How Olympic Judging Can Improve Performance Mgmt
Judging in the Olympics is pretty straightforward if the competition is track and field. The winning is quantitative, measurable: the fastest runner wins, the longest javelin throw wins, the highest bar jumped wins. The focus of the judges in these sports is more focused on not breaking the rules.
But many sports are more qualitative, and therefore, quite akin to performance management in the workplace. We know what good looks like, but there are many interpretations and biases to overcome. So let’s look at how Olympic judging helps combat favoritism and confirmation bias. Think of all the lessons we could apply at work to be more fair in performance management.
Olympic gymnastics:
Two D panel judges assess Difficulty and five E panel judges assess Execution. No single judge judges an overall performance.
The highest and lowest Execution scores are dropped. The three remaining Execution scores are averaged.
Olympic diving:
Seven judges submit their scores for a dive.
The top two and bottom two scores are eliminated.
The three remaining scores are added up and multiplied by the degree of difficulty assigned to a particular type of dive in advance.
What if we assembled performance review panels at work like the Olympics? Things would look very different. Consider:
Your boss wouldn’t be in the discussion.
The judges would likely have heard of you but not know you.
The degree of difficulty of your role would carry weight.
Different evaluators would judge different components of your performance. For example, a few judges assess your people leadership, a few assess your business acumen, a few assess your business performance metrics, etc.
The highest and lowest scores would be thrown out.
The more I think about this, the more I see a need for change at work. Performance management should be judged like the Olympics.
