How quick ‘detection’ of behaviour helps achieve cooperation at IT companies.
Intro
Achieving co-operation and delivering is a priority for IT companies. Their bread and butter too !
Missed timelines, delayed projects, stretching programs, over-budgeted portfolios are common. Equally so within the IT industry.
To solve these problems organizations create systems. Performance bonuses, HR practices, team exercises, parties, excursions, etc. These are all to build teams. And so co-operation.
As part of this blog series, we look at “systematic” concepts that achieve cooperation. Or ought to. So, the following are the requirements for a good review system.
Continuing from How to Achieve Co-operation. We start with pillar 1.
Quick Detection of Behaviour
If I, a software developer, am being lazy. Then even before I can be punished, my cheating must be detected. More importantly – it must be done quickly.
If the detection is fast and accurate, the punishment ( or reward ) can be immediate and accurate.
“Immediacy” thus increases the prospects of getting successful cooperation for an organization.
Vice versa is also true. If my performance is rewarded quickly, then it is reinforced. If not, I could attribute my rewards to my luck, communication, attendance, or worse – luck.
A good example is Pavlov’s experiment. Ivan Pavlov rang a bell each time he fed his dogs. As usually happens, the dogs salivated seeing the food. But eventually, the dogs ended up associating the bell with food.
Later Pavlov simply rang the bell, and the dogs salivated. Had the food been served hours after the bell, would we see the same results ? Nopes !
Stimulant and stimulus too far ? The behavior will never work.
Same goes for Software engineers.
Let us consider the following:
We have a team of 10 developers. Deep is a lazy one !
His code does not solve all use cases, is buggy, poorly designed, and is late.
Deep’s lead quickly brings the issue to the notice of their manager. The manager reviews all details and comes in with a guilty verdict
Within a few days – he is critiqued and is asked to be careful. Since the reprimand is immediate, Deep hardly gets any benefit from his lethargy.
The ROI ( Return Of Investment ) on lethargy is very low. And chances are Deep will stand corrected very quickly.
On the other hand, wait 1 year for a performance review. The ROI becomes HUGE for Deep !
Slow detection
From the same 10 developers, let’s say, some collude to avoid work. They make an understanding with their Lead. Who hides their mistakes and covers for them. In turn, the devs stretch for the Lead when needed.
Together, they come up with tricks to divert accountability. Questions are diverted to the business team, product owner, architect, or manager.
If you think this is uncommon at large organizations. Well, think again.
Now cheating has become more complex. It has more dimensions.
Leadership cannot always look at each dimension, therefore cheating is detected “much late”. This gives me ( the developer ) an incentive to be lazy.
In fact, many (so-called) leaders are incapable of verifying all dimensions. Therefore, they only look at the final stages of a deliverable. Like …
More Complexity !
Unfortunately, these factors have other influences too ….
With all these complexities – detection and punishment become slow and inaccurate. This in turn raises the temptation to cheat.
I claim that – all large IT companies including Infosys, TCS, Cognizant, Wipro etc. face this problem.
If the system detects my lethargy slowly, and only partially. Then being lazy might seem like a good idea.
The scale problem
Consider an organization with ~100 employees. And designated with a hierarchy of around 5 layers.
Management has these additional questions to answer ….
The scale problem is cherry on top of the other ones. That is – collusion, complexities, monitoring ability, and other factors.
If figuring these out is slow, then people have incentives to cheat.
I bet that all large IT companies like Infosys, TCS, Cognizant, Wipro etc. face this problem.
Wrap up
Quick detection is important to generating cooperation, at an IT company. An annual review or a quarterly review, does not serve this purpose well.
In other words, a good performance review system needs “Quick detection of behavior”.
Excerpts from: The Art of Strategy
Next, we discuss the “Nature of rewards” in a performance system.
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