Rating: 
Summary: A remarkably useful handbook for managing in the new century
Review: There should be a huge audience for this book, if others have had anything like the experience I had as a manager years ago. I was asked to complete performance appraisals for the 25 people who reported to me. At the outset, it seemed like a routine process, but it quickly became a font of bitterness. With each employee, I earnestly voiced a combination of heartfelt enthusiasm and helpful criticism. And, invariably, each employee glommed onto the "bad" stuff and walked away crestfallen. Only after I myself set up a forum for receiving appraisals of my own performance did I have any sense of the devastation wrought by the appraisal process. At the time, I was sure I hadn't done it right, that there was a better way to get my incisive criticism across to to those whom I was appraising. But just as Barry Oshrey, in Seeing Systems, has revealed the patterns of perception and behaviors depending on whether one is a top manager, a middle manager, or a front-line employee, Coens and Jenkins, in Abolishing Performance Appraisals, have revealed the systemic bases for the dismay experienced by virtually everyone who has participated in appraising others or being appraised. Even the recently-become-sacred 360-degree appraisals can be fatally flawed, say the authors, if what they are about is judgment and evaluation, rather than helpful feedback. In describing alternatives to appraisal, the authors have written a detailed handbook on feedback, coaching, dealing with poor performers, and compensation. Coens and Jenkins quote a telling comment from Douglas McGregor pointing to the tendency of managers to ignore the results of research. In marshalling not only an impressive array of research, but also nicely bringing the research to life with "true stories," the authors have produced a remarkably useful handbook for managing in the new century.
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Summary: Abolish Bureaucracy to Encourage Improvement!
Review: This book has more perspectives and detail about the problems with performance appraisals than you would have learned about in 20 years. As a result, the suggestion to abolish performance appraisals comes as no surprise (especially since that's the title) and the logic is appealing, as well. To get rid of performance appraisals will be difficult in most companies, because people will not be able to imagine what the alternatives can be. The book's rich detail about the problems, and then the many suggestions in it for how to develop replacements fill those gaps. If you are like me and dislike performance appraisals, get this book to help you to migrate away from them. Since I never liked performance appraisals, I abolished them years ago in our consulting firm. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the mechanisms that I had substituted for performance appraisals were consistent with the authors' recommendations. I am a big believer in complexity science, and like to see organizations operating in more free form ways. You have to eliminate strait jackets like performance appraisals to get to that point. The thrust of the alternative is to place the responsibility with each person in the company for their own development, but be sure that they get access to the resources and feedback they need to improve. This is also very revealing because people vary enormously in how interested they are in improving. If you put the ball in their court, you will learn a great deal about the future potential of the people in the organization. Some will try very little. Some will try a lot. Many will not follow through. But you will have opened a doorway through which the most motivated to improve can go as far as they want. That's terrific! The only part of the book that I disagreed with is that the authors think that all performance measures are bad. In my experience and in my research, I find that performance measures that people set for themselves that they think are important are extremely valuable for focusing and stimulating performance. The authors seem to think that employees will always focus on goals that help their little area rather than the whole company. That occurs only when people don't understand how the whole business works. That's an education issue, not a performance measurement issue. After you have read and begun to apply this book, I suggest that you also think about where else in your organization you have bureaucratic practices that stifle innovation, hurt morale, and slow down progress. Then, use this book as a model for how to undo those harms as well. In many companies, processes for controlling capital expenditures and authorizing new product development often have these effects. As a result, little experiments are inhibited that the company can afford to fail in by processes designed to keep from making big mistakes with billions. Free up everyone to feel good about themselves, to become better, and to cooperate more freely to improve the organization!
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Summary: Dignity in the Workplace
Review: This is an important and well written book. The authors, Tom Coens and Mary Jenkins, think it is time for organizations to begin treating employees like the adults that they are. There is too much patriarchal and paternalistic hand-holding, and way too much time spent monitoring, evaluating and judging individuals. The authors advocate dropping the ritual of performance appraisal as a vital step, in itself, and for the "undercurrent" that appraisal represents, towards freeing the human spirit in organizations. This undercurrent "hangs like a cloud, pervades the workplace atmosphere...." It is the "personnel policies, human resource practices, and most importantly, the organization's unseen culture (values and beliefs) about people. It sends messages that people are not interested in working or improving the organization, messages that people are children who need to be directed and controlled in an atmosphere much like a traditional school." This is powerful stuff. Coens and Jenkins want us to get busy on working together towards improving processes and the system of delivering value to our customers, and give up the quest for finally pinpointing, once and for all, who the "1"s, "2"s, "3"s, etc. are in the organization. They want us to quit thinking that a person's value and performance can somehow be reduced to a number. They explain how this is a fallacy and illusion, given the impossibility of separating out the individual's contribution from the contribution of the system or environment that she works in, inherent measurement and judgment biases, and organizational politics. More importantly, such reductionism is degrading and demoralizing to the individual. And "we trivialize an individual's work, often involving heart and soul, from something unique and wonderful into a cold and sterile numerical rating that purportedly signifies the person's total contribution." The approach the authors take is to first surface, then examine, and ultimately attack the assumptions underlying appraisal, and then to build alternatives from "newer, more hopeful assumptions." They are thorough and convincing in making the case to abolish performance appraisal. W. Edwards Deming, who mentored Jenkins, was often asked, "But if we eliminate performance appraisal, then what will we replace it with?" He would reply, "Try leadership." Whereas Coens and Jenkins would surely support such a true and succinct response, they also offer specific guidelines and methodology for an organization to wean itself from the nonproductive and harmful anachronism of performance appraisal. For example, they describe how to effectively "debundle" management concerns, such as motivation, coaching, counseling, retention, discharge, goal setting, pay, promotion, and discipline, which are often packaged as part of the appraisal process. I highly recommend this book for anyone who values dignity, respect, and trust in the workplace, and who believes that holding such values is crucial in striving for true organizational excellence.
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Summary: An Important Work at an Important Time
Review: Tom Coens and Mary Jenkins have put together a great compilation of years of profound knowledge, and added to that knowledge with even more convincing arguments for ridding ourselves of this destructive practice. It is wonderful that this comes from an attorney as well as a knowledgable consultant because so many labor lawyers have promoted the use of Performance Appraisals as a protective device. The book contains highly practical alternatives to appraisals as well as making the case against them better than any of us have been able to do thus far. I suggest skeptical readers leaf through the book to the topic on which they are most sure they won't be convinced. Read what is written and be prepared to have your mind expanded.
Rating: 
Summary: Insightful!
Review: Tom Coens and Mary Jenkins pull no punches: They hate performance appraisals. They explain why in their book, which also traces the development of the appraisal method and analyzes why companies have stuck with a tool that simply doesn't work. Although the authors tend to redundancy, their writing is clear and engaging, and they support their message with passages from major business leaders, scholars, consultants and researchers. Old hands might view their suggested alternatives as pie-in-the-sky solutions to employee management and motivation, but we [...] recommend this book to optimistic managers who believe that there must be a better way.
Rating:
Summary: Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!
Review: What a wonderful gift Coens and Jenkins have given to us! As a Human Resource Director at a large, Midwest manufacturing facility, I see first hand the impact of performance appraisals on both the company and the individual. I have never felt comfortable with the appraisal process, but always feel responsible for assuring its proper implementation. Despite my best efforts, the process never works as it is intended. Numbers continue to get in the way of meaningful conversation, ratings are rarely accurate, people continue to feel bitter and betrayed, and managers, in general, are uneasy with the process. This book has done several things for me. First, it validates my discomfort with performance apraisals. Secondly, it explains why I feel the way I do and thirdly, it lays the foundation for the "new thinking" that's required for an organization to develop sound alternatives to performance appraisal. The authors draw effectively from the myriad of research by respected change agents such as Dr. W. Edwards Deming, Alfie Kohn, Peter Scholtes, Philp Crosby, Douglas McGregor and others. From the opening dedication ("To all the supervisors and managers who care about people and who have tried their best to make performance appraisals work") to the book's closing call to action by T.S. Eliot, ("...to make an end is to make a beginning") this book spoke to me. Coens and Jenkins have created a lasting and important contribution to the serious debate about the effectiveness of performance appraisals.
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