Has anyone considered using soft factors in evaluating the effectiveness of an executive team? For instance, we are considering items such as timeliness of response to questions/inquiries, sharing of knowledge, helping of others, courteous and professional conduct, overall behavior as a member of the team. We would rate each other on a scale of 1-10 with a trusted middle manager as the process driver and administrator of the results.
This is pretty fuzzy at this point, but I am interested in thoughts from others. Thank you in advance.
Soft factors to evaluate effectiveness of executive team
Answers
Ironically, I think you would need to have an exec team that already rates highly on your measures in order for this to have a snowball's chance of succeeding. It is so difficult to get ego-driven exec team members to focus on anything other than themselves that this would be very difficult to make genuinely work unless it had full support from a strong CEO or, as I note above, everyone on the team already "gets it" and would therefore rate highly already.
Those that don't "get it" would fight all the way and it would reduce any program's effectiveness unless the CEO was fully ready to step-up and make it stick.
Sounds like you are replacing/complementing formal employee evaluations and psych tests. One company I know developed 'employee productivity metrics' under the 'measure everything' philosophy, and evaluated employees on the basis of each measure of measurable output...somewhat along the lines you propose.
All this requires CEO and Board-level belief to carry off.
One method would be to have frequent feedback discussions, and document them. I found that works well.
Rather than a "trusted" middle manager, would think a Consultant would be good, someone totally independent. Doesn't have to be a huge investment in a fancy consulting firm. But certainly the Board and CEO have to see it as a worthwhile investment. A supportive CEO is one who is reasonably happy, receives appropriate rewards for company practices and
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Human Capital