updates: enneagrams at a company retreat, peer reviews, and more

Here are three updates from past letter-writers.

1. We’re supposed to do enneagrams at a company retreat

I spoke to a few colleagues about the enneagram activity, and many agreed and felt this was a strange work activity. I shared with my boss and those in charge of the retreat, and they heard some other feedback as well.

While the activity still happened, it seemed some steps were taken to water down or soften how it was presented to minimize the weight of the activity. Overall it was not too bad, and was amusing to talk about the “types” so long as we were not talking about individuals or the more personal elements. I have a feeling they will gather more feedback before doing a similar activity next time. Thank you for validating my gut reaction!

2. Does it make sense to do peer reviews?

I asked earlier this summer about whether peer reviews ever a good idea and shared insight about my dysfunctional company launching VP peer reviews.

Ironically, the day you ran my question is the exact day I spent pulling the data from the peer reviews and beginning to format the results. I was so in the weeds that I didn’t get to reply to any of the commenters, but it was really interesting to read the comments!

One commenter asked, “What does a group of 6 EVPs do if they don’t manage their 10 VPs? That seems like a lot of salary dollars concentrated in one spot.” Most of them are managing the owner :) It is an absurd amount of salary dollars and makes me want to crawl into a corner and cry.

One commenter said, “I suspect the EVPs are all family members who get paid a lot with low expectations on their work” and that is pretty much correct.

We didn’t actually do these on pen and paper — that was a bad way to explain it — I meant that we didn’t do these in any sort of formal performance review or HRIS system. We did them electronically through a survey-based platform with four blocks of rating-scale-based questions along with open text boxes to provide examples, so I still had to pull the data and manually sort everything. The data pulling, sorting, formatting, synthesizing took me about 50 hours to complete.

However, it was incredibly fascinating and I actually really enjoyed it. I had never done anything like this before and it was a great learning experience for me.

When it was announced to the VP group that they would be required to do the peer reviews, there was a lot of resistance, naturally. However, they all complied, completed the reviews, and some of them actually said that it was a good experience that made them reflect on themselves quite a bit.

Once we closed the reviews, I created two different reports per VP — one version for our CEO that included the full responses, ratings, etc. (the VP group was aware of this before we launched the survey). The second set of reports that I created were fully anonymized for each VP — it gave their overall scores/ratings and a general summary of the comments and common themes. This was actually well received and the VPs had a lot of positive feedback. There was only one negative reaction and that came from the person who had very low peer ratings in all categories.

The CEO and EVPs took this exercise seriously and have (surprisingly) recommended added headcount for some departments, executive coaching, or workshops/conferences for various VPs. Overall, everyone was pleasantly surprised with the entire exercise. I’m still a little in disbelief!

Now, we can only hope that the positive reactions continue and that the EVP group actually follows through on the recommendations.

3. I took a chance on an under-qualified candidate and it’s not working out

Thank you very much for addressing my letter and I also read the comments with appreciation. I have subsequently terminated the employee in question — quite soon after I wrote to you, actually. The commenters noting that I was lax in defining my “must haves” and susceptible to charm are spot on. I appreciate the graceful notes about learning and not being too hard on myself, as well.

I have done a lot of reflecting and will not be in a rush to hire again until I am much more clear on exactly what I am looking for in terms of skills and experience, and wiling to be patient to find the right fit. Thank you again for answering.

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