This lady was a member of my Dunfermline Church and I loved her.  I wish there were more like her.

 

In Celebration of

Elizabeth Sproat

25 January 1955 -  27 November 2016

Elizabeth W Sproat, aged 61, passed peacefully on 27th November 2016 at Victoria Hospital, Kirkcaldy.

Elizabeth a devout Christian and eager church goer devoted many an hours to helping others and those in need. Selflessly she went out her way to spend time with older, infirm members of the community regularly sharing cups of tea, a listening ear and prayers. She loved helping and organising church events such as the children's holiday club, where she could notably be found issuing orders in "her" church kitchen, arranging and delivering flowers and arranging many meals with the ladies of the church. In years passed she regularly attended along with her late husband and children the local Sunday service at the John Douglas Nursing home perhaps in hope to bring comfort and a family atmosphere to the residents.

Elizabeth was a very involved mother. She attended PTA meetings and like to run the show. An avid guide leader she loved to immerse herself in helping children and young people learn and enhance their life skills. As her children became teenagers her house was regularly chaotic with groups of teenagers, some who still visited her until she passed away.

For many years Elizabeth helped run the family business H.B Sproat butchers in Newmills. It was often said she was the brains behind the business and Harry was the patter merchant.

She was notably recognised for her love to bake and feed people. There are not many problems that can't be solved with a pot of soup and a piece of cake. To feed people meant she could give the warmth and comfort from her heart that often got lost in words via a lecture or telling off. Who needs google when Elizabeth had her recipe book. Notably not all of her children inherited her talent for baking.

Elizabeth was a strong, stubborn, kind hearted, caring, strict, old fashioned, patient, compassionate, hilarious, loving and honest soul. She was the ultimate warrior who embodied everything anyone could ever wish to become.

Elizabeth Sproat, wife of the late Mr Harry Sproat (Tobermory),
Survived by daughters Lynne Sproat, Mairi Rockliffe, Kirsty Sproat and Irene Sproat
Son in law Iain Rockliffe
Grandchildren Seonaid-May, Calleigh, Niamh Alvoet and Duncan and Frazer Rockliffe
Siblings Gerald Pearce and Jim Pearce.

Her funeral will take place on Tuesday 6th December 12.15pm at North Parish Church, Dunfermline, 1.15pm Dunfermline Crematorium and thereafter North Parish Church for light refreshments. Wear some purple if possible.

The family wish to thank everyone for their support and help during the past few weeks.
They respectfully ask for no flowers instead please give donations to the Tobermory RNLI, a charity close to the family's heart.

what an awful idea, why do we do it?

Many years ago when I was a teenager in my first job, I was watching the news on TV about annual appraisals and What an innovative, wonderful idea they were as practiced in Japan.  Shortly after that they occurred in this country and I had my first one in the back shop of the co-op.  I knew that Andy williamson the manager hated it and there was no privacy and it was a duty he had to carry out and get out of the way.  I unloaded vans, put stock in the back shop and sometimes put stock on shelves in the front shop and from Thursday to Saturday I put shopping trolleys back in their place.  How was I to improve my performance?  Reviews were utterly demeaning.  To this day I hate them and I think they are useless because researchers who create these things evidently do not realise that people lie.  They just want to get the thing out of the way and get back to work. Why do we have them?  It is just imposed on people and failure is guaranteed.

Another performance review.

Welcome to your annual performance review.
In the next 90 minutes we will:

• Review your performance over the last 12 months
• Follow up on the goals from last year’s review
• Set new goals for your professional development and career
• Handle any problems you might have had in the last year
• Fill out this 8-page form required by HR
• Coach you to better performance
• Get your totally open and honest feedback to my leadership

And of course, we will both pretend that the results of this little chat will not in any way influence the salary adjustments coming up in two months.
Now… any questions?
It seems that no one likes performance reviews. Joel Spolsky, the CEO of Fog Creek Software certainly doesn’t:

At two of the companies I’ve worked for, the most stressful time of year was the twice-yearly performance review period.
For some reason, the Juno HR department and the Microsoft HR department must have copied their performance review system out of the same Dilbertesque management book, because both programs worked exactly the same way.
First, you gave “anonymous” upward reviews for your direct manager (as if that could be done in an honest way). Then, you filled out optional “self-evaluation” forms, which your manager “took into account” in preparing your performance review.
Finally, you got a numerical score, in lots of non-scalar categories like “works well with others”, from 1-5, where the only possible scores were actually 3 or 4.
Managers submitted bonus recommendations upwards, which were completely ignored and everybody received bonuses that were almost completely random.
The system never took into account the fact that people have different and unique talents, all of which are needed for a team to work well.
(source)

Almost every medium-sized or large company does performance reviews. Everybody does it – and I think it’s time to stop!
Performance reviews are fundamentally broken. Managers hate them and fear them and resent the drain on their time.
Employees often leave reviews demotivated, cynical and with no clear idea of how well they’re doing and how to improve:

Research into British workers found a quarter of respondents thought managers simply regarded the reviews as a “tick-box” exercise, while one in five accused their bosses of not even thinking about the appraisal until they were in the room.
Almost half (44 per cent) did not think their boss was honest during the process, 29 per cent thought they were pointless, and a fifth felt they had had an unfair appraisal, according to the YouGov poll of 3000 workers.
Only a fifth believed their manager would always act on what came up during the review and 20 per cent said their boss never bothered to follow up any concerns raised.
(source)

There is a lot of advice out there on how to fix performance reviews but in my opinion, performance reviews would still be worse than uselss, even if we could fix everything that is currently wrong about them and the very fact that companies fell the need to have them, shows that something is seriously broken in our workplaces.
Here’s why performance reviews and appraisals are such a waste of time and why our workplaces would be better off without them.

1: Everybody hates them

Managers actually cite performance appraisals or annual reviews as one of their most disliked tasks (source) and as we saw above, employees dislike and distrust the process too.
Performance reviews are supposed to be about giving people feedback on their past performance and setting goals for the future. This is impossible in a format that people dislike this intensely.
Studies show that if you’re in a bad mood (and lots of people are during their review meetings), you’re not open to criticism and suggestions. You’re also almost certainly not in the mood to make big plans for your future growth and development

2: They try to do too much

Tom Coens and Mary Jenkins in their 2000 book called “Abolishing Performance Appraisals: Why They Backfire and What to Do Instead” argue that employee reviews take on too many tasks at once. They’re about communications, feedback, coaching, promotion, compensation and legal documentation. Good luck doing all of that in an hour or two!

3: They become an excuse for not talking for the rest of the year

“Yeah, I know that Johnson in accounting is lagging a little and seems dissatisfied, but his performance review is coming up in 4 months – we’ll handle it then.”
No. No, no, no!
In fact, If you have good, open, honest communication between managers and employees, if people constantly know what they do well end where they can improve then you have no need for a formal review process.

4: They are too structured and formal

Many companies have noticed that formal reviews are not working and the response, overwhelmingly, has been to formalize them more. There are now more questionnaires to fill out before, during and after for both employees and managers. More boxes to tick. More ratings on a 1-5 scale More time spent preparing.
But here’s the thing: This actually detracts from the value of the conversation you will have. The more you structure the conversation, the less likelihood that you will actually get to talk about what’s important.
The more boxes to tick, the more likely it is that it will get treated as an exercise in “filling in the blanks.”

5: They focus too much on the quantifiable

Joel Spolsky has another good example:

…one friend of mine was a cheerful catalyst, a bouncy cruise director who motivated everyone else when the going got tough. He was the glue that held his team together. But he tended to get negative reviews, because his manager didn’t understand his contribution.

Many of the most valuable and important things we contribute to the workplace do not fit into those little check boxes. If a manager doesn’t understand this during the year, he will most certainly not get it in the performance review.

6: They may not be formally connected with promotions and salary negotiations – in reality everyone knows they are

A lot of companies have noticed that performance reviews go even worse when they also double as negotiations about salaries and promotions.
Consequently they have separated these two processes and will first have appraisals and then later on salary negotiations.
Riiiiiight. Does anyone expect this to work? Will managers forget everything they said in the appraisal when setting salaries later on? Will employees fall for this and be more honest, rather than try to make themselves look good?
Of course not. But trying to pretend that’s the way it works just adds another layer of deception to the whole sorry mess.

7: No one says what they really think

Managers can hold back from offering negative feedback because they fear conflict.
Employees often don’t offer honest criticism of managers and workplaces out of a fear of offending and the knowledge that, regardless of formal policies, the content of this talk will affect your salary.
In short, everyone is on the defensive from the beginning.

8: They take a LOT of time

Everybody’s busy these days, and on top of your regular tasks, once a year you have to find time to prepare for, execute and follow up on the performance reviews. To make matters worse, very few companies factor in this time in peoples’ schedules and give them a lighter workload during those weeks.
This means that rather than doing it right, many people focus on doing it fast and just getting it over with, making the whole process worse than useless.

9: They become a crutch for bad managers

If you’re not capable of giving your employees regular, specific, timely and relevant feedback (good and bad) – you should not be a manager at all.
And formal performance reviews are not the solution! The managers who actually do manage to give worthwhile performance reviews are invariably also those who don’t need to have them because they already excel at providing regular, constructive feedback.

What to do instead

A 2006 Harvard Business Review article talks about how to fix employee reviews by doing things like:

• Have them more often than annually
• Make their purpose clear
• Give continuous feedback
• Add forced ranking of employees (worst idea ever!)

But I think the solution is a lot simpler: lose’em. Stop having formal employee reviews, whether annual, semi-annual or quarterly. They’re not only a waste of time, they’re actively harmful to motivation and happiness at work.
As Peter Block says in the foreword to the Abolishing Performance Appraisals book mentioned above:

“If the appraisal process is so useful, we should consider using it in our personal lives. Would we say to our spouse, significant other or intimate friend, ‘Dear, it is time for your annual performance appraisal. For the sake of our relationship and the well-being of the family unit, I want you to prepare for a discussion of your strengths and weaknesses and the ways you have fallen short of your goals for the year.
” ‘Also, honey, I would like for you to define some stretch goals for the coming year.’
(source)

Good luck with that :o)

Your take

What do you think? Do you know of companies that have abolished performance reviews? Do you know of any that have them and do them well? What happened at your last performance review? Please write a comment, I’d really like to know.

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 I largely agree with this.  I absolutely hate them.  The opening statement in the ones I get tell me that this recognition is what people are crying out for.  NO I AM NOT.  They are well intended, but patronising.  If you do not know how well or badly you are doing then

Moonshots 

Develop holistic performance measures

Increase trust, reduce fear

Rethink the philosophical foundations of management

Summary 

No one likes annual performance reviews. Managers hate doing them and employees hate getting them. Instead of wasting time on this, I suggest totally eliminating the annual perforance review. You can read more about this topic and other innovative leadership ideas in customer service on my blog: http://www.linkedin.com/in/martonjojarth

Problem 

I recently had the pleasure of attending the MIX Mashup management conference. The mission of MIX (short for Management Innovation eXchange) is to collect and spread ideas for innovative management techniques for how we inspire employees, increase their job satisfaction, and improve their value for shareholders. Some of the innovative ideas for revolutionizing management came from companies on the cutting edge of changing how we work: Zappos, GE, and McKinsey & Company, just to name a few.
While the ideas and new methods for management passed around at the conference were inspiring and innovative, everyone was stuck on what is the best way to conduct annual performance reviews. There was agreement on one thing: no one enjoys the dreaded annual performance evaluation process. Managers hate doing it and employees rarely look forward to seeing the results or participating in the process. Yet, no one at the conference could provide a solution for making the process more effective and useful, and all companies present admitted to not knowing how to fix it. Here are the eight biggest problems with annual performance reviews:

1. The most hard working employees are set up to fail

Only those employees who care about their professional growth care about performance reviews. Yet, they are set up for disappointment. Most managers are only allowed to give out a handful of top ratings in order to enforce a bell curve. In other cases the standards needed to reach the top rating are purposely set impossibly high. Either way, most of the workers who want to do better, who strive to get the best reviews are likely to fall short and be disappointed at annual review time, no matter how hard they worked throughout the year.

2. Linking pay increases to performance ratings is unfair

It is common practice to link pay increases to the results of annual performance evaluations, but I see this as encouraging unfair disparities in pay. Imagine two employees who work for the same company for 10 years straight, both starting out with the same salary, both getting the midpoint performance rating for nine years and both getting the top grade one year. Unless both of them get the top grade in the same year, they earn a different amount of money over the course of the decade – for no other reason than the timing of their breakout performance. That is not fair. Netflix is one company that has done away with performance-linked pay increases. Instead, they base pay rate changes on the market value of each position, not each individual. This provides a much fairer basis for salaries.

3. Annual reviews are often out of date

Most companies conduct the annual review process two to three months after the end of the year. This means that feedback provided in the review could be as old as 15 months. Much of the information in an annual review is obsolete by the time the employee gets it.

4. Annual feedback is likely to be off target

If managers write reviews based on their observations only, those reviews are necessarily biased and one-sided. Sometimes managers include feedback from other employees, or even customers, which helps, but still does not create a complete picture. It is too easy to miss key points or to misunderstand why an employee has failed to meet a goal.

5. Positive feedback cannot be taken at face value

Getting positive comments about what you are doing right is always more motivating than negative critiques, but is no more timely or accurate. Employees know this and often do not bother to take those positive comments to heart.

6. One-sided feedback is patronizing

Performance feedback always comes from the top down. The one-way communication never makes an employee feel good. Even when employees are asked to write self-assessments, the managers’ views rule. If it were possible to truly have a two-way conversation about performance, the process might be more instructive and uplifting.

7. Annual reviews are a chore most managers do grudgingly

Proponents of the annual performance evaluation say the process is important because managers rarely give any feedback throughout the year. This is true, and ongoing feedback would be more useful than annual feedback. However, some managers do not give real-time coaching because they simply do not care to do so. That attitude does not improve at annual evaluation time, and the quality of performance reviews written up by these managers is likely to be inadequate.

8. Subjective assessments result in arbitrary bonuses

An argument used for conducting annual performance reviews is that they are needed for determining bonuses. Bonuses determined on the basis of inaccurate readings of performance are likely to be unfair. Using objective criteria and metrics is a better approach for determining bonuses than a subjective evaluation process.

Solution 

Here is my solution for improving the annual performance evaluation game: stop doing it. Annual performance reviews are unnecessary, wasteful, and worst of all, demotivating.

Practical Impact 

Managers and employees will have wasted less time on a review that is arbitrary, inaccurate, and demotivating. Employees and managers will have the chance to develop better and more productive relationships. Employees will have the chance to get real-time, meaningful feedback from managers on a regular basis. Finally, employees will stay motivated and happy, delivering better work outputs and service to customers.

Challenges 

There are a couple of challenges with totally eliminating annual performance reviews, including the difficulty of changing minds. It isn't easy to disrupt the status quo or change how things have always been done. Another challenge is figuring out how to replace annual reviews with something more useful that can actually help employees grow and improve. Real-time feedback is more effective than annual reviews, but doing that in a way that is effective is a behaviour that leaders need to learn.

First Steps 

The important first step to eliminating annual performance reviews would have to include developing an alternative. In every company many processes are tied to the annual performance review score. For example, certain trainings may only be available to employees scoring above a certain score. Or, the rate of pay increases may be tied to annual performance achievements. Before moving away from annual performance measurement, companies will need to identify these interdependencies and update their processes. Gaining consensus about scrapping the dreaded annual performance review process may end up being a much easier task than achieving consensus about what should drive pay increases, regulate promotions, etc. Finally, if real time feedback is going to replace the annual process, then managers need to be trained how to deliver feedback in an effective way. Delivering feedback well is a learned behavior.

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November 7, 2015 at 4:44pm

Édouard Siekierski

Some companies are on their way to get rid of it
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-accenture-deloitte-got-rid-performanc...

Annual reviews

 I largely agree with this. They are patronising.

 

8 Reasons For Killing Annual Performance Reviews

By Marton Jojarth - Vice President, Customer Success at Equinix

June 30, 2015 at 12:11pm

annual performance review

customer service

performance management

Moonshots 

Develop holistic performance measures

Increase trust, reduce fear

Rethink the philosophical foundations of management

Summary 

No one likes annual performance reviews. Managers hate doing them and employees hate getting them. Instead of wasting time on this, I suggest totally eliminating the annual perforance review. You can read more about this topic and other innovative leadership ideas in customer service on my blog: http://www.linkedin.com/in/martonjojarth

Problem 

I recently had the pleasure of attending the MIX Mashup management conference. The mission of MIX (short for Management Innovation eXchange) is to collect and spread ideas for innovative management techniques for how we inspire employees, increase their job satisfaction, and improve their value for shareholders. Some of the innovative ideas for revolutionizing management came from companies on the cutting edge of changing how we work: Zappos, GE, and McKinsey & Company, just to name a few.
While the ideas and new methods for management passed around at the conference were inspiring and innovative, everyone was stuck on what is the best way to conduct annual performance reviews. There was agreement on one thing: no one enjoys the dreaded annual performance evaluation process. Managers hate doing it and employees rarely look forward to seeing the results or participating in the process. Yet, no one at the conference could provide a solution for making the process more effective and useful, and all companies present admitted to not knowing how to fix it. Here are the eight biggest problems with annual performance reviews:

1. The most hard working employees are set up to fail

Only those employees who care about their professional growth care about performance reviews. Yet, they are set up for disappointment. Most managers are only allowed to give out a handful of top ratings in order to enforce a bell curve. In other cases the standards needed to reach the top rating are purposely set impossibly high. Either way, most of the workers who want to do better, who strive to get the best reviews are likely to fall short and be disappointed at annual review time, no matter how hard they worked throughout the year.

2. Linking pay increases to performance ratings is unfair

It is common practice to link pay increases to the results of annual performance evaluations, but I see this as encouraging unfair disparities in pay. Imagine two employees who work for the same company for 10 years straight, both starting out with the same salary, both getting the midpoint performance rating for nine years and both getting the top grade one year. Unless both of them get the top grade in the same year, they earn a different amount of money over the course of the decade – for no other reason than the timing of their breakout performance. That is not fair. Netflix is one company that has done away with performance-linked pay increases. Instead, they base pay rate changes on the market value of each position, not each individual. This provides a much fairer basis for salaries.

3. Annual reviews are often out of date

Most companies conduct the annual review process two to three months after the end of the year. This means that feedback provided in the review could be as old as 15 months. Much of the information in an annual review is obsolete by the time the employee gets it.

4. Annual feedback is likely to be off target

If managers write reviews based on their observations only, those reviews are necessarily biased and one-sided. Sometimes managers include feedback from other employees, or even customers, which helps, but still does not create a complete picture. It is too easy to miss key points or to misunderstand why an employee has failed to meet a goal.

5. Positive feedback cannot be taken at face value

Getting positive comments about what you are doing right is always more motivating than negative critiques, but is no more timely or accurate. Employees know this and often do not bother to take those positive comments to heart.

6. One-sided feedback is patronizing

Performance feedback always comes from the top down. The one-way communication never makes an employee feel good. Even when employees are asked to write self-assessments, the managers’ views rule. If it were possible to truly have a two-way conversation about performance, the process might be more instructive and uplifting.

7. Annual reviews are a chore most managers do grudgingly

Proponents of the annual performance evaluation say the process is important because managers rarely give any feedback throughout the year. This is true, and ongoing feedback would be more useful than annual feedback. However, some managers do not give real-time coaching because they simply do not care to do so. That attitude does not improve at annual evaluation time, and the quality of performance reviews written up by these managers is likely to be inadequate.

8. Subjective assessments result in arbitrary bonuses

An argument used for conducting annual performance reviews is that they are needed for determining bonuses. Bonuses determined on the basis of inaccurate readings of performance are likely to be unfair. Using objective criteria and metrics is a better approach for determining bonuses than a subjective evaluation process.

Solution 

Here is my solution for improving the annual performance evaluation game: stop doing it. Annual performance reviews are unnecessary, wasteful, and worst of all, demotivating.

Practical Impact 

Managers and employees will have wasted less time on a review that is arbitrary, inaccurate, and demotivating. Employees and managers will have the chance to develop better and more productive relationships. Employees will have the chance to get real-time, meaningful feedback from managers on a regular basis. Finally, employees will stay motivated and happy, delivering better work outputs and service to customers.

Challenges 

There are a couple of challenges with totally eliminating annual performance reviews, including the difficulty of changing minds. It isn't easy to disrupt the status quo or change how things have always been done. Another challenge is figuring out how to replace annual reviews with something more useful that can actually help employees grow and improve. Real-time feedback is more effective than annual reviews, but doing that in a way that is effective is a behaviour that leaders need to learn.

First Steps 

The important first step to eliminating annual performance reviews would have to include developing an alternative. In every company many processes are tied to the annual performance review score. For example, certain trainings may only be available to employees scoring above a certain score. Or, the rate of pay increases may be tied to annual performance achievements. Before moving away from annual performance measurement, companies will need to identify these interdependencies and update their processes. Gaining consensus about scrapping the dreaded annual performance review process may end up being a much easier task than achieving consensus about what should drive pay increases, regulate promotions, etc. Finally, if real time feedback is going to replace the annual process, then managers need to be trained how to deliver feedback in an effective way. Delivering feedback well is a learned behavior.

new blog and Doctor who.

started a new blog today on Word Press.  I called it "The Word Master"

Today, is Doctor Who day. On this day in 1963, the first episode was broadcast.

God doesn’t do coincidences

God doesn’t do coincidences

Written by Joshua Rogers

Throughout my 20s, one of the biggest sources of stress in my life was the fear that God didn’t really love me and that I would never really know where I stood with Him. At one one point, however, I put His love to the test: I went on a sinning spree that took me further than I wanted to go and convinced there was no way back.

In theory, I knew Jesus still loved me, but theory was as far as it went. Sure, His blood would still allow me to go to Heaven, but I figured it would be a while before He offered me any other blessings. Yet that was the very moment He chose to bring the greatest blessing of my life: my wife, Raquel.

We met at a party that Raquel almost skipped because there was a terrific storm in D.C. and she hardly knew anyone who was coming to the party. I struck up a conversation with her, got her number, went on a couple of dates with her, and quickly grew to like her. Then, a few weeks into the relationship, I tried to run her off by telling her about my not-so-distant past. To my surprise, she didn’t run. She offered the kind of love I was having so much trouble receiving from God.

It was the beginning of a new chapter in my understanding of Christ’s love, which is why I said at our wedding, “If I ever question whether God loves me based on my performance, all I have to do is look at Raquel.”

No Coincidence

To the world, Raquel’s and my story is one about a heartwarming, coincidental meeting of two people who were ready to find love. For the Christian, however, there is no such thing as a coincidence.

The things that happen to us, good or bad, are subplots in a much bigger story: “That all things” — even our failures and brokenness — “work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). God is the Author, and in His story, there are no accidental twists, no insignificant details, no wasted moments.
Those years of purposelessness that seemed like a waste of time: They’re working together for our good.
The failures that still haunt us: They’re working together for our good.
The successes of other people: They’re working together for our good.

The sins that have been committed against us: They’re working together for our good.

The world events over which we have no control: They’re working together for our good.

That doesn’t mean all these things are good. It means we serve a resurrected Saviour who has the power to bring life from death, gain from loss, joy from sorrow. He’s drawing us deeper into His story in which we eventually discover that all along, every single circumstance was adding up to a surprise ending that was “immeasurably more than all we could ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20).