Personal Review

Yesterday I had my yearly review. It went well.

This year we instituted a new system where part of your yearly review is that up to 15 people throughout the company judge you on how you do your job. Things such as integrity, delivering information in a timely manner and collaboration, entrepreneurial spirit and other such things. On the whole, I think its a great idea. Its possible for people in some workplaces to get away with acting any way they want to their coworkers and still get rewarded by a company for production. As a whole, I think this review process sends a strong message that a culture of cooperation matters.

 From a purely personal viewpoint, there were 2 things I learned from this new review system.

 1. There are probably times when I am too hard on myself. My boss and the 15 people that I work with throughout the company scored me higher than I scored myself. I scored myself lower because I know there are things I could be doing better. There are things that I am not satisfied with. Nevertheless, I need to remind myself from time to time, the rest of my colleagues and boss are satisfied enough that I can't take myself so seriously that work becomes a drag.

 2. Getting along with people, taking care of their needs, just doing what I can to be a good person still affects my overall performance-in the end probably on an equal footing to actual production. I read about a silicon valley company that has two interviews for prospective employees-one to determine their qualifications for a job and another to see how they will mesh with company culture. I hope that more companies start to consider this in hiring.

Work is not simply a bunch of superstars producing outside of each other. There are many people out there who believe that their qualifications make them an incredible addition to the any corporate machine. But there comes a point at which it doesn't matter if your casing is titanium, your springs highly polished beryllium, or even if your bearings are hermetically sealed and lubricated for a life time, if you can't fit into the machine you are part of, and if you can't work with the other components, you're just a useless tool that doesn't fit in...

 In my job dealing with Latino customers, I have seen this played out time and time again. Good relationships are the warm social lubricant that makes the day to day world work smoothly and not feel like metal wearing against metal, chipping away at what makes us all truly human.

 I'd also like to point out that the company I work for has quite possibly the coolest, nicest, and most awesome HR benefits administrator ever, and I would say this even if she didn't read this blog on occasion (but that does contribute to her overall awesomeness matrix).