Catching Chimera: The 21st Century Performance Management

Maddy, the Head of HR, was pensive. “No one seems to like the current performance management system, professor", she said. "The employees disagree with their ratings. They believe that their manager does not remember all their hard work through the year. The managers grumble that employees do not recall the frequent feedback they give throughout the year. None like the ‘bell curve’. And the leadership does not trust the process itself to deliver business results. Is there any solution, professor? Are we destined to fight this multi-headed ‘Chimera’ endlessly with no victory in sight?”

The professor was more optimistic. “We are students, Maddy. Students of logic, and human failings, rationality, and irrationality, mathematics, and statistics, exact sciences as well as probability. We haven’t found a solution only because we haven’t looked in the right places, perhaps. Let’s disaggregate, declutter, solve, and then reaggregate. Let us deal with this, one step at a time”. And thus, the knight and her guide started exploring the contours of this modern ‘Chimera’.

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The 21st century world is transitioning into the Industrial Revolution (IR) 5.0 driven by virtual reality and artificial intelligence. While these changes are revolutionizing human performance and productivity, the system used to manage this performance in the workplaces continues from IR2.0, a relic from an era long gone. The fact that it is out of sync with the current reality has been proven time, and again when organizations have discarded performance measurement altogether due to poor results.

Here is an introduction to a new ‘performance management system’ fit for the 21st century. This is perhaps the idea whose time has come.

The concept has been dealt with, one aspect at a time, in a storytelling fashion to endear itself to the readers, users and decision-makers alike. It is believed that the new system will take root across productive endeavors to make management of performance scientific, contemporaneous, and trustworthy, again.