360 Review

Overview

In Agile Lab, after 7 years of performance measurements and many different evaluation systems, we understood that it is really hard to be fair. We value fairness and transparency so we can't live with that.

Also, our self-management culture is encouraging people to take accountabilities out of their comfort zone (accept new technical or leadership challenges, work in additional circles, OKR, etc...) but, when it comes to evaluating performance, most of it is coming from project activities, so people could be tempted to maximize their individual performance versus their impact at the company level, and this is something we don't want to happen. It would be the classical example of when an economic incentive is playing against the organization itself, known as the distraction/cancellation effect. We want to value adaptive behaviors, team working and we want people to have an impact at company level. All such behaviors are hard to measure, then it is unlikely that pay-for-performance systems will be fair.

Moreover, no performance review is happening in Agile Lab and the bonus (economic incentive) is not linked to the individual performance but is, instead, linked to the overall company performance instead.

We want people to act at their best because driven by play, purpose, and potential (ref. Total Motivation factor). We want people acting like shareholders, not individual performers.

Thus, at the end of each semester we have anyway the 360 review.

Everyone in the company can participate.

The 360 review process allows everyone to give and receive feedbacks in order to improve. It is called 360 because the way it is structured helps building a complete view about each of us and collect more useful feedbacks. It is just another way to provide feedbacks, but more structured, and since we value transparency it is NOT anonymous and it must be actionable in order to improve.

Honest feedbacks only.

It is important to understand that people are not judging you but they are providing feedbacks. These are not right or wrong but they are just feedbacks, please listen to them. When you provide feedbacks be responsible and owner of what you think and what you say, be candid and be ready to discuss more about your feedback in 1:1 with the specific person.

Process

The 360 Review process follows these steps:

1. COO starts officially the process
2. Two days for everybody willing to receive feedbacks to clone the form and publish it through the channels (see How to section in this page)
3. Then, you have 2 weeks to fill in all the 360s because we want you to take the proper time to think about how to provide feedback and make them insightful for other people. Please, keep track of who wants to have feedback from you, and don't forget about it.
4. Finally, each coach starts to discuss them

Filling the 360 review provides the perfect chance to give your feedback to the company about your learning path progression, if are there impediments, etc.

When you share your review with your coach, please add some personal consideration, self assessment, and whatever you feel could be important to highlight at company level

360 Review Structure

A 360 Review attempts to evaluate important skills of career development and company alignment. These skills, composing the 360 Review structure, are:

• Leadership Skills: Delegation, Ownership/Responsibility, Vision, Listening, Approachability, Coaching, Decision Making, Risk-Taking
• Communication Skills: Listening, Clarity, Speaking, Networking, Non-Verbal Behaviors, Openness, Energy, Giving Feedback, Receiving Feedback
• Team Skills: Listening, Questioning, Helping, Participation, Peer Feedback, Reliability
• Organization Skills: Long term goals, Time management, and Attention to Detail
• Creativity Skills: Problem Solving, Problem Identification, Inventiveness, Brainstorming, and Making connections
• Interpersonal Skills: Empathy, Confidence, Stress management, Positivity, Group Work, Approachability, Enthusiasm, and Personal Appearance
• Organizational Alignment: Alignment & Understanding of: Community, Values, Mission, Vision, Strategic Plan, and Processes

It is highly encouraged to provide feedback to people you worked with during the past semester, no matter if you worked in the same team or you collaborated in a side project or in a circle. The feedback should be based on some interaction with the other person.

It is not needed to provide a vote on each skill, but only on the ones you are opinionated about.

Grade scale

Each skill can have a vote between 1 and 5 with the following meaning:

1. Unsatisfactory/Unacceptable: it should be 5% of people
2. Needs Improvements: individual is not doing a good job and needs to shape up immediately, or the person is new to a specific position and, while on track is not yet successful level of performance. It should be 10% of people
3. Meets Expectations/Solid Performer: It should be 60% of people that are really doing a great job inline with what the company demands
4. Exceeds Expectations/Above standard. It should be 20% of people
5. Distinguished/Outstanding. It should be 5% of people. This person performed his job for the whole period at superior level, is not driven by episodes but some incredible achievement must be there

The "vote" should NOT be on an absolute scale, instead it should be based on the expectations you have with regard to the reviewed subject: e.g. You have different expectations from an Engineer I and an Engineer IV so you should give a vote for them taking into account these differences.

Open-ended questions

In the final section of the 360 Review you will find open ended questions that lets you provide free thoughts feedbacks. It is composed by these sections:

• Stop: what the person should stop to do
• Start: what the person should start to do
• Continue: what the person should continue to do
• Best feedback provided by the target person
• Any missed opportunity by the target person to provide a feedback or resolve a conflict

All the suggestions MUST BE actionable, be specific, honest and constructive. No blaming.

Non-actionable feedbacks are, as an example:

• "stop sending mixed messages on certain issue"
• "you are great, I enjoy working with you"

These two non-actionable feedbacks are bad/malformed feedbacks because they are not providing any clue on how the target person can improve.

Actionable feedbacks are, as an example:

• "you can be overly confident, even aggressive, in advocating for a position. I felt this was the case when you were advocating for facility re-opening. You ask for opinions but it seems you are predetermined to get a certain outcome"
• "you don't respond to emails from my team, it feels hierarchical and discouraging. Perhaps we need to establish more trust but I need you be more generous with your time and insights".

Actionable feedbacks are good feedbacks, even if negative, because it is clear what they are referring , also with specific references and examples, and providing some suggestion on how to improve.

A good feedback should be given with a positive intent, don't provide feedback in order to get frustration off your chest, intentionally hurting the other person. Address the problem and explain what behavior change could help the company or the individual, not how it could help you.

Each 360 review, when completed should be shared with your coach. It could be really helpful for leaders to share back their 360 evaluations and show to the team their weakness and improvement needs. This will improve transparency ( not mandatory ).

How to join a 360 Review process

We use Microsoft Forms app to provide a shareable document so that others can give us feedbacks.

In order to obtain a 360 Review form you should:

1. Go into Sharepoint: BigData/Performance review/360 review template.txt
2. Inside the text file you will find a link. Open the link and click on Duplicate It to clone the form.
3. Rename the new form by editing its title. Form name must follow this naming convention: 360 Review <YYYYMM> - <Name> <Surname> (e.g. 360 Review 202301 - Michael Jordan) where YYYYMM is the current year and date e.g. 202301
4. Create a shareable link! Click on Collect responses to create a shareable link.
5. Notify all the people you want to get feedback from, or tag them in the file
6. Add the link into the Excel file: "360 review - yyyy H1/H2" for better reachability.
7. (Optional) Post a message in the "360 review" channel in Microsoft Teams.

Once the 360 Review process gets officially closed. Please share the 360 results with your coach.