Dead Man's Curve

In a client company, we're moving toward a system of ranking employees. Not in the sense that GE has used and that I had to implement at General Motors in the mid-eighties; in these systems a certain percentage of people were force-ranked into top, middle and bottom rankings.

If you were a manager with all high performing people, you were forced to rank your high performers below lower performers from other units.

We are identifying higher potential people and giving them growth opportunities. I'm looking forward to implementing this system this fall. In the mean time, take a look at this article from Workforce: Dead Man's Curve. Forced ranking is evaluated. It's exceedingly important to note that up to one in five Fortune 500 companies uses forced employee ranking, but no one would talk about it for the article.

Numeric ratings are one of the most abused components of any measurement and assessment system. They make people angry and destroy fragile working relationships. The wonder to me is why you would expect anything different. Want to know more? Take Those Numeric Ratings and ...