As the proportion of Millennials in the workforce increase, management is going to have to adapt to the demands of this unique cohort. Having been raised in a feedback and media rich environment, they are going to expect no less in the workplace.

Problem

If you were born in the year 1982 or later, you probably grew up with the internet, which became widely available in the 90's. Having personally led teams comprised of these millennials, there is something that stands out about this cohort more than any generation before.

Back in 1972, Walter Mischel of Stanford University conducted one of the most successful behavioral experiments ever. A marshmallow was offered to each child. If the child could resist eating the marshmallow, he was promised two instead of one. The scientists analyzed how long each child resisted the temptation of eating the marshmallow, and whether or not doing so had an effect on their future success. The first follow-up study, in 1988, showed that "preschool children who delayed gratification longer in the self-imposed delay paradigm were described more than 10 years later by their parents as adolescents who were significantly more competent". A second follow-up study, in 1990, showed that the ability to delay gratification also correlated with higher SAT scores.

Media, Technology and the Internet have however programmed an entire generation to get everything you ever wanted at the click of a button, even if you don't have the money! The seductive trio has conspired to systematically demolish our ability to delay gratification of any sort. Technology, Media and the Internet work 25/8/366 to tell us that we need more stuff, better stuff or then different stuff. In the past, one would have to wait for the morning's newspaper, now it's on twitter moments after it happened. In the past, you took a picture, waited to finish the roll of film, and gave it in to develop, and then saw the pictures a couple of days later. Now it's on your Facebook page the moment it is clicked. To get to your favorite song, you needed to fast forward or rewind till you got to the right part of the magnetic tape. Now it is a touch away on you latest 'idevice'.

The gap between an action and feedback has steadily decreased over the last 40 years and is most cases now it is a few seconds. If you blog, you get feedback on your post in a matter of a few minutes. If you put up some new pictures, you get feedback in a matter of minutes. Instant feedback has become a way of life. It is feedback on what you share that keeps you refreshing your social network home page every few minutes.

The problem is that organizations don't get it. Most large organizations still have archaic annual performance review cycles that are documentation intensive and don't interest millenials at the very least. One of my direct reports once told me, 'Just let me know what my performance rating is and how much variable pay I'm getting. I know the rest'.

Performance management systems have to adapt to the times, in order to remain relevant to the people they are being used to manage. While many organizations still treat the performance management and appraisal process with great confidentiality and secrecy, one just has to look over to Yahoo! to see just how candid and transparent the corporate world has begun post the Internet. Carol Bartz had no qualms in letting the whole world know that she had been fired over the phone. She has no qualms in using her iPad to do it either!

Solution

Performance management has to become real time. Feedback has to be delivered immediately to managers to keep them engaged and motivated. One of the questions in the Gallup Q12, considered by many to be the gold standard as far as measuring employee engagement, is this one at #4.

"In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work"

Not the last year, not the last month, LAST 7 DAYS. And this is basis research that was published in the path-breaking book, First, Break All the Rules back in 1999. I would wager that 7 DAYS in the 90's is the equivalent of 1 DAY in 2011.

Younger managers need feedback all the time, even if it is just a pat on the back or a quick word. It is the equivalent of the 'Like' or 'Thumbs Up' icon that ubiquitous in cyberspace. Having been raised in a medium that's rich in instantaneous feedback, they yearn for the same in the workplace too.

Appraisal systems are going to have to become no different from a Facebook page. You post what you are working on. Your team members are listed as co-workers. As you make progress, your team members and supervisor keep sharing their feedback with you. At the end of each project, everyone on the team and your supervisor enter their ratings of your contribution, performance and behavioral competencies on the same system. The user can determine the degree of transparency in the system.

As alien as this might seem to a number of people, millennials actually prefer this route. Not very long ago I was trying desperately to schedule a face-to-face year-end discussion with one of my direct reports. It finally came to a situation where I had to ask him to cancel some travel plans so that we could sit down and have the conversation. At this point he suggested that we hang out on Google+ and do it. That cleared up a lot of cobwebs in my head and I discarded the dogma of face-to-face being the best way to do things. The world was changing and I had to change to remain relevant.

The solution is simple. Switch to a Facebook or LinkedIn interface to ensure continuous feedback and make this the backbone of all performance management processes.

Practical Impact

The practical impact of this would be a dramatic increase in engagement. Let's look at the Q12 a little more closely.

Do I know what is expected of me at work?
Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?
At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?
In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for good work?
Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?
Is there someone at work who encourages my development?
At work, do my opinions seem to count?
Does the mission/purpose of my organization make me feel like my work is important?
Are my co-workers committed to doing quality work?
Do I have a close friend at work?
In the last six months, have I talked with someone about my progress?
At work, have I had opportunities to learn and grow?

A social media inspired performance management system would enable a number of these pre-conditions for employee engagement very elegantly. (1) Expectations of each team member both from peers and well as the supervisor can be posted at the start of the day. (4) Recognition of the sort they are used to in terms of likes / messaging etc. can be delivered instantly and through the day. (7) Instant polls and online voting to arrive at a consensus decision will go a long way in ensuring opinions count. (9) Greater awareness and connectedness to co-workers will increase collective pride and ownership. (10) The same platform can be used to build friendships in pretty much the same way that social media enables. (12) Sharing of great work, new intelligence or training programs can rapidly raise the skill levels of the workforce.

Most organizations are today involved in the debate about whether they should allow Internet access or not at the workplace. A majority of the employees already have a hack around that! Rather than resist the direction in which the world in headed, it is best that you find a means to harness social media to benefit your organization. A performance management interface that is based on a portal that they are already familiar with navigating will make adoption much faster and usage will be much higher than most stand alone performance documentation systems that are currently the norm in organizations.

First Steps

To start with, you could shift your entry level managers and their supervisors to the new Facebook inspied performance management system. Adoption here would be swift and you could do a pre / post engagement survery to measure the efficiacy of the system.

If you really wanted to keep the costs rock bottom, you could run the pilot on facebook itself using the right privacy settings. Every member of the team and the supervisor should sign up and become part of a group and then use all the features to communicate, give feedback, plan meetings, give recognition etc.

A year down the line you could use the success of the pilot to make the case for an organization-wide roll out very compelling.

Credits

Raynah Remedios

Aswath Venkatraman (we once almost did a performance review on IM)

Deepali Agarwal

Sandeep Ramesh

Sairam Krishnamurthy

Karen Remedios

Himanshu Kanwar

Nagendra RR

Shankar Radhakrishnan

Chanakya Gupta

Aditi Pratap

Geeta Royuuru

Sandeep Mathew

Shashwat Sharma

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November 17, 2011 at 1:58am

DLee

Stephen you hit the nail right on the head here. Have you heard of Rypple, www.rypple.com? This company has developed software which provides a platform for organizations to give instant performance feedback to their employees. At the same time it provides transparency in the workplace. Why should anyone be expected to wait an entire performance cycle just to be told how they did 6 months ago? If there is problem, let me know now while there is time to make the proper adjustments or seek out help! Instant feedback is more common practice than people may think, and it is used in the military. Terri Griffith decribes in her book, "The Plugged-In Manager", how the military uses After Action Reviews to seek out opportunities to improve the people, technology, and organization.

November 16, 2011 at 12:55am

Sriram G

This is a very interesting thought, allow me to build on it a little :)

A Football Season is to me a great way to understand a lot of Management Theories & Concepts. The prize at the end of the year is the Trophy, to win it you have to win as many of the smaller battles every week (games) as possible. There will be times when qualitatively a game is easier or tougher, but the net gain from winning a game remains the same. There will be times when people achieve a great sequence of results, and the momentum is worth more than the results themselves.

Feedback in football is instantaneous, but the projects, are long term. Improving the first touch of a player or making another fitter or faster, growing the ability of the team to be compact & reduce space between the lines, and building a team spirit where teams never give up till the final whistle… all these are desired goals, but managers work on it bit by bit, looking at every game as a test of whether things are improving. In between, there are training sessions every day, where you get time, away from the pressure of instant results to observe, evaluate and have a conversation with a person or the team. When you go through the video of the defeat last Saturday, or the movement patterns of the midfield in the upcoming Sunday battle. Where you work in preparing the team for the next result that will matter.

A Year is made up of many small goals, whether it is 38 games or 12 monthly operating cycles. What is important is that a leader checks whether the team is heading in the right direction after each of these events, and works upon it in between the games, to best equip the team to win the next round of matches. Feedback then, is useless if not continuous because the journey always is.