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. CTO 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

We adopt an open-ended questions approach to stimulate critical thinking, and create the right conditions to provide insightful feedbacks. We don't want to rate or evaluate people, we want just to provide them useful information to own their personal growth within the company.

There are three sections:

• Check-in: This is the only mandatory part and providing a instant feedback about it is positive and what can be improved ( Start from positive things because after that is easier to accept negative feedbacks )
• Personal Development: Here there is the possibility to be more specific on how the target person could improve and be more effective within the company
• Closing: Saying Thanks and Sorry is always important to create better connection with people and share vulnerabilities. This will make you feedback more effective and accepted.

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 mandatory to fill all the questions, but highly recommended to take your time and go through them

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.