp of her wagging her finger at the president.  She had a prop that she could talk about to the press after the meeting.  The CEO in question, confronted with the randomness and aggressiveness, tried to shake her and get her off his pants leg.  Which just gave her more ammo.

At what point did the president's handlers not understand that if this meet-up could not be avoided, they should just change the schedule and come to the state under the cover of darkness, in a private way based on security concerns, etc?  What possibly made them think that this wouldn't happen?

I'm on the record as a moderate Republican.  With that in mind, the odds are long that my vote goes Democrat in November.  But seriously - this is what it has come to?  Grandstanding and co-opting our president into your PR campaign? 

If it was corporate America, someone would be fired for allowing the CEO to ever get in this situation.  Protect your leader from BS that is beneath him in your role as an HR leader, folks.  It's a great way to make yourself indispensible to your CEO.

And it's obviously needed, even at the highest levels.

I'm "up with people" today on a Friday.  I'm going to wave the flag a bit, because there are plenty of bashers related to the situation in the US on a variety of fronts.  Times are tough.  Companies don't treat workers the right way.  The EEOC is running active PR campaigns to publicize the companies they sue.

As a result of tough times, lots of people like to rage against the machine that is America.  Companies suck.  There's not fairness, no equity.

You know what I'm saying to the haters?  If you really believe that America doesn't do things the right way, you need to give up your iPhone.  Probably your Android as well.  

Why?  Because for all the drama in America, people generally don't die in our workplaces.  And why you're sniffing the marketing juice of companies like Apple and thinking they're above the fray, the bottom line is it's a lot more complex that we care to admit.  From the New York Times:

"In the last decade, Apple has become one of the mightiest, richest and most successful companies in the world, in part by mastering global manufacturing. Apple and its high-technology peers — as well as dozens of other American industries — have achieved a pace of innovation nearly unmatched in modern history.

However, the workers assembling iPhones, iPads and other devices often labor in harsh conditions, according to employees inside those plants, worker advocates and documents published by companies themselves. Problems are as varied as onerous work environments and serious — sometimes deadly — safety problems.

Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple’s products, and the company’s suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors.

More troubling, the groups say, is some suppliers’ disregard for workers’ health. Two years ago, 137 workers at an Apple supplier in eastern China were injured after they were ordered to use a poisonous chemical to clean iPhone screens. Within seven months last year, two explosions at iPad factories, including in Chengdu, killed four people and injured 77. Before those blasts, Apple had been alerted to hazardous conditions inside the Chengdu plant, according to a Chinese group that published that warning."

Tim Cook replied to this article with the following letter.  Go give it a read.  That article says what I've known for awhile, but most people are unaware of.  The conditions in China are horrible.  Apple and everyone else takes advantage of that supply chain with limited human rights.  It makes the American workplace look like heaven.

My point?  Fairness and equity in the workplace is complicated.  Hate the way things are going in America?  Like to hate how much power companies have?

Cool.  You ought to give up your digital device when you compare that to what goes on in China out of protest.

Last time I checked, that American low wage manufacturer or hourly retail shop that has low-end jobs didn't have suicide nets.  

Be consistent.

Marylin Delpy: The site got twenty-two hundred hits within two hours? 
Mark Zuckerberg: Thousand. 
Marylin Delpy: I'm sorry? 
Mark Zuckerberg: Twenty-two *thousand*. 
Marylin Delpy: [to herself] Wow. 

That's a line of dialog from the movie "The Social Network", which details the rise of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook from the campus of Harvard to its ultimate position as the leading social play in the world today.

With a little under a Billion (that's right, 1 Billion, not million) members, it's pretty obvious that most of us need to know more than we do about how to recruit using Facebook.  So, with the help of my friends at Fistful of Talent (my multi-contributor blog), we've put together a great webinar Webinar on how to recruit using Facebook.  We call it: Social Recruiting MacGyver Style! No Money, a Paperclip and Facebook – all a Real HR Pro Needs to Recruit.

Register Today by Clicking this link and completing the form…

Join your hosts (Tim Sackett and me) on February 2, 2012 for this one-hour webinar and we’ll hit you with the following Facebook-centric items:

• Where is social recruiting heading, and why do you need to care as the HR rep of your organization?
• How a 1-2 person shop can compete in social recruiting (with no money, a paper clip and Facebook…)
• Understanding the difference between Facebook Pages vs. Profiles and how it drives your Facebook recruiting strategy
• How to use rarely understood tools like Facebook Marketplace and Facebook Pay-Per-Click Ads to drive Facebook candidates to your open positions
• How to use Facebook search features to locate candidates on Facebook and contact them without looking like a stalker

Still not convinced this is worth your time?  Register today and we’ll send you a special FOT toolkit – “How to Find and Contact Candidates on Facebook without Looking Like a Stalker” once the webinar is complete.

Facebook.  The Capitalist. FOT.  MacGyver.  What could go wrong?

Register today by clicking here!!