Conference 7.286::digital

    I heard about a non-Digital sales organisation in which the following
    practices are used.
    
    1  All bonuses are pooled and shared equally among team members.
    
    2  Team members are subject to peer review and if performance remedies
       fail then they are at least taken out of the bonus share and
       probably removed from the team.
    
    3  There is _NO_ downward review by managers of staff, but the managers
       are all subject to both upward review and peer review.

re .0

What's your job function?

I'm a software engineer, and certainly I've had some element
of "peer review" in my previous positions (not sure about this
one yet!).  This has taken the form of the manager soliciting
comments from the people I work with, and incorporating the
comments into my review if appropriate.

This seems like a good idea to me, since software engineering
is done in teams.  It helps detect disparity between management's
perception of the worth of Engineer X and the team's perception
of the same.  It also helps detect operational conflicts; if you've
got someone who's good but doesn't get along with anyone, then
you need to know about it.

If management's doing their job right, they don't simply
concatenate these comments and call it a review -- they
use the comments as information to form a more complete 
view of the employee.
 

	In answer to .2, I work for the MCS Massachusetts SNA Support Center,
where the main tasks are software installations and fielding customer hotline 
calls. I work remotely from home in California. My work is largely invisible to 
the naked eye.
	Whether or not peer review suits a particular group is not the point.
If we really wish to be fair, either everyone must use peer review or no-one. 
Has "do the right thing" been replaced with "do your own thing"?
	The author of .2 really confirms one of my points. "If management's
doing its job right", we wouldn't need such an artifice as peer review. We 
always had informal peer review, if it only consisted of the manager asking his 
secretary to tap into the grapevine. Over the last ten or fifteen years 
management has increasingly tried to shift tasks to others. There are less than 
twenty in our group and it shouldn't be too difficult to take time off meetings 
to find out what one's subordinates are doing. I was very impressed with a
recent broadcast on PBS about the massive Indian Railroad system, where the
head honcho holds daily briefings about every known problem and then goes out 
on site to various troublespots and talks to the ordinary working man.
	As for mention of "someone who's good but doesn't get along with 
anyone" - this opens a whole can of worms. What does it matter if a person 
doesn't fit in, as long as the person's work is "good"? It seems to me that
to consider such a factor in a review is very hazardous and prone to abuse.
It suggests all sorts of subjective and unmeasurable criteria. As long as 
no-one's work is affected, it is not the manager's concern. Since when was 
Digital a social club?

Peter Jones
    

	Interesting question. I too have been subject to peer review, 
	and have mixed thoughts on the matter.

	My first manager had us IC's write a draft of our own
	review, and he usually rubber stamped them. Naturally
	I got good reviews ;^) But his review writing led to his
	downfall. For personal/political reasons he jerked one 
	fellow around mightly. As word leaked out there was
	rebellion in the ranks. Mr. Manager was demoted, and took
	his leave when the early retirement package was offered.
	A very messy, demoralizing situation for all involved.

	The new manager instituted a very disciplined review process
	which included anonymous peer review. My first time around
	I got mostly good comments from my co-workers except for one 
	rather strong negative. I tried to take it all as constructive. 
	The new manager and I worked out a plan to modify my offending 
	ways, and I ernestly stuck to the plan, but the next year the 
	same thing happened. By the third time around I shrugged it off
	and chalked it up to experience. You can't please everyone.

	Altogether I would say peer review has a positive role (and
	client review even more so). It always helps me to have a
	balanced perspective from many voices, especially about
	something with as much emotional weight as one's work performance. 
	However as long as the input is anonymous, it cannot be rebutted.
	Even attempting to rebutt can put one in bad light by
	making one appear to be unresponsive to criticism.
	Furthermore personal conflict issues cannot be directly 
	addressed. So the peer review input needs to be carefully 
	placed into the proper context by the manager.


				John

       	I started to write a response but then realized I wasn't sure
    how the "peer review" in the base note was implemented. For the last 
    10 years or so, I've sort of written my own review and others that I've 
    worked with have been solicited for input.

    	The end result was usually a mixture of input from everyone with
    the majority of it coming from me. How is this different from what
    the base noter goes through ? Does everyone get in a room and hash it
    out ?

    	Ray

>        As for mention of "someone who's good but doesn't get along with 
> anyone" - this opens a whole can of worms. What does it matter if a person 
> doesn't fit in, as long as the person's work is "good"? It seems to me that
> to consider such a factor in a review is very hazardous and prone to abuse.

What I meant is, I might be utterly brilliant and capable of doing 17
impossible things all before lunch time.  However, this doesn't do
anyone much good if I refuse to tell my teammates my ideas and am
actually downright rude to anyone who suggests a little more
co-operation.   

Now, you can say then obviously I am not doing my job. I agree. However,
my point was that the peer review data might reveal the manner in which I am
failing to do my job, and thus we can come up with a development plan
to fix things.  

>									We
> always had informal peer review, if it only consisted of the manager asking his 
> secretary to tap into the grapevine. Over the last ten or fifteen years 

Dunno about what goes on in your group, but in my last group it wasn't
a whole lot more formal than this.   The manager sends out a mail message
which pretty much said "care to say anything for X's review?".  I don't
really see that that can be bad, but listening to what the grapevine
says about X is good.   In fact, this way people have to take responsibility
for what they say about X, which should encourage a more balanced reporting
of strengths and weaknesses.   

> It suggests all sorts of subjective and unmeasurable criteria. As long as 
> no-one's work is affected, it is not the manager's concern. Since when was 
> Digital a social club?

DEC isn't a social club, but it is a collaborative enterprise.  I'm only talking
about those factors which DO affect work.

By the way, the reason I asked about your job was because I think it affects
the process.  As I think I said, I'm a software engineer.  Software gets
designed in teams, and therefore the ability to work in teams is
important - hence feedback on how well you're working is important.
Maybe it's less so for your job; sounds like you don't have a whole lot
of day-to-day contact with your peers.  And that's why one-rule-for-everyone
is not appropriate.

    Gee, I tried to get peer input in my review but the only input that was
    used was management's. I asked for peer input from both my coworkers
    and (internal) customers and included that in my addendum. My own input
    to my review was also completely dismissed.
    
    It was an 'interesting' review.

    so, what's the role of the manager in peer reviews?  Does the manager
    still decide the rating and salary increase, or is that somehow done by
    your peers?  Oh gee, what if we had 'peer salary planning'?
    
    Mark

In my model, and experience:

-- Management does the review and has responsibility for it.

-- The "peers" get a chance to provide their opinions to
   management.  They don't write the review and they don't
   see the review.

Perhaps this is a weaker version of "peer review" than
is practised in the basenoter's case.

>Perhaps this is a weaker version of "peer review" than

Yep;  Back when I worked at the CSC, I was on a team where:

Peers provided input to me (manager included).  I wrote my review based on peer
input.  Manager, myself, and 2-3 peers gathered (the team varied in size,
usually around 30 people), looked over input from peers, and my write-up;
discussed.  If everyone agreed that my write-up reflected input, rating was
assigned based on input and committee signed review.

--Scott

re:-1 Yep, that's the way our engineering team did it too (when we last had
reviews a couple of bungee managers ago). We didn't even have our manager but
rather a facilitator whose job was to keep things moving and professional. I
was a bit incomfortable in these but felt they were fair. I'm not sure what
happens now. We have a local host manager who we rarely talk to and a remote
manager we see about 3 or 4 times a year. liesl

    Peer reviewhas worked for the teams I have been on with a few caveats:  
    
    1.  Review the person's work, not their politics, religion, etc.  Since
    this fits right in with valuing differences it hasn't been a problem.  
    
    2.  One thing we put into place on one team was negative issues need to
    have been addressed between you and your peer, or they could not be
    included in the PA.  
    
    3.  No anonymous peer reviewing.  This has the potential of creating
    the feeling that you have upwards of 40 enemies if the information is
    anonymous and unfavorable.  
    
    4.  Team input on putting together the peer review rules.  This is
    critical to avoid the same concerns you have. 
    
    Me?  I like(ed) it but we had all the caveats in ours addressed.  One
    iwll hope it will continue.
    
    meg