Transforming organisations

The CEO appraisal

Once the Board has finally signed off the bulls’ eye, the process of appraising each director can begin. This always starts with the CEO because everything stems from the person at the top.

The structure of an organisation, its culture, the degree to which it is goal or target focussed, whether it tends to be marketing or finance led, the people policy, the ICT emphasis, everything stems from the top whether it is spoken or unspoken.

Ideally two other directors appraise the CEO with an external facilitator in place to manage the process. You need a room where there will be no interruptions of any kind for maybe three hours. Very little paperwork is required and certainly nothing to do with technology or spurious questionnaires. It is what people talk about that matters.

There are three stages to this process, and maybe just three sheets of paper to record comments and observations. The first stage is to review the CEO’s development points that arose from the previous appraisal. To what extent have these been addressed? Were any difficulties encountered? Have these development points been completed? If not, why not? What is to be done about this?

The second stage is the discussion of contemporary issues where anything and everything can be raised. This stage will include what the CEO has enjoyed about the job, what has been a frustration, how effective this person is with communication, handling conflict, dealing with crisis and so on. Literally anything can be discussed provided it is in the interests of the organisation.

Remember that we are talking about transforming executive performance, and that this work comes under the heading ‘developing trust’. You develop trust in any relationship by sharing a process of openness, honesty and integrity.

As the conversation progresses it is invariably the external facilitator that teases out the development points, one by one. Most people only really want up to three development points to be working on between appraisals. The reason it is the facilitator that formulates these in the first instance is because he or she will be working impartially, with no interest in politics or protocol or hidden agendas. This person can ask the difficult questions. These are things that are inevitably part of organisational life, but they get in the way of high quality appraisals. Everyone serves the organisation, including the CEO.

These development points can be anything to do with behaviour, personality, use of time, use of energy, types of intelligence, simplicity in the face of complexity, thinking paradigms, experience, skill, knowledge or even attitude. What is essential is that they link to the bull’s eye. If the bull’s eye is the statement of excellence for the organisation, then the development points for the CEO are their personal commitment to excellence. You only grow an organisation by growing the people and this always needs to start at the top. The steeper the flight path towards the bull’s eye the more important these development points are.

And then you can move on to each Board director in turn.

posted by Tim @ 2:08 AM