Tactility and the Inverse Performance Review

’Tis the season for Oscar announcements, breaking New Year’s resolutions, and perhaps among the most dreaded of annual rituals, the Performance Review. I wrote recently about Appreciative Performance Remediation, and here at Adler we too are setting up for our own Appreciative Performance Reflections done in the context of a 3-person reference group (rather than being reviewed by their direct supervisor or manager alone, or in the context of the now-cliché 360 appraisal).

When an organization is guided by vision, a method of evaluation and assessment that involves oversight and supervision (which literally means the same as “over” “sight”) makes some semblance of sense. Vision is a one-way sense that demands distance and separation of the viewer from what is being viewed. Objectivity is the intent, and that unfortunately necessitates that which is being viewed – that is, the employee – to become an instrumental object in the organization’s “eyes.”All of that is consistent with the instrumental consideration of employees in an Industrial-Age-informed workplace.

On the other hand, an organization that chooses tactility as its guiding sensory metaphor – navigating according to the question, whom are we going to touch and how are we going to touch them today? – has a different realization. Tactility is a two-way sense: you cannot touch without being touched. In a workplace informed and inspired by tactility, there is an opportunity to introduce a reciprocity aspect to the annual performance reflection. If the organization is going to ask its members, “how well did you accomplish what we’ve asked of you; how well were you able to bring your best to contribute to the organization’s success?” then the individual has the right to ask of the organization’s leadership, “how well did you do what was expected of you to support my success?”

Recall what 21st century leadership is about: “enabling a conducive environment where people engage to create a shared experience in which an alternative future becomes possible. In an organization informed by tactility, it is not only legitimate and appropriate, but necessary for the individual to assess the leadership, asking, “how well did you enable that engaging shared experience? How much more likely is that alternative future this year as compared to last year? How effectively were resources deployed to create an environment most conducive to enabling me to bring my best towards our collective success?”

Fair game, I say: If organizations are bent on annually reviewing the performance of its members, the members have an equal right and obligation to act appropriately in undertaking an inverse performance review.