I continue to be amazed at the level of effort put forth by a union on behalf of one of our Uncle’s largest exempt workforces. I don’t quite understand the motivation. I guess if you want to argue intel is more art than science, then sure, I’m down with joining the Teamsters (if nothing else for the jacket).
Look unless you want to go to a seriously objective system of measuring performance, there is no system that is not going to be abused by unscrupulous SOBs. The union assumes however that every boss is an SOB, and I don’t know about the rest of you, but that has rarely been my experience. In fact, more often than not I have seen bosses hampered by the performance/reward system and very deserving people effectively shortchanged because the rules were not flexible enough to account for the fact that they were rock stars.
What the union doesn’t want is a tech-based solution (the IC versions of Digg, Ebay and Amazon rankings) that would show objectively who was collaborating and having a measurable impact in the community (logs have no reason to lie). When measuring performance is simple math, you don’t need to pay dues for an advocate.
Comments (2)
I’d join just to hang out on the docks. It sounds like something cool to do. Just need a watch cap and a pea coat. Maybe a pipe for show.
NSPS has been around a while in several national security related fields and it has been a learning process. I’ve yet to find someone who likes it better than the old system. Managers are forced to think about performance and workers are forced to think about performance. Too much thinking to be a pleasant thing.
There was one issue that was probably not foreseen. With pay banding it is nearly impossible for a person outside of an organization to determine who is the person in charge. You get three bands for most of the career fields. So two people show up to a meeting and both are from the middle band, one is much older than the other. Who will the visiting organization think is in charge? The older one? Maybe not.
One thing I saw used before was performance based on ranking by three groups of people: those senior to you, those in your peer group, and those junior to you. Those senior and junior did not need to be in the supervisory chain. This did allow for the truest performers to rise to top but was subject to popularity contest mindset by some. If I remember right, a percentage (10%) was removed from the top ratings and (10%) from the bottom from the outset to alleviate the effect of extreme (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FO2Abp0FbA0) outliers. Ratings were based not just on performance but ability to lead and ability to follow and ability to work with others. The surveys were done all at the same time by the different groups which also probably alleviated politicking and bandwagon jumping (something the primary processes could learn a little from).
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July 2, 2008 9:06 PM
Posted on July 2, 2008 21:06
With respect to monitoring and paying for performance based on usage of material and usability, look again to the gargoyles of Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson. The intel collectors of his future are paid for content which is influenced by the desire of the customer for the content provided.
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July 2, 2008 9:11 PM
Posted on July 2, 2008 21:11