dick grote

1. Knowledge Seminar
09-12-2013
Submitted to :
Lt Col Prasad SN
Submitted by : Group C9
Name
PGDM No.
Priyankar Das Dalal
13164
Rachit Kumar Gupta
13165
Riddhi Jaini
13166
Saad Abdul Wajid
13167
Saniha S Alva
13168

2. Forced Ranking
• Jack Welch, CEO of General Electric, “Forced Ranking method,
companies break down the workforce into 3 categories: The top 20%,
the middle 70% and the bottom 10%”.
• Top 20% must be loved and nurtured in the soul and wallet and the
bottom 20% must be removed.
• Welch said this must be performed annually.
• It is unethical to "rank and yank" people

3. Author’s intent about the ranking method
• A valuable component of a company's total talent management
palette.
• A supplement to and not a replacement for the familiar performance
appraisal system.
• A rigorous process for distinguishing the relative talent in your
organization and eliminating the problems of inflated ratings and
ratings variability.
• Serve as a good check and balance for the results produced by
conventional performance assessments.

4. Common misbeliefs
• The cause of a significant amount of resistance to the procedure, is
the belief that the people who are ranked in the bottom category of a
forced ranking process are "poor performers" .
• People who end up in the bottom ranking category are necessarily
poor performers is a common belief.
• This book is about helping us to be better able to identify and
understand the talent pool.
• Jump-starting a lead development process for those organizations
that have gone stale.

5. The differentiation of talent
• A performance appraisal was conducted and at that time GE had four
performance ratings: Outstanding, Above Standard, Standard, and
Below Standard.
• The manager Ray Moeller gave him Standard or Below Standard in all
the boxes.
• The author hopped jobs from United Airlines, moved to PepsiCo, then
to Dallas and finally to Frito-Lay

6. Relevant questions
• How should rewards be allocated? Who should get a big raise: who
should be denied any increase at all?
• What is the depth of our talent pool? Do we have the people we need
to meet the demands of the future?
•Are there pockets of excellence and pockets of mediocrity within the
company?
• Do we have a level playing field in our talent assessment and
performance evaluation practices?

7. The Demand for Differentiation
• "Differentiation is the mother's milk of building a performance
culture," - Larry Bossidy, chairman of Honeywell and ex-CEO, GE
• The best performers quickly discover that their immediate supervisor
or the organization as a whole is unwilling to do any more for them
than he is for those whose performance is not nearly as good.
• They either leave for employment with a company that truly values
and rewards excellence, or they slide down the performance curve to
a spot just comfortably above the middle

8. Contd.
• The weakest performers discover that they are in a culture that is
greatly to their liking, where nothing more Is asked of them than they
are willing to deliver.
• Every member of the organization wants the answers to two
questions what do you expect of me? And, how am I doing at meeting
your expectations?
• Obligation to provide an honest answer.

9. Absolute and Relative Comparisons
• When performance is appraised using an absolute comparison
approach, an employee is evaluated in terms of what he achieved and
how he went about achieving it.
• Problems: low expectation, varying levels of expectation.
• When performance is appraised using a relative comparison
approach, employees are evaluated In terms of how well they did
compared to how well other people did.
• Problems: comparison not on a scale but person to person.

10. • Rationale: Employers were not able to justify the reasons
for cut-downs in the workforce.
• Improved workplace: Research suggests forced ranking works only when
carried out periodically.
• Context: Difficult to measure extent of forced ranking in organizations due
to the protean meaning of the word.
• Forced ranking systems should be used for only a few years and then. Once
the obvious and immediate benefits have been achieved, replaced with
other talent management initiatives.
• The only place where forced ranking is being used is the private sector.
According to the author public sector companies don’t follow forced
ranking and hence the productivity and complaints from the higher
management is on the rise

11. Risk and Rewards
Benefits
• Forced ranking combats artificially inflated performance appraisal ratings and
forces the truth into performance management.
• The forced ranking process forces the information out in open.
• Forced ranking is a valuable tool to supplement an organization’s overall talent
management efforts.
• Forced ranking procedure reduces favouritism, nepotism, and promotions based
on factors other than performance.
• Forced ranking provides a sound and defensible rationale for all important
personnel actions-including pay raises, promotions, bonuses, developmental
opportunities, layoffs and terminations.
• Forced ranking jolts managers and organizations out of complacency.

12. Risks
• The process may produce culture shock and generate an environment
where competition trumps teamwork and corporate goals are sub
optimized.
• Some managers and some employees may resist the process.
Employees may become demoralized.
• Judgments made in forced ranking are subjective.
• A forced ranking system may influence managers to concentrate only
on developing their stars
• Forced ranking process may unfairly penalize managers and
departments that adhere to high performance standard.

13. Cont.
• Forced ranking is not a sustainable process. It’s simply impossible to
keep “raising the bar” indefinitely.
• Forced ranking isn’t appropriate for an organization that already
consists entirely of all-stars.
• Comparing one individual against another - is somehow unfair.
• Mistakes are inevitable.
• Lower-ranked employees may believe that the ranking procedures
produces illegally discriminatory results.

14. Getting Started
Is Your Company Ready?
What Ranking Scheme Should Be Used?
•
•
•
•
•
•
20-70-10
Quartiling
Quintiling
10/10
1 to 5
Stack ranking and totem poling
What Criteria Should Be Used for the Ranking Process?

15. Cont.
How Often Should We Use the Procedure?
Who Should Be in the Ranking Pool?
Who Should Do the Ranking?
What Information Should Be Provided to Rankers?
What Should We Communicate About the Ranking System-and to
Whom?
Should people be told how they came out in process?
How should the results be used?
Should there be an appeals process?

16. Gettingthemechanicsright
Critical components
• The critical components are:
Training those who will serve as rankers .
Running the sessions themselves competently.
• The success of a forced ranking system will be
determined by the quality of execution.

17. Training Assessors:
• Advantages of training managers who participate in the forced
ranking system:
 Skill development for making good decisions.
Forum for solving concerns among managers regarding the system.
Training platform for the ground rules and operational mechanics.
Bridge between the top management and employees.
Awareness of the forced ranking system.

18. Steps implemented before training
• Creation of briefing books.
• Bullet list creation.
• Pre reading of articles on forced ranking.
• List of benchmark individuals.

19. Implementation agenda
followed
by the author
• Background – what their companies forced ranking process is all
about.
• Rationale – reason for implementation and the expectations
• Outcomes – what will happen to the ranking among the managers
when the process is over
• Events to date- what has happened so far.
• Mechanics- step by step plan of the process.
• Skill building- developing the ability of the assessors to make good
ranking decisions.

20. Building Assessor skills:
• The primary skill required to be a good assessor is behavioural
observation.
• The organization should ask the assessors to develop a list of
examples of behaviours that they would accept as indicators that the
person has excelled in this area.
• A list of deficit behaviours would be helpful as well.
• Participants should be able to assess whether the individual under
review is an A, B, or C player.

23. Tests to monitor the results:
• Are there any significant differences in rankings between one
department and another?
• Are the people from work units that are universally known to be
talent rich or poor performing represented in top and bottom
categories?
• Is there an there appropriate distribution of rankings at different job
levels?
• Are the people who are ranked in the lowest quartile genuinely at the
bottom of performance curve?

24. Behind the scenes

25. FORCED
DISTRIBUTION
FORCED DISTRIBUTION is a procedure that involves tweaking
the rules of performance appraisal system to either request
or require a certain distribution of performance appraisal
ratings.
• Predetermined distribution of performance appraisal
ratings
• The distribution of ratings may either be
required(“forced’’) or recommended (“guidelines”).
• It is a person-standard evaluation.

26. Sample forced distribution rating
scheme
Distinguished
Superior
Fully Successful
Needs improvement
Unsatisfactory
5%
20%
50%
20%
5%

27. PROBLEMS
1.There is no flexibility in percentages of ratings allowed.
low performing group
all stars group
2.It mirrors a bell shaped curve.
population is very small
selection criteria is not random

28. A better approach
Distinguished
5% max
Superior
Fully Successful
Needs improvement
20-30%
50-60%
10-15%
Unsatisfactory
2-5 %

29. QUESTIONS TOBE
ADDRESSED
Is the distribution scheme appropriate for an actual organisation?
How well will the system meet the requirements of the managers of the
under-performing and the all-star groups?
How should it be applied to a work unit with a very small population?
When, if ever should exceptions be allowed?
How do you control for variations in the standards and expectations of
various managers?
Who will police the system ,making sure that the guidelines are being
followed?
What will happen if a manager ignores the guidelines?

30. GETTING THE FORCED
DISTRIBUTION RIGHT
The company could set a percentage for high ratings
only thereby minimize the antagonism of low ranked
employees.
If bonuses are to be handed out at work they should
be available to anyone who meets a given standard
instead of making each person an obstacle to others
success.

31. APPROPRIATEDISTRIBUTION
GUIDELINES
Suggestions that will be useful in determining if to have a distribution
requirement in the performance appraisal system and how to make it
the most effective.
• Get wide input on what the appropriate distribution should be.
• Provide guidelines, not rigid requirements
• Allow managers to vary from the guidelines-but do not make it easy
for them to do so

32. Getting the truth in performance management
Performance Appraisal
Forced Ranking
Performance
Appraisal
programs
typically effect everyone in the
company.
Forced Ranking systems usually only
examine the top of the organization
who have the greatest impact on the
organization’s overall success.
It largely focuses on the past.
It focuses primarily on the future.
It is the process for evaluating how
well the person performed in the
previous 12 months.
It is the amount of stretch the person
has over the 2 or 3 years to lead the
organization into the future.

33. •
•
•
•
•
The rater reliability/calibration
process
Rater reliability” or “cross-calibration” or “levelling” is the performance
calibration procedure that is used to make sure that different appraisers
apply similar standards in assessing the performance of their subordinates.
Procedure
-prepare preliminary report, calibration
session,presentation,discussion,adjust ratings
prepare final performance appraisal
Advantages
Disadvantages
Problems

34. • Ground rules for the session-people with direct knowledge, no direct
knowledge,discussion,confidentiality.
• Calibration criteria-assessment item , measure and collaboration
• Session mechanics-different coloured 4*6 sticky note…
• Calibration factors-job complexity, complexity of
goals,collaboration,expertise,skill versatility , talent development.

35. Calibration session to meet distribution
guideline guidelines and calibration procedures are
Distribution
useful techniques for making an already-effective
performance management process work better.
How?
• Examine number of ratings allowed for each category
• Check for Variance
• What is the target distribution
• Recommend changes

36. Building Performance Management
Accountability distributions of appraisal ratings, and calibration procedures
Forced ranking, forced
are all aimed at one objective: getting the truth into performance management.
• Building Accountability through Performance Reviews
responsibility of the reviewer
- Ensure timely completion of performance reviews.
-Ensure fair, thorough, and complete reviews.
-Ensure inter-rater reliability.
-Make sure that tough-minded, demanding performance standards are set.
-Coach appraisers for success.
• Using process evaluations to build accountability

37. Conclusion
• Forced ranking is a relative comparison process which provides a
separate and complimentary view through which performance can
be assessed.
• Along with other techniques and procedures forced ranking is a
valuable and legitimate way of answering how one is doing.
• Though conventional performance appraisal and forced ranking
are important techniques; both have limitations, but together
they can provide an accurate and well – rounded picture of
strengths and weaknesses of each member of the team