Dear Sirs,
First, as a note of clarification, I’d like to shed some light on the greeting I’ve elected to use for this alleged “performance evaluation”. While I find this entire endeavor mindless, irrelevant and, quite frankly, insulting, I'd like to acknowledge the patriarch(s) that is Corporate America/Canada and its undeniable influence that has crept its way into our everyday lives like muddy rainwater seeping up from the ground into an old, musty basement. This salutation is meant to address those individuals who have their bloated, clammy collective finger on the button; those who I consider to be somewhat, if not wholly, responsible for this exercise.
I received an email a short while ago with an innocuous-looking Word document attached. The body of the email contained instructions directing me to “evaluate” my “performance”, and promptly return said document to the appropriate managerial party. The following categories were to be assessed: Adaptability, Communication, Compliance, Aligning Performance for Success, Decision Making, Delegating Responsibility, Managing Conflict, Planning and Organizing, and Work Standards. It contained a box with bullet points where I was to delineate my Future Goals and Objectives. It also contained a Comments section.
I printed out the document and looked at it more closely, as if I expected the words and characters to have changed as it crossed over the wires and made its way to the nearest HP LaserJet. I threw it away, promptly.
To my dismay, I find myself still holding a sense of obligation to you and your need for me to "evaluate" myself. It's the same obligation I feel towards something like wrapping Christmas presents. One can't help but despise the glaring irony that, despite the effort put forth to wrap a present, to make it neat and shiny and to curl the ribbons to Martha Stewart perfection, it will only ever result in a saccharine acknowledgment of "how pretty" it looks. Ultimately, at day's end, ones effort ends up in the same place as the picked-over turkey carcass.
So, I won't evaluate myself or my performance, at least not based on any of the criteria you've provided. I won't be homogenized and broken and mashed into square bits so you can squeeze me into a box to fit your categories. I won't be a perfectly-wrapped, tidy package so it's easier for you to assign a value to what I do.
My successes are my own; my value has nothing to do with Compliance or Work Standards or any other corporate buzzwords. What I have achieved is not through an obligation to you or to this organization, but through an obligation to myself to conduct myself in a manner each day that reflects a desire to improve myself and those around me. I will take that with me in lieu of a slightly above cost-of-living pay raise.
I cannot list my future goals and objectives, as my present goals and objectives are really all that is relevant. Goals should not be lofty ideas hanging in the balance, like a carrot on a string, but initiatives we practice daily. If we operate within a box, we operate within limitations that never expand outside its walls. If we submit to conformity, we accept mediocrity and stagnate. Accepting the value that someone else assigns to us based on inane criteria is to accept an illusion of success. It closes the box, and locks the lid.
This letter is not meant to be hostile or flippant, only to inform. It is an attempt to improve you; to encourage you to truly evaluate yourself and your performance. It is an invitation, if any of this information is new to you, to wake up.
Please consider this my "Comments" section.
Kindest regards,
Magen
