HR asked Steve to dispense with the gestures and use the prescribed form for performance appraisals instead...

Judging by how nice everyone in the office is being to everyone else, I can only assume that some sort of performance appraisal process must be taking place (I know what you’re thinking; yes, another one!). As a result, there has been much debate in meetings, in pause areas and on the golf course as to which people fit into which performance categories. Several organisations use the Topgrading system, separating employees into A grade staffers, forming the top 10%, the B graders making up a disproportionately large 70% and the losers… sorry, I mean, C grade workers who begrudgingly bring up the rear. There is much gnashing of teeth as managers struggle to put their subordinates into one of these categories. I’m just disappointed that there isn’t a category D… But as a service to managers struggling with this problem, here are some characteristics of high, average and poor performers that might just help you make up your mind.

Leadership

A Player – His leadership skills are often compared to Nelson Mandela, Sir Winston Churchill and the Dalai Lama

B Player – His leadership skills are often compared to Morgan Freeman, Joseph Stalin and Lorenzo Lamas

C Player – His leadership skills are often compared to Winnie Mandela, Sir Mix-a-lot and a llama

Team work

A Player – She works well with others, listening, sharing and bringing out the best in all the team members

B Player – She works with others, listening to her iPod, sharing her lunch and bringing out the average in all the team members

C Player – She works others into headlocks, listening their screams, sharing her views on waterboarding and bringing out the most fear in all the team members

Motivation

A Player – Is so motivated he’s willing to walk on hot coals

B Player – Is often motivated to use hot coals to barbecue things

C Player – Once picked up a hot coal to see if it was hot

Values

A Player – Mother Teresa would be proud

B Player – Mother-in-law would be proud

C Player – Madonna would be proud

Supervision

A Player – Requires very little, if any, supervision at all; can be confidently left alone to get the job done

B Player – Requires some supervision and a little hand-holding; can be confidently left alone to get the job done slowly, with far too many questions and plenty of mistakes, making you wonder why you didn’t do it all yourself in the first place…

C Player – Requires very little supervision as long as ‘very little’ is less than twenty hours per week; can be confidently left alone to cock things up

Customer Service

A Player – Lives the company motto, “The customer is King”

B Player – Has altered the company motto to “The customer is a Queen”

C Player – Received a written warning for repeatedly saying “The customer is a drag queen”

Pro-active

A Player – Tackles tasks before you even think of them

B Player – Tackles tasks when you remind him

C Player – Should have that “Casual Day 2003” poster complete any day now…

Quality Output

A Player – Produces one defect per thousand

B Player – Produces one defect per hundred

C Player – Is a defect

Apparently, workers at the Auditor General are also on strike...

Last week was quite a difficult week for us all. Those of us that actually turned up for work and the thousands of South African public service workers who decided to go on strike. Hence, I use the word “workers” quite loosely. It was an even more difficult week for those public servants who weren’t on strike and tried to make it into work and then desperately tried to do their jobs, despite the violence and the intimidation, caring for patients, teaching children and renewing my vehicle license. In the latter instance, it was so difficult to tell if the Post Office I went to was on strike or not: the queue was almost to the door, frustrated and angry customers stormed out and only one teller was available – turned out they were open and operating normally!

Now, some readers might object to me saying that the striking public servants had a difficult week last week. Imagine their distress when they found out they’d be picketing the whole day, without the obligatory lunch hour that’s usually more than an hour, two tea breaks and finishing up for the day at 16:00. Finishing at 4pm does mean powering down from about 3pm onwards – it’s like exercise, you can’t just abruptly stop, you need to cool down or else you might do you self an injury, which in turn means claiming from Workmen’s Compensation. Then there’s all that angst in deciding which red t-shirt to wear to the protest. Thanks goodness the dress code is Demonstration Casual. Even worse though, someone’s got to write up a couple of placards. Now I’m not saying anything, but here’s a quick tip: spend a few minutes doing a spelling and grammar check before brandishing a placard for the international press to report on. Another suggestion – better use can made of the striking maths teachers – 8.6% of R6000 is not R300.

The strike has certainly made us reflect at the ease at which people in helper professions would abandon those in need and in their care. Even more surprising has been how militant nurses and teachers have been. My Std. 6 woodwork teacher and one or two sports coaches might have had a propensity for violence, but who knew it was endemic? As for nurses, I’ll be far more polite the next time I’m in hospital.

The good news is that contrary to the perception that Joburgers are cynical, selfish and intolerant (and that’s just at pedestrian crossings) hundreds of ordinary citizens have volunteered their time to help their fellow man. Admittedly a lot of them volunteered to shoot the strikers, but it’s the thought that counts. Seriously though, people have been offering their time to assist with cleaning wards, cooking for patients, looking after newborns and offering to drive ambulances really quickly in the emergency lane (you guessed it, taxi drivers).

I too have offered my time. While I can’t offer any great skill at cleaning and looking after babies, I can bring immense talent, vast experience and enormous enthusiasm to retrenchments. If the city needs my help liberating violent, striking employees of their employment, I’m more than happy to do my part. I might even get the opportunity to test my “Downsizing Text Message” technology: “UR Fired! ” At less than 25c for a bulk SMS, it’s a lot cheaper than a letter printed on A4 paper folded into an envelope.

There’s no truth to the rumour that Capetonian volunteers are just after the hospital meds.

Charles' customised keyboard did little to disguise his intentions.

I ran into a neighbour of mine the other day and asked him why he was selling his house. He genuinely looked surprised and asked me how I knew. Mmm… lucky guess, but the large For Sale sign was a bit of a clue. The same sort of thinking can also be found in our offices and our teams – people scurrying about applying for new jobs, thinking that the rest of us are blissfully unaware of their intentions. Like the For Sale sign, the clues are starring right at you! Here are my Top Ten Signs That Your Employees Are Looking For New Jobs:

My rental car was a little smaller and more toy-like than I was expecting...

Last week my proper man-sized, automatic transmission, power steering, traffic-fine-incurring car had to go in for repairs. Thanks City of Johannesburg for not repairing the multitude of potholes sprinkled liberally round town, keeping drivers on our toes and encouraging rapid lanes changes just to keep pedestrians wide awake too. The latter being another reason why blind people should not beg at Joburg intersections. My insurer told me that they will “kindly” offer a rent-a-car for the duration of the repairs. And by “kindly” they no doubt mean “already covered in your policy that you pay for”. But I did get a rental and so far it has proven to be invaluable.

Firstly, a rental car can do things that your car can’t do, or more correctly, you won’t do in your car. If you’re trying to get to a meeting on time, you can be sure your rental will go faster than the speedometer indicates… whilst holding up BMWs tailgating in fast lane. It’s like having your cake and eating it (as opposed to doing anything else with you cake)! We all know the best 4×4 by far is a rent-a-car. It goes off-road without having to select low range and will comfortably mount a curb if you’re stuck for parking. Thanks to my rental Hyundai Getz, I’ve now been able to achieve a lifelong dream: park on a traffic island, preventing a BMW X5 from doing the same! And speaking of parking, if you’ve ever wanted to parallel park at speed using the handbrake, only a rent-a-car will allow for this most entertaining manoeuvre. Ten points extra if you can do this into a disabled parking bay.

Now, I don’t want to say that my Getz is small, but I’m sure I can park two of them in my regular parking bay at work. I feel like I’m in an episode of the A-Team every time I ramp a speed bump. I can do donuts on traffic circles. And as the annoyed X5 driver pointed out, I could almost certainly park my Hyundai in his 4×4. Of course, we’d probably have to put the rear seats down… It would be unfair to compare my car to the clown car that is my rental, but the brochure does list a driver’s side airbag as a feature, which is nice. Holes in the dashboard are called “cup holders” and the air conditioner is about as powerful as a slow puncture. But I shouldn’t complain; it gets me to work and I’ve managed to hold up at least one Deputy Assistant Junior Director General’s convoy on his way to an emergency conference on nepotism.

Driving rent-a-cars over the years has made me ask a few pertinent questions, such as:

• Why do all rental cars smell of cigarette smoke and fabric softener?
• Why is there always a complimentary packet of breath mints in the car? What are they saying about customers and the freshness of their breath?
• Why are their customer service people so accusatory when you bring back a car covered in mud, missing its front bumper, with a blow-up doll in the passenger seat?

But, the rent-a-car brings pleasure and joy to driving. Who amongst us hasn’t accelerated when approaching the speed bumps on your way out of Cape Town International Airport, comforted by the thought that we’re driving a rental? Often when travelling on business, the rental car is neat way to jolt your brain to its senses, especially after a long, dull flight. What better way to do this than to spend ten frustrating and embarrassing minutes trying to figure out how the immobiliser works, why the car won’t engage first gear and pretending that you switched the wipers on purpose even though you thought you were indicating? If you’ve chosen your car rental wisely, you’ll even get a packet of Mint Imperials to ensure you greet your client as freshly and as minty as possible!

I can’t wait to get my car back!

"Happy thoughts! Happy thoughts! Happy thoughts!"

Friday afternoons are seldom associated with work. Surfing the net, doodling, staring at random spreadsheets, long lunches and Friday afternoon drinks perhaps, but seldom work. So it was a pleasant surprise when several massage therapists arrived on our floor, offering free stress relief massages! They came from a company called Hands On Healing. At first, I thought they were part of a Pentecostal ministry here to cast out evil spirits, heal the infirm and bless the poor in spirit, in which case they were in the right place. They did offer to “lay their hands on us”, but were in fact referring to a simple shoulder and neck massage conducted conveniently in your un-ergonomic office chair. Apparently, someone felt that stress levels were too high and the only solution was massages at your desk. Must be the same person who gave us ‘stress level monitoring’ fridge magnets – I kid you not, I still have mine!

I can’t vouch for stress levels being high or not, but there certainly has been an increase in vending-machine-rage, much gnashing of teeth because we’ve run out of sugar in the kitchen (which you only realise once you’ve made your coffee) and a dramatic escalation in ‘stress level monitoring’ fridge magnet vandalism. But it does beg the question whether deskbound massages are the answer? Indeed, there are many solutions to workplace stress. Feel free to try any of the following ideas which have been suggested by colleagues, HR people and my attorney, for some bizarre reason:

• Meditation – an exercise intended to empty the mind (easier for some), focus one’s thoughts and foster contemplation and relaxation. It’s also a great way to sleep during office hours.
• Reiki – involves transferring warm, healing energy through the palms that can assist with reducing anxiety and depression but not hangovers. It’s always handy to have a Reiki master around the office… you know… just in case the microwave breaks down – they’re great for warming leftovers!
• Breathing – deep and concentrated breathing can assist with lowering your pulse, giving you a sense of control and reducing those stress levels. It’s so quick and easy, you can even do it in the elevator. Unless of course some idiot gets in and takes the lift up only one floor, in which case, for stress relief purposes, feel free to punch them in the face. You’ll feel much better.
• Yoga – a useful technique for controlling the mind and the body… on a mat. Don’t try Bikram Yoga because this requires the room to be heated to 40 degrees Centigrade, which might annoy some of the other people sitting on your floor.
• Exercise – take a brisk walk at lunchtime. It’ll have to be brisk considering the number of muggings round the building…
• Start a stress journal – this can help you identify your stressors, helping you recognise patterns and common themes, such as having to write something every day in stupid, annoying journal.

The other option is to take a long bath, light some scented candles, put on some chilled music and curl up with a good book. This may not be possible in your cubicle.

If you’ve got any suggestions for coping with stress at the office, let me know at diary@jeetesh.net

SWOT analyis, not just a 'tick in the box' exercise

The annoying thing about people who’ve just completed their MBAs, some obscure certification or random training course, is that when they return to work they enthusiastically, but naively, want to implement everything they’ve just leant by next Thursday. Colleagues just back from the “Manage More Effective Meetings” course want to have agendas for any meeting including the one we had to decide what we’re wearing for Steve’s fancy dress party next weekend. I was chastised for not “speaking through the Chairperson” when I called dibs on Batman. Nervous, shy types just back from “Assertiveness Training” want to say no to everything to avoid being taken advantage of. I’ve just come up with a clever way to stop the nervous, shy types from coming to Steve’s fancy dress: ask them! They’re now obliged to say no! How assertive they are!

But recently, I’ve noticed that everyone back from training courses and MBA classes all want to do SWOT analyses. It’s as if they’ve run out of analysis tools to teach, so lecturers are just giving up after Chapter One and leaving it at SWOT. For those of you that don’t have a business degree, been to the company training facility or got your job as a result of nepotism, SWOT is an analysis tool, used to evaluate the relative Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats of a particular strategy, situation or choice. So, armed with only this tool, every Huey, Dewey, and Louie wants to do a SWOT at every opportunity. If they could complete a SWOT analysis on the usage of Post-It notes in the office they would. When the only tool you have is a hammer…

So I’ve decided to do a SWOT analysis of doing a SWOT analysis:

South Africans unite to support Ghana against Uruguay, but only until next weeks's planned xenophobia

We’ve been preparing for the Soccer World Cup since 2004 and in just four short weeks, it’s now all over. Sort of like Guns ‘n Roses long-awaited “new” album, Chinese Democracy but far more successful. I’ve been fortunate enough to go to four games, visit a couple of fan parks and get held up at 06:45 on the M1 South by Joe Biden’s cavalcade. But now that it’s over and done with, it’s time to reflect on what are the top ten things I learnt from the 2010 Soccer World Cup:

No, really, just stop

It has come to my attention that this month is interim performance appraisal month. I became aware of it when I received an invitation to my interim performance appraisal meeting. We all know your rating was already decided weeks ago, after you finished some random task or said something irrelevant in a meeting that either made your boss think you’re the company champion or the fifth floor’s village idiot.

But of course, just deciding on an employee’s rating would be terribly unfair. More efficient and perhaps more honest, but supposedly very unfair. So it’s important to gather subjective, immaterial and uncorrelated supporting evidence in order to justify the manager’s off-the-cuff evaluation of your performance. And this week I came across a rather novel way of doing that. It’s rather obviously called “Stop, Start and Continue”

Now, “Stop, Start and Continue” could easily be mistaken for the name of Alfa Romeo’s Motorplan (it runs for the first 10,000km or three months, whichever comes first or unless the gearbox falls off, in which case the motorplan is invalidated – hey, it’s your fault for buying an Alfa), but it also happens to be a very quick and easy way of evaluating employee performance. Why send out links to expensive performance management web sites, complicated Excel spreadsheets for capturing 360 degree feedback or asking people to complete a self-evaluation (an entertaining way to see just how deluded some colleagues can be)? All you need to do is send out a brief e-mail to superiors, peers and minions of the person being evaluated and ask them to list what the person should stop doing, start doing and continue doing, all for the purpose of learning, growth and weeding out the idiots.

To save you some time and attention, I’ve listed a few choice selections of what to answer if you’re lucky enough to be asked to participate in a friendly game of “Stop, Start and Continue”.

Stop

• Asking what Jack Welch would do.
• Pressing ‘Alt’ and ‘Tab’ every time someone passes your desk; we know you’re surfing the net and the fake budget spreadsheet from 2007 isn’t fooling anyone.
• Please.

Start

• Practicing higher standards of personal hygiene; there’s a reason why no one’s inviting you meetings and it’s not because “we’ve run out of chairs again”.
• Subscribing to those online recruitment web sites… I’m not saying anything but they might come in handy after we replace you with a macro in Excel.
• Working – a novel way to earn a salary and perhaps even a bonus as opposed to whining every year that you’re underpaid and the only bonus you got was an accidental extra helping of bolognaise at the canteen!

Continue

• Coming to work earlier and earlier and leaving later and later till you eventually leave before you arrive. We will interpret this as commitment, but will mark you down for having poor work/life balance
• Falling asleep at your desk. We all have a good laugh when you deny it, even though we can see the impression your keyboard has made on your cheeks. Also, it’s a mousepad, not a droolpad.
• Bringing donuts to Monday’s weekly progress meeting in a vain attempt to curry favour, when we all know you haven’t done anything since last week’s progress meeting you work-shy lazy bastard