Role of Evaluation in LO LO9774

Keith Cowan (72212.51@CompuServe.COM)
05 Sep 96 18:25:12 EDT

Replying to LO9539 --

Hal Steinbeigle (has@unm.edu) answered my question

>...
>Formative evaluation is a chance to take a deep breath and ask, "Where
>have we been? What have we learned? Where do we want to go now?"
>Therefore, I believe it can be done without disempowering anyone
>(admittedly this leans heavily toward idealism).

I have initiated and participated in dozens of different "management"
evaluations. Most were private between HR and the individual to avoid this
"fear" of being disempowered. Some were with an outside agency so that
even HR did not see the results. The summaries provided by HR (or the
outside consultant) were not terribly helpful to me because lots of
opportunities for coaching interventions were masked by the averages.

In one instance, all my direct reports went through an extensive
psychological test. It was only by sharing my own personal test results
with them in advance and again after they got their own back that they
opened up to me. They had their own results and I did not, but eventually
they shared theirs with me. It is this aspect of earning the right to
coach and not be suspected of spying on them that I was alluding to in my
earlier post. As CEO, I would not be able to dictate that all my VPs share
their results with their subordinates so what happens with the results are
left to chance at the higher levels. I might see some area within the
corporate culture that would show up in the summaries and take some
remedial action at that level, but this is very removed from the heat of
the action.

How many of us have experienced a "bad" manager that stayed in their jobs
for just this reason. Management were not armed with any real information
about the problem before a lot of damage was done! For the fun of it..
....Keith

-- 

Keith Cowan <72212.51@CompuServe.COM>

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>