Learnings from the Performance Management shifts made by Juniper, Accenture, Adobe, Microsoft, Deloitte and Infosys

Having gone through the rationale of some of the companies that embraced the change in performance management system in the last few posts, i think its wise to consolidate the information in one smart view. This is what i tried to do with the table below. As you go through the contents, i will try and summarize some of the points that i found interesting in all these cases-

1. As is evident, such a change that directly impacts the  cannot be brought in without the commitment of Top management. Almost in all the organizations studied here, the change was initiated by someone on the top or near the top.
2. Interestingly, the companies like Adobe, Deloitte and Accenture did the cost analysis of time taken in the traditional system. I find this interesting because this seem like a one-sided metric (atleast going by the way it is presented in the referred articles) because it does not cover how much time would the new process take. Accenture case does admit that the new process change will not lead to substantial money and time saving.
3. Juniper, Adobe and Microsoft saw the traditional system as breaking trust between employee and manager and quite interestingly, in the case of Deloitte, Employees were comfortable with the traditional system while the management team wanted to change the system, which is a shift from the norm.
4. Most companies studied here cited that there wasn't enough mechanisms for regular feedback between employees and managers in the traditional system. It cites that once-a-year discussion wasn't enough. Interestingly, most of these companies then figured out the processes such as Check-ins, Conversation day so the employee and managers can talk regularly. I find this amusing because nothing stopped these companies to introduce these processes in the traditional performance management system. Moreover, the newer system won't ensure that check-in conversations would be of high quality. In my humble opinion and experience, i have seen traditional performance management systems work well as long as discussions between employee and manager were of great quality. Somehow, i saw the fancy names being used for conversations in these cases but i could rarely see a mention of conversation quality.

Note: 
1. The contents in the table below are best viewable at less than 100% zoom (around 75% in the Chrome browser).
2. Below is just a comparative summary, for more details, click on the link against each company name below.

Organization	Motivation behind the change	Shortcomings with the old system	What will be/was embraced
Juniper Networks	(Embraced around 2010) 1. Top Management Commitment towards the change. 2. Embrace personalization of Technology	1. Facilitated less Trust with employees/management. 2. Facilitated Less regular feedback mechanisms.	1. Driving Philpsophy: Juniper drew on work of David Rock – see ‘Managing with the Brain in Mind’- http://www.davidrock.net/files/ManagingWBrainInMind.pdf 2. No Ratings 3. Embracing regular conversation day between employee-manager. 4. More focus on career growth than the past.
Accenture	(Embraced from 2015-2016) 1. Top Management Commitment towards the change. 2. Focus on establishing trust. 3. Focus on managing millennials.	1. Forced Rankings of employees. 2. Time consuming paperwork. 3. Tendency to promote Nascissism (Self-promotion) among employees 4. Too costly process (200 hours a year per manager, $35 million per year for Accenture) 5. Yearly wait is too long for sharing feedback.	1. Timely feedback mechanisms, more fluid system. 2. No Forced Rankings
Adobe	(Embraced from 2014) 1. Top Management Commitment towards the change. 2. Realization that the existing process was too time-consuming.	1. Cause of Employee-Manager Conflicts. 2. Not assisting business Transformation. 3. Yearly wait is too long for sharing feedback. 4. Recency bias related problems (feedback ususally related to recent events). 5. More focus backwards (past) than forward (future). 6. Forced Rankings	1. Regular Check-ins (Timely feedback sharing, career conversations). 2. Active participation from the employee.
Microsoft	(Embraced from 2013-14) 1. Top Management Commitment towards the change. 2. Realization of Stack rankings as a destructive process.	Unpopular stack rankings	1. More emphasis on teamwork and collaboration. 2. New process called "Connects" (timely feedback, meaningful career discussions). 3. No ratings. 4. No more stack rankings.
Deloitte	(Embraced around 2015) 1. Realization that the process out of sync with business objectives 2. Findings from public survey results	1. Employees thought that the existing process was fair, however management didn't. 2. Existing process was too costly (2 million hours a year of organization's time). 3. Ratings reveal less about Ratee, More about Rater	1. no cascading objectives. 2. no 360 degrees feedback tools. 3. no once a year review. 4. Focus on key performance questions. 5. Weekly check-ins (focused meetings between managers and employees).
Infosys	(Embraced from 2015-16) 1. Top Management Commitment towards the change. 2. Realization that bell curve process is a reason for attrition.	Said to be the cause of attrition.	1. No forced rankings. 2. Managers take a call and reward.