sign of maturity?

[burnunit]

When you have a performance review that says "I agree with all of your self assessments. You've made really good progress on all these goals we identified. It's really good when there's alignment between goals, perceptions and reality. 2008 was a good year." it feels really good.

When the rest of the review talks about 2009 in specific ways, it feels really good. Doesn't it just feel awesome when your work manager goes "Make sure ___ and ____ can do ________. You have six months." ? That kind of focused goal setting helps a lot^*. Enormously.

So coming out of the review we both can say "These are specific goal areas for the coming year. 1. 2. 3. This one wraps up by Q3, this one wraps up in Q2, this one is for Q3&4." It feels super grown up when this happens and when it feels like we're both fully aware of how much work is involved, and that it's enough work.

You don't need LOTS of stuff to do at your job to be "important," you need focus and clarity, and institutional/executive backing that says "these things are enough for you to be considered very valuable here."

Now let's hope we start turning more profit so all this progress gets attached to a damn raise, already! I'm happy to have a job, especially one in which executives work to bring more clarity to it each day. I'm just going on month 24 of the same salary. I appreciate the stability (knock knock). I struggle with inflation, especially health and childcare.

^* Yes, I realize I still have some of that to do with other leadership areas in my life.

Comments

[mrs-lovett.livejournal.com]

Huzzah!

That sounds ideal.

[lexinatrix.livejournal.com]

Here's how reviews and goal setting work at my job (a large insurance company).

1. We are reviewed on a new set of criteria, suddenly announced 2 weeks before the review period ends. That is: the goals we set back in Feb 08, 3 reorg's and divisional reprioritizations later.
2. We stagger through our reviews and try to explain how through mismanagement and endless reorganization we weren't able to accomplish our goals. Several of us are being reviewed by managers who've never managed anyone in our job title and to whom we've reported for 2 months.
3. We hear rumors that the corporate goals may be ready, but no one is sharing.
4. See #3, but for the next layer of imaginary management: the divisional level.
5. We write some goals, trying to tie them to the rumored divisional goals, since they haven't cascaded them to us yet.
6. Our managers will likely hand off the team goals 2 days before our own goals are due.
7. Somewhere midyear we'll overhaul the review system again, and all this will be for naught.

Yay!