Regina points us to a post by Robert Scoble – Microsoft’s unofficial but omnipresent blogger – on MS’s ditching if it’s forced ranking process.

“One big thing that’s gone? Stack ranking. No longer am I judged against Charles and Adam and Tina and Jeff. Now, either I’m doing a good job for Microsoft or I’m not and my review will now reflect that.”

I know Dick Grote think that forced ranking is great (I just saw him discuss the topic at World at Work in Anaheim) – at least for a period of time – so perhaps Microsoft’s forced ranking simply outlived it’s usefulness. Perhaps they culled enough low performers to start demotivating the people that were left.

Thoughts?

Corsello wonders what we will do with $45 million. The answer is simple. One huge party. Invites will be sent out by the end of the week.

Not really.

How ‘bout this:
Build a company that continues to get results for our customers. End of story.

The responsibility and accountability we feel towards our customers is something we take very seriously. This isn’t just about numbers to us. We want to add real value. Make organizations more productive and profitable. Help employees get rewarded fairly and attain their personal goals.

As we continue to take on the responsibility of new customers, we want to make sure our ability to deliver on our commitment to them is as solid as with our very first customer. So we’re hiring the best people around to get our customers live quickly and to support them as they navigate the opportunities in, and achieve the benefits of, performance and talent management.

Good people don’t come cheap, but ultimately, they’re the reason that both customers and investors continue to put their faith in us. It may be a little trite to say this in our industry - but for SuccessFactors, it’s all about the people, and they’re worth every penny.

Note: This post was written by SuccessFactors’ Director of Customer Results, Erik Berggren.  Erik is leading a team focused on understanding - through detailed, data-driven analysis - how specific talent management behaviors drive business results – and then working to build those learnings into our product for the benefit of our customers. I’m excited to host his thoughts here, and I look forward to sharing more of our new knowledge via this blog in the future. So please enjoy Erik’s contribution and as always, I encourage comments. We want to know what you think. – Max

Talent management is about more than efficiency
Pull, don’t push your way to meaningful ROI

I recently came across The 2006 talent management survey, conducted by IHRIM and Knowledge Infusion, which found that 77% of HR professionals think that talent management will only increase in importance over the next three years. In general, I think that’s great, because it means that people as an asset is a concept that’s making its way into the HR mindset. But, it also worries me, and here’s why: If HR Professionals think they can simply buy the software, put it in, turn it on and get full benefits, they are mistaken.

To maximize the return on investment in talent management, the solution isn’t just to put the processes out there and hope for the best, nor is it to push it out with smart internal marketing and hard selling. HR professionals need to make sure that their internal customers believe that there is value in using it the enhanced process, and get involved in making it work. That “pull” is critical, without it, organizations will not get a full return on their investment.
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Jason Corsello picks up on our recent research announcement – calling the approach “groundbreaking.”

You can see some early thoughts from SuccessFactors Research as previously posted here. Keep checking back for more of the “From our research” series.

(Note: click on the graph to see a larger version)
I’m closing the vizu.com powered poll that’s been running on the blog for the past few weeks and the results are pretty interesting.

The question asked was “What are the most important factors in employee engagement?” and I based the answers on a Towers Perrin Survey report from 2003 on the topic.

The poll attracted 47 responses, 59% of which indicated that “challenging work” was the most important factor in employee engagement. Close behind were “Senior manager’s interest in employees well being” with 55%, “clear vision from senior management about future success” with 53% and “Input on decision making” and “A collaborative work environment where people work well in teams” with 51% each.

The least important were “evidence the company is focused on customers” with only 25% and “company’s reputation as a good employer” with 36%.

Certainly there’s nothing scientific about this poll, but the split between issues that center around “me” and those that are about “the company” seems clear from these results. The answers that specifically related to my job, the level of attention paid to me, my likelihood of future success, and my input topped the heap.

From these results, it seems fair to conclude that engagement is largely defined by the extent to which people like their work and feel taken care of by those for whom they are working. Or, to put it another way, “What have you done for me lately”

Anybody get something different?

New poll coming soon.

David Berlind on the ‘Between the Lines’ blog at ZDNet tells of the unique pleasure of sitting next to SuccessFactors’ own Marty Pitkow (pictured) on an airplane the other day. And believe it or not, Marty helped him experience a SaaS epiphany.

How, you might ask? Well as it turns out, David was on the way back from the Gartner Symposium where one analyst recommended (link to another ZdNet article) that it was time for companies to “not own, but rent” applications – among some other visionary proclamations. And so David had SaaS on the brain – but talking to Marty drove the point home.

Perhaps not surprisingly, I agree with David’s conclusion – that SaaS is ultimately a no brainer. Here’s an excerpt:

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Not the dishwasher detergent. Actually I’m talking about the concept of the goal cascade. In most cases, this means a manager pushing her goals down to her employees. For many, that’s all it is. Honestly, that’s all I thought it was, too.

But earlier this week, I sat in on one of the all-hands training sessions we had and I realized there’s actually more to it. Technology enabled Goal Alignment doesn’t only have to be a mechanism for a manager that enables her to say “hey employee, this is what I’m working on – you work on it too.” It can actually be a far richer and more dynamic process.

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Gautam has a list of the top 10 reasons why people leave organizations. Remarkable how many would fall under the banner of performance and talent management.

A Note: this post was written by a guest writer, and does not necessarily represent my opinion. That said, I think it’s important to host a variety of thoughts and perspectives on the blog and thus, I give you the following article written by Lavinia Weissman, Publisher of WorkEcology.com. As always, please feel free to comment.

The Equity Factor:
Pay for Performance – From Wage Earner to Portfolio Worker

If you are a thought or practice leader working with others to increase work effectiveness, introducing a Pay-for-Performance (PFP) System is one of the most productive methodologies a company can integrate with a high performance change initiative. There are different factors to consider when implementing PFP in large, mid-size and small companies.  Some of these performance measures relate to size, culture, values proposition and level of system impact and others relate more to the relationship between the person’s position within a company or where they focus their activity within their Social Network and the position of the company they work for in their Value Network and/or value network clusters.

In large corporate systems, a company’s income, expense and ROI can be so complex, it is easy for managers to get lost in gaining agreement on measures, performance standards, quantifying types of equity, base pay and bonuses in such away that the goal to standardize, becomes an obstacle for smaller autonomous units and groups of people to define PFP measures.  A Social Network Analysis and a Value Network (& Clusters) Analysis are valuable tools for organizing work-effectiveness strategies for individuals within their groups. 

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I was directed to this very good article from WPS magazine called Succession Planning: The Nuts and Bolts of the Process which is sort of a primer on succession planning. A couple of its most enlightening observations are that 1. people often make the mistake of biting off more than they can chew with Succession – meaning that they try to collect too much data on too many people and 2. the best place to start a succession planning process is during the performance management process.

The author also points out an important decision: the one on which group will own the succession process. To me, the obvious place is HR, because succession fits so snugly with other responsibilities, but alternatives are a corporate strategy group or even a wholly separate succession group. A quote:

Once an organization has established all of the skills and competencies for every key leadership role and formulated a plan that works to take them from the current state of succession planning to the desired future state, the company must decide which department should own the process. “There’s not one cookie cutter answer in the sense that some organizations may have a corporate strategy group,” Kondo explained.