I hate evaluations.  I absolutely detest them.   Why?  Because they have become a thing of being overly critical of employees rather than stating clearly what is expected of the employee and making it a tool to help the employee reach his full potential.

In The One Minute Entrepreneur, it talks about how evaluations should be.  It used a story of a college professor.  The professor gave the final exam to his students the first day of class.  He then proceeded to teach them throughout the semester what the answers are to the questions.  His goal was for those students to get an A in his class and to gain the knowledge of the important aspects of the subject.

Now from the story in the book, the professor was always clashing with the other professors who did not like that style.  Which is better though, knowing the subject or ensuring some students will not succeed?

Jack Welch at GE would eliminate the bottom 10% of his employees.  My full time employer is moving a bell curve for evaluations.  It causes employees to work in fear, and more mistakes will occur.

I prefer departments to be “lean and mean”.  Not that many employees, but they are all working hard.  Instead of having some of the employees having to be sacrificed, all employees are aces at what they do.

A saying I have heard over and over again in my entrepreneur path is “a rising tide raises all boats”.  We do not need to intentionally destroy an employee’s ego and morale from an employee evaluation.  We need to encourage all employees to get an A for the department.