South Africa’s defeat in the Cricket World Cup – Relevance to Corporates

Last evening, South Africa (well accepted as the best team in the cricket world cup and the most consistent team in the last several years) suffered a defeat at the hands of New Zealand, in the quarter-finals and are now out of contention. This is the fifth time South Africa has lost a knock-out match in the world-cup (infact, they have never won a knock-out match in the world cup so far).

How often do we find that in companies, the employees who should be getting the promotions, the best ratings, end up not getting those because of various rules/factors that come up during the performance appraisal process – e.g. freeze on promotions, restrictions on number of promotions.

While it is acceptable in sport tournaments that teams need to perform on those critical matches to win, shouldn’t we adopt a better process/approach to measure and evaluate people in companies. In companies, we want people who deliver results consistently, yet our performance management processes reward people who deliver the more visible results and can manipulate the process better, especially around the performance appraisal process timelines.

One way to do a better job is to use Recognition data in performance management. Let’s say an individual gets recognized repeatedly throughout the year for delivering results and exhibiting behaviour, that the company wants. If this data is linked to the performance appraisal process, it will be easier for the manager to identify the individuals who truly deserve the best ratings. It will also give an opportunity for HR to analyze the recognition data and performance data and assess if the performance management processes and the recognition philosophies are aligned.