GentrysMillTX10 said:
At my last job - all of us that reported to the VP had to set annual goals. They had to be SMART goals….Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relative, and Timely.
One guy wrote his 5 goals and then the next day celebrated that he had met his goals for the year. The VP congratulated him and said the rest of us should learn to follow suit - and the VP was dead serious.
I later asked the VP why that was acceptable and even promoted. The VP said that everyone sees goals differently and for that guy to actually achieve his goals has been a lifelong struggle - so he was proud of the employee for setting and achieving his goals.
So I asked if I can set goals for the next day and be done for the year. The VP said no since I had already written my goals for the year the day before and he wouldn't let me change them.
Later that same year, the next day goal setter purchased 150 acres from the VP in east Texas. The VP then bought a beach house and let the employee go to the beach house whenever he wanted….
That SMART goal crap has been around forever. I worked at a company that implemented a "people first" program that include the SMART goals. At one of the kick off type meetings someone wore a "People First" shirt to the meeting the the presenter asked him where he got the shirt. He replied "From when I worked at AT&T...we did this same thing 10-years ago and gave it up after about 3-years...but I did get the t-shirt".
That same company, a manager would do his subs evals, then they would be re-aligned in a big meeting with all the managers. They started the meeting with the premise that everything person's score had to fit into a bell curve. The theory was there would be a few top performers, a few bad ones, and everyone else goes into the middle. So they'd go thru every persons' rating in the department (so your managers rating of you would be shown to every other manager in the dept.) and then everyone would upgrade or downgrade that rating to fit it into the bell curve. This of course was ridiculous because some managers were 'easy graders' and others were very demanding/difficult. So a 5-star guy for manager X would be a 3-star guy for manager Y. Then of course some managers might hold a grudge against another manger or employee and they'd of course down grade that employee. My old manager told me there would literally be shouting matches over who should be ranked where.
I guess they figured this was a way to get rid of the 'bad' employees....the employees they valued so much they hired this outside consulting firm to implement the 'People First' program so we'd all think management gave a **** about the little people. Of course the company only hired the best employees..which of course flies in the face of grading everyone on a bell curve.
I left a few years after it started and I believe they abandoned the whole process shortly after.
One other thing my boss told me at the time was when he'd get feedback from other employees I worked with, he'd only consider the ones where the other employee was willing to allow me to see what they said. He felt if that person did not have the courage to stand behind their evaluation of me, it wasn't worth the paper it was written on and he'd throw those ones in the trash. He was one of the smartest people I'd ever known and was a pretty good boss. Reminded me of that good teacher you had in school who was always willing to explain things or help you make sense of work tasks to help you be successful. Great mentor.