"Impact" that never existed

More and more organization have been moving away from bell curve, and may be rightly so. The new HR guidelines and policies are attaching importance to ‘impact’ creation, rather than list of activities, being carried out over appraisal period. It all sounds great; however, is it so easy evaluate the people for impact, and to define impact?

The first hurdle is in terms of defining the ‘impact’. At what level, what gets considered as impact. How one will define the impact at role level, and yet able to differentiate the performance to two individuals? In some systems, the impact is also defined in terms on initiatives that are being takes / carried out by an individual. But, can the number of initiatives be the criterion for impact?
Similarly, what is the boundary of impact? That is, not everyone can have initiative at organization level to showcase a wider impact, then can ‘unavailability’ of an opportunity be considered as ‘less’ impact? People will carry out initiatives and ‘Business as Usual’ at different levels, then what is the measurement system to evaluate the compare two impacts; as ultimately in any system, where opportunities are constrained, one will be forced to compare?

The complexity does not end here, rather it extends itself in terms of visibility. That is, how visible / obscure your contributions and impact have been? It could be the case that what you have done is truly impactful; however, it has not been publicized enough for you to get credit for the same. So, comes another attribute in arsenal, i.e. how marketable you are? Whether you are taking pains to market yourself? Or, is it the other way round, i.e. market yourself, and the impact will automatically follow?

Further, whether those impacts are visible in same financial / appraisal year itself, or they are running across year boundaries? The chances are if those are running into multiple years, the ‘impact’ will vanish, unless, you are the one on ‘marketable’ side. If you are the one (marketable), then chances are that you will reap the benefits of the same across multiple years.
A little further development of this topic will reveal that one can’t define or standardize impact. With this ambiguity, any impact will be debatable, and the credit will depend on many external factors, which are not intrinsic to impact per se.

We can have many illustrations to expose the fragility of this evaluation system.

1. Suppose one has created a methodology / process, which would ultimately result in efficiencies / gains in future; however, for that appraisal cycle, will that be impactful?
2. One has been involved in Leadership sponsored program, though there had been not output / outcome for that financial year, will the person get his activities counted as ‘impact’?
3. The person corrected a flaw such that it made the organization compliant; however, did not touch many persons, hence the visibility is limited; will the person be getting the right ‘impact’ for his career for the ‘impact’ that he has created?
4. The person had the ‘Change’ implemented successfully; however, person had to ‘steam roll’ the changes, as gathering buy-in was taking time because people wanted to let the ambiguity be there in system, as the new changes would have taken those away. Will the ‘impact’ be positive or negative?
5. The person has generated efficiencies, though small in nature, and limited to part of an organization; however, generated without any leadership sponsorship. This vis-à-vis an impact on similar scale, but having leadership sponsorship. Will two have the same impact?

The list goes on…So, I’m not sure, if this system is better or beneficial as compared to old ‘Bell Curve’ based. I’m not saying that ‘Bell Curve’ was better, rather, all I’m trying to state that the reasons for which it (Bell Curve) was dumped, had not been addressed fully.

I’m sure, you would not have 1-5, A-D or any other means of rating the people in new system; however, in background some mechanism of comparing and ‘categorizing’ people, would have been in place. Can we really do away with that comparison, and categorization?

In a world, where everything and everyone is bound by constraints, as resources / opportunities are limited, one cannot avoid comparison. It is as simple as one child and one elder person vying for a bottle of water in a middle of desert. Had there been no constraints, each would have got the water, it is the scarcity (read is as ‘constraint’), which has driven us for ‘evaluation’ / ‘comparison’ of needs.

This comparison or categorization, in the absence of fair system, i.e. where one can either have objective evaluation, or have checks in place to ensure fairness in evaluation, will result in tilting of balance in favor of practices, which are not conducive either for promotion of talent and true impact, or evaluation system, which is free of favoritism. The things get worsen even further when all of these practices promote discussions on ‘transactions’ rather than overall impact.

In the process, the ‘impact’ goes into oblivion, and what remains is the result of large egos, and system to support the same. This makes me wonder, if organizations are really interested in going for performance based system, where is the need to create all of this ambiguity, rather go for open and discussion based evaluation system. As long as we keep introducing ambiguity in our evaluation system, and will divide the rewards in quotas to avoid free and fair discussions, we will always end up in situations of “Impact, that doesn’t exist”.