Ditching appraisals – Step 3 – Get the team together

So, you’ve used a group of people to help you to sketch out the size of the problem with appraisals, your senior management have agreed to support you and sponsor the program, now you need to assemble a team to design the solution.

Image courtesy of jscreationzs / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Image courtesy of jscreationzs / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Yes, I know, you already have a team that started on this, but are they the right people to take the project forward?  You must review the team composition, make sure that you have the right people to represent the organisation’s views, as you begin to devise a new way of working.  There’s nothing worse that your team working really hard on a proposal, only to find that Department X, who will be impacted by your proposal, object to the change, or worse still, can’t work in the new way.

The hard part for you is that you can’t have 10s of people in your project team, otherwise you’ll never get anywhere.  You need to make sure that you have conduits for information to all affected areas.  There are numerous tools available to you to manage this.  Don’t forget, you can always add people to the team as you progress, but this comes at a cost: you have to explain everything to them, and you don’t want to do this every day!

So, who should be represented in your team?  Everyone!  Everyone at every level!  As I said in my original post, this is not an opportunity to form a new management committee.  By representing all levels across the organisation, and all functions that are affected, you stand a good chance of successfully delivering the change that you proposed to senior management.  One word of caution, however.  If you work in a large corporation, you need to be careful in building a team including senior managers as well as those on the frontline.  I’d limit the spread of grades to a spread of 2 or 3.  You need the input of the ‘workers’, as it is these people that are at the heart of any business. You need them to participate fully in the discussions; in the presence of the Senior Executive Vice President of Things, you may not get what you’re looking for.

Depending on where your business is, or what type of business you’re working in, there may need to be specific people, or groups of people represented.  Trades Union representation may be mandatory in some cases.

No matter where the people come from, you need to have a team of creative people.  After all, you’re designing something new.  You need to find the right people, with the right skills and personalities to get the job done.

Spend some time on this, get it right first time!  Good luck!