"Promotion is not a reward for performance!!". I once made this rather bold statement at a employee town hall meet and it kicked off a good bit of discussion. In my view this came about as a rather provocative statement and I ended up meeting at least a dozen mid to senior level folks who came back and said they never saw it that way. It did change their perspective on how they look at their role and I tried to capture some of the sentiments in this piece.
In the past I have spent quite a bit of time detailing out, designing and running performance management framework and systems for large organizations and came across many many people (a good estimate can be as high as 75% and more) consider promotions as a reward for performance. The more this idea gets reinforced the more it creates a problem for the organization. Organizations that send this signal are setting themselves for failure. Sooner or later you end up with a entitlement paradox, where every good performer starts saying "When's my turn?".
Here are some perspectives on this...
Promotion is all about recognizing someone's capability for a job and making that fitment. If you had to promote someone for just for his good performance then you can be setting him up for failure. Remember the commonly encountered saying... "Your best operations guy may end up being your worst sales person"
One thing I often observed is that managers, at times when it comes to promotions, try to play GOD. They make every effort to give the promoted employee a feeling that they worked a lot through the network to manage their(his / her) subordinate to get a promotion.
How you manage the process in the organization will determine how others view it and who you promote matters because people read the message loud and clear when you promote the wrong persons and punish the right guys by not giving them the role they truly fit into.
In reality it will be an incidental thing that a person who is promoted is a good performer but not always true the other way round. Another point to remember is that performance is a necessary but no sufficient condition for a promotion. Take the simple case of A being the best territory sales representative for GETWELL PHARMA. As a Territory sales person he is responsible for ensuring good services to clients within a geographical boundary, increasing sales all at optimal travel and overhead costs. He is the star performer among sales folks. A is a a go-getter, loves traveling, loves meeting people and extremely achievement oriented. He always prefers to be in the limelight, gets excited and highly motivated when receives a praise and recognition from the Regional Sales Head or the Territory Sales Manager. The Regional Sales Head had just received a resignation letter from the Territory Sales Manager and was contemplating making A the new Territory Sales Manager in next 3 months.
When he discussed the proposal with the HR Manager he got the following feedback. A loves to follow schedules, meet Doctors as per assigned protocols and engage with them in a very pleasing and detailed oriented manner. However he really hates managing outcome of others. He just can't lead a team, motivate performance, coach or mentor others. He prefers being a star and can't stand losing out on sales targets. He gets completely dejected and takes the failures to meet targets as his own doing.
The regional sales head knows this very well and is not sure how to retain A if he is not able to promote him in at least next 2 years. But the question is will he be setting up for failure.
It is in the interest of the organization to do something else to retain him. So promoting your best sales person might leave you with worrying about having a bad fit for a Territory Manager role because he has to fix targets for others, drive up motivation, arrange team meetings, take stock of weekly performance all of which is not something that A is very keen on. He needs a fair bit of coaching to scale up and manage before he can take up the role of Territory Manager and the HR team feels that this can happen only after couple of years of inputs
So what options does a manager have to retain A. Here are three ways it can be done. While the first is essential you have a choice among the other two.
It is in the interest of the organization to do something else to retain him. So promoting your best sales person might leave you with worrying about having a bad fit for a Territory Manager role because he has to fix targets for others, drive up motivation, arrange team meetings, take stock of weekly performance all of which is not something that A is very keen on. He needs a fair bit of coaching to scale up and manage before he can take up the role of Territory Manager and the HR team feels that this can happen only after couple of years of inputs
So what options does a manager have to retain A. Here are three ways it can be done. While the first is essential you have a choice among the other two.
- Assign a performance coach and work through action and improvement areas. Needs to be a two way process starting with establishing objectives, working through with understanding barriers to improvement and then action planning followed by action to change
- Have an alternative engagement model for motivating and incentivizing the Sales Person (A in this case). This is very important and should be done in parallel to the coaching assignment. That way A is focused on the achievement and it is important this laddering (showing few more steps on the path towards something different or a new role is to be done)is important. Most organizations fail on this count and thus are unable to retain your good performer and lose them for lack of action taken.
- Look for a rotation to a new location or new product line in same role and change the context for the individual. It is more likely he / she will be engaged for the period since the change and in parallel you need to work on the coaching bit
At times you may be promoting someone into his or her area of expertise or capability then in such case it may be a good thing but if not then it is a recipe for failure.
The dichotomy comes in when you don't understand that performance is not a sufficient condition for promotion. To rephrase - it more appropriate to how people should see it... "Promotion is not causally related to performance" or "Performance is not the cause of promotion". It maybe a pre condition or given but the real precedence is good fit on capability or competencies and whether the organization is growing, whether there are roles in the organization for the individual to move. That is why companies known for their HR practices actually have multiple career path options for their employees.
Hence we should look at the fallout of not communicating in clear and simple terms why someone did not get promoted. Most of your A raters who leave because they did not get promoted after being considered or were looked over for promotion could actually have been retained if only a bit of effort was put in to communicate the right reasons.
Where HR teams and the managers fail, is their ability to communicate this aspect of a one sided relationship existing between performance and promotion. Also at stake are ego, self-esteem and motivation all a fall out of the perceptions about not being promoted that are in the minds of the people. Also the organizations often leave people who are not promoted to their own devices in interpreting feedback and finding ways to achieve their career goals.
Vague feedback from managers like "You need to be a bit more hard boiled" or"You're just about there" add to the confusion in the mind of he employee and on top of it he / she is again worried that X got through the job but not me adding to the anxiety. This reference group effect only complicates the perceived injustice or aberration in the system that people then attribute to the the whole process of promotion.
There is always some fuzziness maintained by organizations on the promotion criteria and how those decisions are made however it is generally a fit perspective that is considered. What capabilities do you need for the role being considered and the degree of fit which the individual brings to the table. We will continue to live with that fuzziness and cannot expect it as a problem that will go away sooner or later. Of course if we don't want performance differentiation and everyone gets the same rating we'll have to wait for those complete "Robot Teams" whose synchronous delivery of goods and services will be very different from the human element. And of course you won't have to motivate them except recharge or maybe at times tighten their nuts and bolts.
Hence we should look at the fallout of not communicating in clear and simple terms why someone did not get promoted. Most of your A raters who leave because they did not get promoted after being considered or were looked over for promotion could actually have been retained if only a bit of effort was put in to communicate the right reasons.
Where HR teams and the managers fail, is their ability to communicate this aspect of a one sided relationship existing between performance and promotion. Also at stake are ego, self-esteem and motivation all a fall out of the perceptions about not being promoted that are in the minds of the people. Also the organizations often leave people who are not promoted to their own devices in interpreting feedback and finding ways to achieve their career goals.
Vague feedback from managers like "You need to be a bit more hard boiled" or"You're just about there" add to the confusion in the mind of he employee and on top of it he / she is again worried that X got through the job but not me adding to the anxiety. This reference group effect only complicates the perceived injustice or aberration in the system that people then attribute to the the whole process of promotion.
There is always some fuzziness maintained by organizations on the promotion criteria and how those decisions are made however it is generally a fit perspective that is considered. What capabilities do you need for the role being considered and the degree of fit which the individual brings to the table. We will continue to live with that fuzziness and cannot expect it as a problem that will go away sooner or later. Of course if we don't want performance differentiation and everyone gets the same rating we'll have to wait for those complete "Robot Teams" whose synchronous delivery of goods and services will be very different from the human element. And of course you won't have to motivate them except recharge or maybe at times tighten their nuts and bolts.
The challenge for HR as well as Line managers would be how else do your reward high performers and your stars. In days of stiff talent competition it is very important that you keep a very sharp focus on who you retain. Retaining your best performers will be on the top of your agenda and it is here that disgruntlement with not being promoted plays a key role in turn over. However the reason for this is the lack of understanding of the relationship between performance and promotion and normally confusing the advancement as something that is a validation of their role in the organization. So when you create clarity about these aspects on the table it plays a vital role in making people understand the stance and this is the only pragmatic way to approach promotions and the complexities.
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