Nano Tools for Leaders® — a collaboration between Wharton Executive Education and Wharton’s Center for Leadership and Change Management — are fast, effective leadership tools that you can learn and start using in less than 15 minutes, with the potential to significantly impact your success as a leader and the engagement and productivity of the people you lead.
Contributor: Katherine Klein, Wharton management professor and vice dean for the Wharton Social Impact Initiative.
The Goal:
Create feedback systems that improve, rather than diminish, performance.
Nano Tool:
It’s a commonly held belief, one that gets played out daily in organizations around the world: Employees who receive performance feedback are much more likely to improve their performance than those who don’t get feedback. But research tells us that it’s simply not true. Typically, performance after feedback improves only modestly — and over one-third of the time, it actually gets worse. People who receive positive feedback often see no need for change, and those who receive negative feedback often react with skepticism, discouragement, and anger, dismissing the evaluation as inaccurate, unhelpful, or unfair.
But if feedback doesn’t always and easily improve performance, what should managers do? Research suggests that “pulling” is a better idea than “pushing.” Pulling entails teaching, coaching, and developing employees rather than pushing — or correcting — them. Pulling says, “Here’s how to get ahead in this company; we’ll provide you with guidelines and coaching to help you master these skills and behaviors.” Pushing says “You’re not doing very well.” In employees’ eyes, it’s likely to be the difference between challenge or inspiration and criticism.
To get favorable results from performance evaluations, evaluators must set positive expectations, showing that they believe improvements can be made, and that the feedback itself — even negative feedback — is an opportunity to learn rather than a punitive final word. They should also be willing to assist with concrete steps toward the suggested improvements, including coaching and goal setting. Done correctly, performance feedback can lead to improvements — but don’t forget to “pull” for those improvements by making clear the skills and behaviors needed and helping them to acquire them.
How Companies Use It:
Deloitte’s performance appraisal system, described as a tool for developing talent rather than benchmarking, incorporates factors such as coaching, training, self-assessment, multi-point feedback, behaviorally-based appraisal, and goal setting. Each practitioner has a counselor who is responsible for evaluation and coaching. Two expectations are outlined: performance at a client site and organization citizenship behaviors (OCB), which involve internal initiatives to increase firm value. Counselors are trained to record performance “in the moment” to aid in providing meaningful examples.
Pulling entails teaching, coaching, and developing employees rather than pushing — or correcting — them.
The U.S. Army’s Officer Corps experiences “pulling” at every level, as well as a feedback system that is direct, reinforcing, and indicative of clear ways for improvement. An “officer professional development” system and a formal mentoring program help to develop necessary leadership skills, whether technical or tactical. In addition, annual feedback and ratings are supplemented with After Action Reviews (AARs) that critique every mission, indicate needed improvements, and fix any problems before the next mission to mitigate risk.
Cargill, a 150-year-old Minneapolis-based food producer and distributor, uses ongoing conversations between managers and employees, giving forward-looking encouragement and motivation rather than retrospective evaluations. After shifting from annual reviews to this “Everyday Performance Management” system, almost 70% of the company’s employees said they felt valued and found the feedback useful.
Action Steps:
To “pull” for great performance:
- Clarify and specify the behaviors, skills, and accomplishments that employees at each level need to exhibit to do their jobs well and to progress to the next level. What are these factors and why are they important?
- Use multiple approaches to teach employees what these factors are and how they link to the company’s strategy, values, and performance. Publicize them in training sessions, emails, or websites. Ask higher-level employees to meet with lower-level colleagues for a Q&A session on getting ahead. Offer mentoring, coaching, formal classes, and/or opportunities to shadow employees working in different units, roles, or higher-level positions.
- Create an organizational climate that’s safe for asking questions, getting feedback, and learning new things. Let employees know that whenever they have questions they can and should reach out to their supervisors and others in higher-level positions.
- Coach supervisors in how to give performance feedback to their direct reports that includes:
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- delivering an honest message in a way that employees are likely to find both fair and constructive
- inviting employees to ask questions, provide input, and reflect on their own performance
- keeping the focus on the task and behavior, not the self and personal traits
- providing coaching to support employees in acquiring new and more effective skills, behaviors, and accomplishments
- setting goals for performance improvement
- emphasizing the learning opportunity and the fact that change is possible.
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- Be prepared when receiving feedback to ask the kinds of questions that will check defensiveness and enhance learning, such as: What do you think I’m already doing well? What are areas for improvement? Are there specific things I have done that I should definitely keep doing? What specific things have I done that have concerned you and why? Then paraphrase what you have heard (“So key areas for me to work on are….”), ask what resources exist for you to make improvements in these areas, and set a date to meet again to discuss your progress.
Additional Resources:
- Performance reviews and other talent management issues are taught in the following Wharton Executive Education programs: Executive Development Program, People Analytics: HR Transformation through Data, and The Adaptable Leader: Leading in a Virtual World.
- Access all Wharton Executive Education Nano Tools.
- Download this Nano Tool as a PDF.
Join The Discussion
One Comment So Far
Anumakonda Jagadeesh
Excellent.
Push–pull strategy
The original meaning of push and pull, as used in operations management, logistics and supply chain management. In the pull system production orders begin upon inventory reaching a certain level, while on the push system production begins based on demand (forecasted or actual demand). The CONWIP is a hybrid between a pure push and pure pull system.
The business terms push and pull originated in logistics and supply chain management, but are also widely used in marketing and in the hotel distribution business.
Walmart is an example of a company that uses the push vs. pull strategy.
Supply-chain management
• Push: As stated by Bonney et al. (1999) control information flow is in the same direction of goods flow
• Semi push or Push-pull : Succeeding node makes order request for preceding node. Preceding node reacts by replenishing from stock that is rebuilt every fixed period.
• Pull : Succeeding node makes order request for preceding node. Preceding node reacts by producing the order, which involves all internal operations, and replenishes when finished.
• Semi-pull or pull-push : Succeeding node makes order request for preceding node. Preceding node reacts by replenishing from stock that is rebuilt immediately. There are several levels of semi-pull systems as a node can have stock at several layers in an organization.
Information flow
With a push-based supply chain, products are pushed through the channel, from the production side up to the retailer. The manufacturer sets production at a level in accord with historical ordering patterns from retailers. It takes longer for a push-based supply chain to respond to changes in demand, which can result in overstocking or bottlenecks and delays (the bullwhip effect), unacceptable service levels and product obsolescence.
In a pull-based supply chain, procurement, production and distribution are demand-driven rather than to forecast. However, a pull strategy does not always require make to order production. Toyota Motors Manufacturing is frequently used as an example of pull production, yet do not typically produce to order. They follow the “supermarket model” where limited inventory is kept on hand and is replenished as it is consumed. In Toyota’s case, Kanban cards are used to signal the need to replenish inventory.
A supply chain is almost always a combination of both push and pull, where the interface between the push-based stages and the pull-based stages is sometimes known as the push–pull boundary. However, because of the subtle difference between pull production and make-to-order production, a more accurate name for this may be the customer order decoupling point. An example of this is Dell’s build to order supply chain. Inventory levels of individual components are determined by forecasting general demand, but final assembly is in response to a specific customer request. The decoupling point would then be at the beginning of the assembly line.
• Applied to that portion of the supply chain where demand uncertainty is relatively small
• Production and distribution decisions are based on long term forecasts
• Based on past orders received from retailer’s warehouse (may lead to bullwhip effect)
• Inability to meet changing demand patterns
• Large and variable production batches
• Unacceptable service levels
• Excessive inventories due to the need for large safety stocks
• Less expenditure on advertising than pull strategy
In a marketing pull system, the consumer requests the product and “pulls” it through the delivery channel. An example of this is the car manufacturing company Ford Australia. Ford Australia only produces cars when they have been ordered by customers.
• Applied to that portion of the supply chain where demand uncertainty is high
• Production and distribution are demand driven
• No inventory, response to specific orders
• Point of sale (POS) data comes is helpful when shared with supply chain partners
• Decrease in lead time
• Difficult to implement
Use of pull, push, and hybrid push-pull strategy
Harrison summarized when to use each one of the three supply chain strategies:
• A push based supply chain strategy is usually suggested for products with low demand uncertainty, as the forecast will provide a good indication of what to produce and keep in inventory, and also for products with high importance of economies of scale in reducing costs.
• A pull based supply chain strategy, usually suggested for products with high demand uncertainty and with low importance of economies of scales, which means, aggregation does not reduce cost, and hence, the firm would be willing to manage the supply chain based on realized demand.
• A hybrid push–pull strategy, usually suggested for products which uncertainty in demand is high, while economies of scale are important in reducing production and delivery costs. An example of this strategy is the furniture industry, where production strategy has to follow a pull-based strategy, since it is impossible to make production decisions based on long-term forecasts. However, the distribution strategy needs to take advantage of economies of scale in order to reduce transportation cost, using a push-based strategy.
Examples in push and pull
and Spearman consider some of the most common systems found in industry and the literature and classify them as either push or pull
• Material requirements planning (MRP) is a push system because releases are made according to a master production schedule without regard to system status. Hence, no prior work in process (WIP) limit exists.
• Classic kanban is a pull system. The number of kanban cards establishes a fixed limit on WIP.
• The classic base stock system is a push system because there is no limit on the amount of work in process in the system. This is because backorders can increase beyond the basestock level.
• Installation stock is also a push system as are echelon stock systems because neither imposes a limit on the number of orders in the system.
• CONstant work in process (CONWIP) is a pull system because it limits WIP via cards similar to kanban. An important difference from kanban from an implementation standpoint is that the cards are line specific rather than part number specific. However, from a push-pull perspective, CONWIP cards limit WIP in the same manner as kanban cards.
• (K, S) systems (proposed by Liberopoulos and Dallery) are pull systems if K <∞ and are push systems otherwise.
• POLCA systems proposed by Suri are pull systems because, like kanban and CONWIP, WIP is limited by cards.
• PAC systems proposed by Buzacott and Shanthikumar are pull systems when the number of process tags (which serve to limit WIP) is less than infinity.
• MRP with a WIP constraint (as suggested by Axsäter and Rosling) is a pull system.
Marketing
An advertising push strategy refers to a situation when a vendor advertises its product to gain audience awareness, while the pull strategy implies the aims to reach audiences which have shown existing interest in the product or information about it. The difference between "push" and "pull" marketing can also be identified by the manner in which the company approaches the lead. If, for example, the company were to send a sales brochure, that would be considered pushing the opportunity toward the lead. If, instead, the company provided a subject matter expert as a speaker for an industry event attended by targeted leads, that could be one tactic used as part of a strategy to pull in a lead by encouraging that lead to seek out the expert in a moment of need for that expertise.
Hotel distribution
The online world has brought this pull push decision to the hotel distribution business
• Push strategies in the hotel distribution business imply that hotel inventory is placed for the distributors or resellers outside the hotel system in one or several extranets that belong to these distributors (online travel agencies, tour operators, and bed banks). The inventory must be therefore updated in these extranets. The hotel servers receive less traffic preventing server crashes but booking must be transferred to the hotel system.
Pull strategies are based on distributors interfacing with the hotel property management system. In this case the inventory is "pulled" from the hotel (or hotel chain) system. This method provides a much more precise picture of the real availability and saves time loading the bookings but, requires more IT development and a bigger server (dedicated one)(Wikipedia).
In India in the 80s 100% Depreciation was given to Wind Projects. Many Big Industrialists jumped into it and there was big activity. As it often happens some industrialists misused the incentives and the Union Government gradually withdrawn them.
In Innovation theory these are two approaches: Technology Push and Demand Pull. Solar cookers(Box Type) belongs to the former category and Mineral water,mobiles etc. belong to the latter category.
Generally Incentives are provided to promote a product initially. There are two ways to reduce the cost . One is mass production and the other is increased efficiency. In Renewables like Solar the latter is the need of the hour.
One Pertinent Question:
In India the Solar Box type solar cooker was heaviliy subsidized and hardly 0.6 million of them are sold but not all used. The reason being the Solar Cooker suffers from many disadvantages:
!. No provision for frying
2. One has to cook food outside(Cultural constraint).
Assuming that a housewife who is employed wants to use ,not possible because of office hours.
3. A bicycle which costs triple the Box type solar cooker was never subsidized and Millions of them are in use.
In India the success of MOBILE PHONE is a classic example of success . The Mobile meets the demand of variety of people and hence phenomenal success.
Bottom of the Story: People want devices which are of multiple use. Nobody uses useless things even though they are given free.
Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India
Renewable Energy Expert.