The classic performance appraisal is dead. Long live Echo!

Andreas Schwarz

31.12.2019

Translation: Jessica Johnson-Ferguson

Pictures: Thomas Kunz

From defining a common mission, setting objectives or evaluating outcomes: it’s not the individual but the team that’s at the heart of our objective and evaluation process. Armed with swarm intelligence and maximum transparency, we set off on new adventures year after year.

Every autumn, humpback whales migrate from Antarctica to the warmer waters of the South Seas. On their journey through the Pacific Ocean, they cover over 5,000 km. Whilst migrating, they can neither fully rely on their sight nor on any points of reference. They need more. They need trust. They need an echo. And we humans aren’t that different. We’re social creatures – whether we like it or not. So whenever we join forces to think, define and question things, we achieve more. For this reason, we at Digitec Galaxus have introduced the Echo process. It’s a more collective and agile version of the traditional objective-setting and evaluation process.

Bigger doesn’t mean less personal

Our company was launched in 2001 with just a handful of employees and a single product focus: computers and their spare parts. Today, over 1,300 employees work in almost 30 categories for three shops. They have come together from every corner of the Seven Seas. There is no blueprint for their success – online commerce is developing way too dynamically to be pinned down. Over the years, the company has been faced with many new customer needs. Rewind 15 years and who would have thought people zipping around on e-scooters would be a common sight in cities?

Back in the day it was much easier to reach agreements at short notice. Today, greater distances, both in terms of space and content, can make things a tad trickier. Your standard large company will tend to tackle rapid growth by introducing rigid processes. The annual performance appraisal being a classic example: come the end of the year, employees are called into a hermetically sealed room. There, their grave-faced boss tells them what they did well or not so well in the past 365 days. This can be useful but often is not. And for all of those employees who get no feedback at all, this means another year of work dominated by frustration rather than motivation. This is where Echo comes into effect. The process is built on the conviction that an agile way of working is only possible when teamwork is at a maximum.

Team mission – objectives – evaluation

To define an individual mission, each team is asked to capture its essence in a few sentences. There is no specific deadline in which this must be done. Some teams escape to a mountain retreat for a few days, throw away the keys to their chalet and produce a document they don’t touch again for years. Others manage to put together a few sentences over coffee but continue to update and tweak them.

The next step is defining objectives. In descending order, both annual and quarterly objectives are formulated for the entire company, the departments and for each team. To keep things tangible, objectives are limited to four. What’s key is that all defined objectives are publicly visible for the whole company. In other words, the apprentice is free to take a closer look at the goals management has set for itself. The teams act as the nucleus in this process. After all, not only are they the ones with the expertise but also strongly affected by their own actions when it comes to daily business. And because new quarterly objectives are defined every three months, the organisation remains agile and can react quickly to changes.

The objectives set are continuously evaluated. Throughout the year, the teams carry out feedback and retrospective sessions. Monthly one-on-ones between employees and their superiors add to the mix of feedback types. Personal development meetings, in which objectives are defined, can be held out at any time during the course of the year.

This means that the employees are prepared when it’s performance appraisal time. They know what to expect. Instead of an end-of-year guillotine, they can look forward to a motivational talk with their boss and a preview of the exciting tasks lined up for them in the year ahead. Winter passes quickly and the next crossing of the Pacific will be here sooner than you might think. And often, the journey is more important than the destination.

Andreas Schwarz

People & Organizational Developer

Andreas.Schwarz@digitecgalaxus.ch

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