My Fifty Sixth Week as a Budding Author

Earlier this week our house was scene of a terrible trauma. A woman sat with head in hands in frustration wondering how this had happened and what on earth was she going to do about it. Now, seeing as there is a committed cyclist in the house you will immediately jump to the conclusion that her strife is linked to either the purchase of a new bike or oil marks on the carpet. It was neither. Helen was attempting to complete her annual performance appraisal for work.

Of course I showed due sympathy with a Cheshire cat grin and several air punches. I am now free of this yearly ritual that out trumps Morris dancing in its total pointlessness. For those that have not been through it, the annual appraisal is akin to being thrashed naked with birch twigs in the snow outside of a Swedish sauna. You are told by someone that there is huge benefit in doing it, but the execution and aftermath do not appear to uphold their proposition.

It is supposed to be frank and caring exchange of views between employee and employer. The employee’s performance against objectives is discussed and all sorts of human resource type things are then triggered like pay reviews, remedial action, training plans or moving the employee away from Stacey ‘cos she omits the Impulse underarm most days. Human Resources will tell you that this appraisal is necessary for employee motivation. It makes them feel wanted and gives them a chance to express themselves and raise any concerns that they may have.

The real truth is that appraisals are the HR equivalent of the British railway system. They cause untold anguish to many individuals, cost their organisations millions of pounds annually but never seem to actually move anything on. And before any of you HR or managerial types get all up in arms, sit back and have a think about appraisals in real life.

Imagine you wanted to appraise your peer group in order to improve their performance and effectiveness each year. Consider the paths available to you. Firstly you could meet each one of them individually in a pub, but before this meeting you should present them with a fifty page form that they must complete concerning their performance as “your friend” over the past year. This form must be completed in addition to all of you other demands as a friend, and to help them you must supply a one hundred page long manual to aid them in its completion, which they must read as well.

Then you must have the meeting. It must follow a strict set of guidelines and be the same as all the other meetings that you will have with all of your other friends but at the same time make them feel they are being treated as an individual. You must suppress the fact that you are an argumentative, opinionated, short tempered oaf with a minuscule attention span and for this one meeting become the ultimate diplomat. You must listen without judgement and document your friend’s views, jointly agreeing a course of action for any areas that require attention. Then you should set a series of objectives for your friend’s performance in the coming year. These must all be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Timely (SMART, HR love a good acronym). For example:-

“Dave, you must brush your teeth and lower your halitosis to a level of “Steve can sit within three yards of you” by the end of January 2012”

This applies specifically to me and my teeth, can be measured by Steve’s proximity, is attainable as I own toothpaste and a brush, is relevant as Steve won’t come to the pub unless I don’t, and has a timescale.

All of this must be carefully documented and presented to a third party so that all of your peer group appraisals can be “levelled”. Essentially, this means that the ratio of friends who are “brilliant” or “crap” must be small and most of them should be deemed to be adequate. Having been through the levelling process an action plan must be put in place and regularly reviewed throughout the year to ensure that neither party strays from the agreed path.

So, it all seems straightforward. I’ve applied a common business practise to the real world what could go wrong? Quite a lot actually. Firstly, I think I would receive several punches in the face for suggesting it in the first place. A few more lampings would occur during the meeting and after the levelling process I would be quietly driven to a dark woods and buried alive. You just would not treat your friends like this. Making them do most of the work in telling you all the things they are crap at. Making them write it all down and then telling them that they are not allowed to be statistically “very crap” as too many of them are so they have to be simply “crap” instead.

The way it would work is much more straightforward. It happens in cycling all of the time. You do something wrong, your friends berate you incessantly until you stop. You either stop and so do they, or you don’t and they depart. But Human Resources would not be happy with this as it isn’t a uniform process and some managers would not do the beration to company policy. Agreed. But life at work is not one long uniform set of processes is it? Did Steve Jobs dream up the iPod after following a series of flow charts. Success would be dealt with as it is in real life, with simmering resentment and talk behind the back.

And how many Human Resources departments can honestly hold their hands on heart that they have read through every single appraisal and continuously acted on them. In twenty years of going through this I know of exactly zero people for whom life at work has measurably changed after appraisal. Pay rises are decided by Finance, promotions are based upon either tongue based rectal cleaning or tactfully losing at golf to the boss and training courses are only allowed if you work in HR and need to learn about appraisals.

I suspect the process is one of filing followed by retrieval if and only if disciplinary action is required. The best appraisal I ever had was conducted by my manager Robin. He called me into his office, said “You seem to be doing OK”, ushered me out and then turned his attentions back to his Danish secretary. I fully appreciated his brevity, the lack of onus upon me to do anything but more importantly his priorities which were clearly focused in entirely the right direction.

I sympathise with Helen’s pain and obviously I am an embittered ex-corporate who used to be part of this process himself. I had a simple strategy though, I just told all my staff they were ace. That way they don’t mind filling in the forms and if you get them done early enough you can fill up the corporate “ace” quotient before any other department gets a chance. But Helen’s pain has made me think about my performance in the previous year when writing this book. So, I’ve decided to conduct my own personal appraisal in full public view.

But before we dive into my self flagellation can I quickly show you a view?

Not bad is it. A nice little harbour vista from what appears to be a wooden window frame. That is exactly my view as I write this blog. And what is much much worse is that it is MY view. Helen and I have gone and bought another house. Our entire family have all facepalmed in unison. “Why on earth are you two increasing your outgoings at a time when one of you is basically just dossing about?”. There’s a simple answer. “Why not?”.

We both fell in love with Brixham many years ago. I miss living by the sea and we have a house full of sea based fun stuff like kayaks, diving gear and fishing rods. Hardly any of it ever gets used. Stupidly we kept an eye on the property market in Brixham which recently freefalled (freefell? I don’t know). Coincidently a small house in need of repair was struggling to be sold. Many weeks of spreadsheet hackery and kids toy selling liberated the funds necessary for us to make our move.

A speculative low offer was surprisingly accepted and a bit more negotiation reduced the price further until a point late last week when our solicitor demanded the funds and his fee and we suddenly owned another house.

Depending on your point of view, Devon is a cyclist’s heaven. Basically, it is one bloody great hill. They cannot be escaped. They’re all incredibly steep and there is usually only room for a single vehicle regardless of its nature. I’ve been down here sorting things out and doing a lot of writing as well. Today I nipped out for a cheeky forty miles. This turned into a three hour long sufferfest as I had completely underestimated the climbing involved, somewhere in the region of 5,000 feet. The ride out of Dartmouth was a highlight, looking down onto the Dart estuary whilst suffering like hell on an 18% gradient that leads into the clouds. I think I’m going to like it here.

Helen and the kids are on their way down for the weekend and I hope they bought jumpers. Because, just like all of the other houses I have bought in the past, the heating is bust. I get the feeling I am to become very well acquainted with a large number of Devon tradesmen and that’s before I even had a chance to visit the docks. The owners clearly left in a rush and as part of the deal we took over the house “fully furnished”. Some of the items left behind are slightly bizarre though, I don’t remember seeing hair clippers, golf clubs, piss smelling wetsuits or car alloy wheels on the inventory. Put that lot together and you get the picture that this place may have been a sadomasochists retreat before we took it over. No change there then.

The house purchase does come with an imperative in that there is a clear mark in the calendar beyond which I have to generate funds. Last week I wrote about focus. This week it has been tattooed on the inside of my eyelids and so I’ve been a pretty productive chap hammering away at the keyboard like Rick Wakeman on speed. Just about all of the English rides written up and way over 10,000 words for the week. I’ve also done some really secret stuff that I’m not allowed to tell you about which makes this an incredibly pointless sentence that only I can fully appreciate.

Oh! I nearly forgot my appraisal.

Well, apart from the clear financial irregularities I appear to be doing OK. Please pass me my Danish secretary.

Dave

27th January 2012

WEEK 57>>>>>>>>>>>