Arrow Electronics

Stephen Kaufman has two main responsibilities from a CEO's standpoint. The first is to guide the strategy of the organization. Second, is getting the right people in the right places and motivating them, so that the execution of the strategy is effective. Kaufman says that everything else is just mechanics. This puts a heavy emphasis on the people that need to be hired, and their performance evaluations. By looking at employees evaluations, he can better determine if the right people are in the right places and that those people are being effective.

A good point was brought up by Krista Boland. She stated that the comparative rating system was not the best way to give employees feedback about their performance. This was because it indirectly compared the employees to one another. Since the evaluations were based on numbers from 1 to 5, each individual employee had to be compared to one another to get the meaning of 1 and 5. So, if someone got a 2 in a certain area, they started to question who got the 5. All in all, this style of performance evaluation was not based on the individual, but the group of employees as a whole.

The results of the evaluations did not come out as expected. The managers who were conducting the evaluations did not discriminate between employees. I think that they were afraid of the fact that being critical about other peoples jobs might lead someone to be critical about their own. Since the managers were afraid to give true evaluations, everyone received a 4 or 5 on their evaluations. When everyone on received 4s and 5s, they were then under the impression that nothing needed to be improved. So in turn, the employees would not work harder, and more effectively.

All in all, Kaufman tried many different approaches to the performance evaluation rules/criteria. All of these approaches lead to inconclusive results. So by spinning his wheels trying to find a accurate performance evaluation system, did nothing. This is one of the examples that show performance evaluations to be useless. I think that the best way to have productive and efficient employees is to internally motivate them. Employees do not become more efficient after a performance evaluation, they have to be internally aware that they need to do better. Then and only then will be grow and become a better worker. You can compare this situation to the classic new years resolution, millions of people each year set a goal or standard tat they want to achieve throughout that next year. But in reality, 90% of those people who make that goal do not continue it and accomplish it. People have to be internally motivated to achieve something, not just a once a year slap in the face.