ET Tan

The performance appraisal is the manager’s single most powerful tool, but sadly it is also the least recognised one in his/her toolkit.  To many, the performance appraisal is a waste of time required by HR, to be gotten over with as quickly as possible so ‘we can go do more important work’. This attitude shows a lack of understanding of what the performance appraisal (PA) can do for the incumbent. Any manager can do this. When I was a young engineer of 26, I was promoted to be in charge of the HDD manufacturing engineering department when HP started up operations in Bristol. It would have been a steep learning curve to learn about hard disk drives in managing the 8 new people under my charge. I decided I needed to be the best manager for them instead.  This required understanding three non-technical areas: First is the business and what overall key performance metrics are. That is the reason for the business’s existence and continued survival. As a new factory, we needed to come online as soon as possible and generate revenue quickly. Second is responsibility of my department, how this fits in the overall whole, and its contribution to the key performance metrics of the division. Bringing up the production line smoothly and smoothly running afterwards is paramount. We need to work with production well and put processes in place quickly. Third, involves my direct reports. They already know what they are doing as they were there before me. What I had to do was to understand their roles, capabilities and ensure that all 8 of them cover everything my department is responsible for. Thereafter, I set monthly objectives for each of them and sat with each of them every two weeks to ensure we are on track and on schedule. We also used the meetings to realign responsibilities should there be unexpected issues to ensure they are covered in a timely manner. Feedback was provided there and then. As manager, my job is to coordinate that start-up problems are properly resolved. It allowed my team to do their job with ease and in so doing, achieve goals of the department and contribute to the business. When time came to do their performance appraisal it was a simple matter of pulling out our monthly achievements and formalizing them into the template provided by HR. Together, we made the annual PA into a continuous process and incorporated time to provide guidance, give feedback and allow individual growth. Performance appraisal is the fundamental method that we as leaders recognize that people are our most important resource.  Rewarding them properly is a consequence of this activity.

Technology may look like it can solve the problem, but transformation is not driven by tech alone.  Let me share about the product that never made it out the door because of that. Even before we heard about IR4.0, the researchers at Hewlett Packard Labs already created the concept of an electronic clipboard to capture what was on forms for processing online. The year was 1998. The thinking was how much easier it would be if data entry which was then handwritten on duplicate forms (sometimes triplicate) did not need to be retyped to be entered into computers. Recognition software would convert the handwriting on the clipboard captured directly as the service advisor was writing on the form. Data entry would be immediate. Service time will improve. Doctors can still write the way they like and retraining on clumsy computers was not needed. The industry will be revolutionised. With full support of then HP CEO Lew Platt, a division in HP absorbed the HPLabs team led by Polly Siegel to pivot to this new business plan, codenamed ‘PaperClip’ [pix]. The plan was not to replace paper forms, but to augment them. We will allow users to continue to do what they do best: focus on their trade and continue to capture the data on the clipboard such as personal details, service data, payment info and so on. Except this new clipboard will also be battery powered. Extreme care was taken to ensure it was intuitive to use and carry in rugged conditions, and could capture handwriting through a stack of forms placed on it. The industrial design for the product even won acclaim for IDEO, the design house engaged for the project. We partnered with the country’s largest forms producer and distributor, The Reynolds and Reynolds Company, to identify early adopters to pilot the product. Their forms are used everywhere in the USA, and will be our launch partner. It was potentially a billion dollar business, or perhaps more. But alas, technology alone is not enough. It is really hard to compete against a $2 clipboard you can buy from any stationery store. The irony today is the devices replacing the $2 clipboard are electronic handheld devices not unlike the smartphone costing many times that of PaperClip. And companies buy them without hesitation. Flatscreens are everywhere, and at doctor’s offices many struggle to do data entry as it is still their job to do so. The Reynolds and Reynolds company today is also providing retail software management systems, along with the forms that they are known for. The lesson from all this: technology alone cannot drive transformation. Users and ecosystems have to align. And the timing has to be right. We can’t connect the dots looking forward. We just have to be smarter going forward.

Like most things, it is fear of the unknown. As a leader, many of us have a natural tendency to feel we need to know the answers, correction, ALL the answers. That is actually our biggest weakness. We are fundamentally all managers: managers of expectations, of time, and of effort. As managers and leaders, it is about how we work with others and bring the best out of them. My big break came when I was appointed R&D Project Manager to lead a new project at HP Bristol. Until then, my experience had been in production systems (telecoms test equipment) and manufacturing engineering (disk drives). These areas, although advanced in their own right, are well understood and already developed by others. New product development is what every engineer dreams of doing. So when I was told I was to lead the (then) next generation storage system for HP, I was over the moon. Then reality hit home: err.. how? The immediate reaction was: can I pick another project and start with a less challenging project instead? Fortunately I didn’t. Leading the project means identifying what will be that next generation backup solution, selecting the right vendor and defining what the product would look like. This is not only about the external look of the box, but also what it does and how it is supposed to function. Initially it exposed me to the world of market research, meeting with the largest computer companies of the time like IBM, DEC, Wang and their customers to understand their needs. From there, we selected Sony’s Digital Audio Tape (DAT) technology to be adapted for computer applications. Along the way I also learnt Japanese, and led our US and US teams to work with Sony engineers in their Shibaura plant in Tokyo and how to eat my first sushi. The best part was everyone on the team participated and contributed to the best of their abilities and happy pushing the boundaries in the areas that they excel in – only with stress on how to do their very best. We worked hard and played hard. To cut a long story short, we introduced the DDS/DAT Storage System in 1989 and HP in Bristol generated over US$600 million revenue p.a. after 3 years; the second most successful industry-wide peripheral solution from HP (after printers). There had since been 7 generations of the technology, and still shipping today. I was worried I could not invent a new category of products from my background, but the team managed to. Together with Sony, we generated 26 patents from the project. And I got my name in one too. The lesson I want to share to the reader is to fully embrace your areas of weakness and fears. Managers do not have to have answers for everything. The leader is one who can identify the capabilities of the team. After that, just let each member do their best.