The DWEEB team

Is the partner running the performance reviews actually a suboptimal performer himself? ... It looks like it ... A world in which 40 percent is the new 50 percent ... Meeting adjourned after bad debt allegation ... Dorothy blogs  

It is performance appraisal time.

This year, the managing partner has established an exciting new committee.  

He calls it the Partner Performance Excellence Board.

George calls it DWEEB: Dead Wood Eviction or Elevation Board.

(It is George's observation that partners with suboptimal practices have two possible fates:  eviction or elevation to the firm's management team.)

Of course, sacking an equity partner is problematic as, technically speaking, an equity partner is an owner of the firm.  

So we would not call it sacking. 

We would call it instituting a process of review and performance assistance.   

For which we would need a committee of impartial persons.

Ivan is on the DWEEB, a job he has embraced with enthusiasm and relish. It has caused him to return to his vast collection of Law Manager's Monthly and look at the most recent learnings on this important topic. 

The first important innovation is that, as part of a detailed review, it was noted that it is very difficult to compare relative partner performance with the current marking system.

We get a mark out of 5 for each of six criteria (staff, clients, expertise, marketing, financial management, firm). Ninety percent of partners get 3 or 4 out of 5, which makes it hard to work out the margins of crappiness.

Now you might think that if this were the problem, one might instead mark it out of something bigger - say, 10 or 100. Or - I don't know - 21.

In fact, the numbers available to the DWEEB for discriminating levels of crappiness are, literally as I understand it from my limited experience of mathematics, infinite.

Instead, DWEEB has issued a directive that 2 out of 5 is the new 50 percent. 

Lawyers, generally speaking, are not very good at maths.  But even the most innumerate of us can work out that no matter how many times you say that 2 out of 5 is a pass mark, it isn't.

And even though innumerate, we value ourselves by numbers: the pay packet, the marks out of 5. It is the source of our flimsy self-worth.

In short, if the new paradigm of 2/5 is executed poorly, it could wreak havoc on productivity. Weeks could be wasted in psychiatrist's comfy chairs patching-up the damage. 

It could even spark a partnerly stampede to the exit. 

So how did DWEEB execute? Let's use Gail's appraisal to illustrate.

As previously reported, Ivan does not love Gail, not even fiduciarily, and the feeling is requited.

The process for performance appraisal requires that a discussion take place with a DWEEB subcommittee (of two) and that the marks out of 5 be delivered in writing to the victim at least 24 hours in advance. 

Gail's were delivered seven minutes before the interview.

Skimming it in the lift on the way to the meeting room, she saw that Ivan had given her a 2/5 for the categories of "clients" and "financial management". 

As she was processing this, she arrived at the door of the interview room. 

She considered not going in, on the grounds of late delivery of documents, but Ivan had already made it clear that grave consequences would be visited upon any person who failed to turn-up to the performance appraisal.

So she entered, trying as she did to arrange her face into a semblance of insouciance.

Ivan had Trevor, his favourite sycophant, as the other half of the DWEEB team.

The discussion on the 2 for clients happened first. 

"Feedback from partners," said Ivan, "is that they have no confidence in your ability to deliver for clients." 

Note that he did not say "you do not deliver for clients". If he had said that, she could have sought particulars, and refuted them. 

This was much more deflating. 

We spend more time with our partners than we do with our spouses and children -and Ivan was telling her that "they" (one? some? all?) told him that she is hopeless at the thing she has spent her whole life trying to excel in.        

Ivan delivered an oily smile. "Strictly speaking," he said, like a hyena administering comfort to an injured gazelle, "this should result in a 2 for 'firm' as well. But we decided against that. And you must understand that a 2 means an adequate performance."

He let the notions of his magnanimity and Gail's adequacy hover for a moment before he moved to the 2 for financial management.

"So what is the issue here?" Gail asked.

"Profitability. Unacceptable."

"What do you mean?"

"Bad debts," said Trevor. 

"What bad debts? I don't know of any bad debts."

"Which is the reason for the 2. Failing to keep track of your debtor position," said Ivan dismissively.

"But I do keep track and I have no bad debts."

"I think you will find you do," said Ivan in his most morally superior tone.

Gail, a litigator who understands the power of particulars said, "I want a list". 

There was a stand-off until Trevor's embarrassment overrode his sycophancy. He telephoned the numbers man and asked him to bring a print out of the bad debts. 

Ivan looked at it. 

"We will get back to you on this," he said in a grim tone which indicated the outcome would be worse for her than first thought. 

Ivan refused to hand over the piece of paper. The meeting was adjourned.  

Gail managed to extract the list from the numbers man the next day.

There was only one item on the list: one very big, bad debt which was in fact ... Ivan's.  

Ivan had an enormous bad debt which had been festering in a darkened back room, and, by some freak of computerness, it had ended up in Gail's figures. 

Dorothy