{"id":3604,"date":"2020-12-28T10:41:07","date_gmt":"2020-12-28T15:41:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.certitrek.com\/nlpa\/2017\/12\/28\/the-performance-appraisal-as-a-procurement-leadership-tool\/"},"modified":"2023-11-30T11:09:11","modified_gmt":"2023-11-30T15:09:11","slug":"performance-appraisal-procurement-leadership-tool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.certitrek.com\/nlpa\/blog\/performance-appraisal-procurement-leadership-tool\/","title":{"rendered":"The Performance Appraisal As A Procurement Leadership Tool"},"content":{"rendered":"

The end of the year coincides with an often dreaded event:\u00a0 annual performance appraisals.<\/p>\n

Thinking about performance appraisals, my mind goes back to the late ’90’s, when I was a rising procurement star for US Airways (now American Airlines).<\/p>\n

On our performance appraisals, our managers had multiple sections to complete.\u00a0 Two of those sections were “Strengths” and “Developmental Areas.”\u00a0 Now, we all know that the opposite of strengths is weaknesses.\u00a0 So, why not call the section “Weaknesses?”<\/p>\n

Well, of course, no one likes their weaknesses pointed out.\u00a0 And, if you rub an employee the wrong way, that can kill morale and obliterate any good that listing strengths would have done.<\/p>\n

So, “developmental areas” implies that\u00a0certain traits of an employee’s work\u00a0 can and will be improved in the next year.<\/p>\n

It’s a decent euphemism.\u00a0 But I heard an even better one last night.<\/p>\n

Anyone who has read my book, The Procurement Game Plan<\/a>, knows that I love sports.\u00a0 And that I love to correlate sports performance to procurement performance.<\/p>\n

So, that’s where my mind was last night as I watched the press conference of Pittsburgh Penguins’ head coach, Mike Sullivan, after the Pens’ big win over the Columbus Blue Jackets.<\/p>\n

A reporter asked the question:\u00a0 “How do you make sure that this win does sort of translate on and produce some sort of positive change down the road for this season?”<\/p>\n

Sullivan answered:\u00a0 “We’re going to break the film down.\u00a0 We’re going to learn what we can from it.\u00a0 We’re going to take some of the good things and some of the teaching points…and we’re going to look at our next game.”<\/p>\n

Did you catch that phrase?<\/p>\n

“Teaching points.”<\/p>\n

Now, that is a euphemism I like even better than “developmental areas.”\u00a0 I like it because it implies a few things:<\/p>\n