Stack Ranking: Organizational Cancer
fliptop writes:
Over at ACM.org, Doug Mell asks, "If only the best are hired, why isn't everybody great?
Some organizational leaders can manage to hold the following thoughts concurrently in their heads:
- "Our organization only hires the best, because we have an intensive interview process."
- "Our organization regularly needs to fire a non-trivial and fixed percentage of the workforce who aren't up to standards."
This combination of statements raises a great many questions, not the least of which is, if only the best are hired, why isn't everybody great? If the initial screening process is as exceedingly thorough as advertised, shouldn't washouts be an exception rather than the rule? The second statement is commonly referred to as stack ranking, and especially when paired with the first, produces an organizational cancer in every sense of the phrase.
[...] The outcomes of such a system [Stack Ranking] are incentives to not be the new person on a team, to not ask questions, to not work on new and unfamiliar efforts, and to not work together at all generally. Those behaviors become embedded in an organization's DNA, despite whatever is advertised publicly.
[...] Stack ranking seems like management, and it can keep a lot of HR people busy with paperwork, which appears like productivity. It also creates an excuse for executives to not do the hard parts such as providing constructive feedback, developing teams, fostering collaboration, creating new and innovative market-leading solutions, and generally inspiring people to do better. "We have a review process" they will say, "and we are following it." Such activities don't need to make any sense, they just need to be institutionalized to take over.
Stack ranking, just like cancer, is as old as time. And it will keep coming back in new forms and with new brandings such as "Top Grading," "Vitality Curve," "Forced Rankings," or "Forced Distributions," because it is easier than actual leadership. The best advice for any organization is to watch for the signs. When the focus becomes primarily inward-looking, especially with core assumptions about a fixed percentage of people that are regularly "underperforming" or "need to go," this is a huge red flag, especially for the rank-and-file employees who will be the first to feel the impact.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.