Published on June 13, 2017
Majority of the corporates continue to believe in the PMS and get onto setting the KRAs for their management staff. One of the critical issue that often challenges the HR fraternity, is the inability of some of the people to quantify their KRAs.
Is it really that difficult to measure a given responsibility?
Or is it our mindset?
Are we trying to hide behind this belief system and playing the game of subjectivity ?
I recall long back when we re-introduced the KRA based evaluation, I took a session of my own team to remove any cobwebs. Since they had come from multi locations, I did not have a chance to speak to them beforehand. I started the meeting with a quote from Peter Drucker – “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it”, the need to remove or reduce subjectivity from the scoring mechanism and to ensure that the KRAs are quantifiable.
The moment I uttered these opening remarks, I was hijacked for even thinking of starting KRA based PMS.
– How can we measure all aspects of our work?
– We cannot measure the softer skills.
– Our business is so dynamic that by the time we end the year, the KRAs ought to have changed completely.
– How can you measure when the task is completed by a team and not a single person
The questions were valid and I had to provide the answers. Fortunately, I had done my homework and had strong practical knowledge of setting the KRAs from scratch.
But before that I had to do something dramatic – so I challenged my audience that everything can be measured, each and everything – provided you have a scale. And to substantiate that I gave an example – I asked a member of audience about his height. He responded by saying 5’-8”. So, I said, “great, you are 5 feet and 8 inches tall. Now suppose though some mechanism I take you back in time machine and in 200 BC and just imagine someone asks you the same question and what would be your answer”.
He looked around sheepishly and said he does not know. I pressurized him and said, still if you had to answer what would you say. After some head scratching he responded that he would probably look around and perhaps say that he was two arms shorter than the lowest branch of the front tree.
My job was done – I had already put the cat in the bag. With almost cinematic voice I told the audience that exactly this is what I am trying to say. In the year 200 BC, there were no scales available to measure the dimensions of anything or for that matter the distance. It was only much later some wise people sat and came to a consensus to decide on what is now known as an inch and foot. Some other learned people did not quite agree with this dimension and came up with their own version – a millimeter and a centimeter and eventually a meter. But once a scale is defined, established then there is no confusion in measurement.
Similarly, if you are able to decide on a scale, come to a consensus and start measuring. So by virtue of that you can measure virtually any soft skill or behavior.
The next question I asked the audience was to measure “Anger”. There was silence but then slowly someone said, when he is angry – his blood pressure rises. Another person pitched that he starts shouting when angry. Someone else said – he loses his appetite.
There you are, I said – if you can measure these objectively, you have a scale ready for measuring “Anger”
We then devised a scale for measuring “Anger” then and there and I would like to reproduce the same for benefit of all concerned.
Within a span of 15 – 20 minutes we could make a scale for measuring Anger. So in order to say some one’s Anger level is 5 on a scale of 1 – 5. His systolic BP would be between 141–145, his diastolic BP would be 101 – 105, his voice level at a distance of 3 feet would be 82 dB or more and he would not be feeling any appetite for over 8 hours. Now remember this was the scale decided by my audience for their captive use. If we had to have a large consensus and involve medical professionals, we could have arrived at a scientific way of measuring Anger. Similarly I said, you can measure anything –any damn thing provided you agree on a scale.
*Excerpts from my book “Incredible HR” available on Flipkart. For more details, please read the book.