尼尔森CEO热情捍卫“绩效排名”

    上周，微软（Microsoft）做出了一项重要的人力资源决策，宣布终止“员工绩效排名”，相关报道中提到的对这种做法的最强烈感受是厌恶。每个人看起来都憎恨“绩效排名”——由经理将员工按绩效分类：包括排名最靠前的小部分，广大的中间阶层，以及小部分垫底的人。

    这种做法在微软遭到痛斥，员工们说它具有破坏性，让人透不过气来，而且有政治色彩。当人力资源部门发出邮件承诺“不再进行绩效排名”时，人们几乎都可以听到雷德蒙德员工发出的欢呼声。杰克•韦尔奇在通用电气（General Electric）推广的绩效排名做法曾在企业界风行一时，但通用电气如今也已经停止了这种做法。所以，眼下很多新闻报道都着力于宣称，绩效排名已经过时，即将退出历史舞台。

    因此，我们不妨来听听一位激情洋溢的坚定支持者怎么说的，或许能有另外的启发。戴维•卡尔霍恩是尼尔森控股（Nielsen Holdings）的CEO，他在2006年加盟这家公司，此前他曾在通用电气工作了27年，并担任副董事长。他在尼尔森施行了绩效排名。“我是相对排名的粉丝，可以说是，坚定的粉丝，”他告诉我说。“我认为，（媒体对于微软的改变大呼小叫）这整件事情很可笑，根本没说到点子上。”

    这家评级信息服务公司的首席执行官对于什么是关键相当清楚：“做这种事必须得有一个目标。在通用电气，我们只有一个目标，那就是迫使人们做到坦诚。这就是全部——迫使你的经理与你进行坦诚的对话。员工们清楚经理会给自己的排名，问问经理，“告诉我，我排在第几？为什么？”没有什么能比这更能迫使人们坦诚相对了。

    没有这样的讨论对于一家公司不是一件好事，对于员工则可能是灾难性的事情。或许你一直都没有升职，也“从来没人告诉你是为什么”。或者“在可能最糟的状况下”，公司必须裁员200人，那些排名靠后的人们最终接到了被裁的坏消息时，“他们一无所知，毫无预见，心理上也没有准备。”

    外部人士很少能理解这些，卡尔霍恩说：“媒体只知道关注‘他们想解雇排名垫底的三分之一。'这是胡扯。垫底的三分之一往往会在了解到自己的排名后自己要么会离开。要么会全力以赴，为此做些改变。”

    卡尔霍恩说，问题是几乎没有经理想进行这样的坦诚对话。“每位新领导人，包括我自己在内，都会讨厌给反馈。”但（绩效排名体系）在这方面非常管用。

    我问他是否在理论上能找到一些其他方式确保这样有效的讨论。“如果真的有，那就太好了，”他说。“但我目前还没有想出什么其他的方式。”

    显然，微软也没有想出来。（财富中文网）

    Loathing is the strongest emotion coming through the coverage of Microsoft's big HR announcement last week that it is ending its "stack ranking" of employees. Everyone seems to hate stack ranking, which requires managers to place employees in performance categories—typically a top group, a broad middle, and a small percentage at the bottom.

    The practice was certainly reviled at Microsoft (MSFT), where employees called it destructive, cutthroat, and political. You could practically hear the cheering in Redmond when the email from HR promised, "No more ratings." The burden of the news coverage is that stack ranking, popularized by Jack Welch at General Electric (GE)—which has since ended the practice—is outmoded and headed for history's dustbin.

    So it's instructive to hear from a passionate, unapologetic advocate. David Calhoun is CEO of Nielsen Holdings (NLSN), which he joined in 2006 after 27 years at GE, where he was vice chairman. He employs stack ranking at Nielsen. "I'm a fan of relative ranking, a big fan," he tells me. "I thought the whole thing [the media hub-bub over Microsoft's change] was silly because it misses the point."

    The chief executive of the ratings and information company is perfectly clear about the point: "You have to have an objective when you do stuff like this. At GE there was only one objective, and that was to force honesty. That's all it ever was—to force an honest discussion between your manager and you. And there's nothing that quite forces that more than employees knowing that they expect to know how that manager ranks them, and then asking that manager, 'Tell me where I rank and tell me why.'"

    Not having that discussion is bad for the company and potentially disastrous for the employee. Maybe you keep not getting promoted "and nobody ever tells you why." Or—"the worst possible situation"—the company has to lay off 200 people, and when those in the lower ranks inevitably get the bad news, "they never knew it, couldn't prepare for it, weren't mentally ready for it."

    Outsiders rarely understand any of that, argues Calhoun: "The media wants to focus on, 'Oh, they want to get rid of the bottom third.' That's a bunch of crap. The bottom third usually leaves when they find out. Or some of them really bear down and do something about it."

    The problem, Calhoun says, is that hardly any manager wants to hold that honest discussion. "Every first-time leader, me included—you hated giving feedback. But this [a stack ranking system] is a really good forcing function."

    I asked him if, in theory, finding some other way to guarantee that discussion would be as good. "It would be great," he says. "I just haven't figured out the other way."

    It's by no means clear that Microsoft has either.