![]() Except, of course, if deliberately undermining their efforts means there is an enhanced probability that they'll be at the bottom.and you won't be.No one on this team would deliberately act in a way that undermines my efforts.Not only do you get the traditional issue of "Why would I help you when I could be doing my work?" but you get the bonus of "When you fail, I do better by comparison." Two for one! This is perhaps the most devastating challenge to stack ranking: it strongly disententives collaboration.It is difficult to ask other members of this team for help.But stank ranking perpetuates the status quo, since average performance within a group is safe from the penalties that come with being at the bottom of the stack. Appropriate risk taking is what allows for growth in companies, by creating opportunities outside the norm.It is safe to take a risk in this team.It puts the suffer in suffer-by-comparison. In stack ranking, every chance to reject others is a chance to elevate yourself, even if that rejection isn't directly related to an actual performance issue.People on this team sometimes reject others for being different.This can cause team members to hide potential problems in ways that can be intensely costly to the business later. If you know you are going to be ranked against others, then being vulnerable is strongly disincentivized.Members of this team are able to bring up problems and tough issues.Highlighting others' failures is actively encouraged in comparative reward systems. But you can also rise by denigrating others: you can be in first place simply by pushing others toward last place. You can win at stack ranking by celebrating your accomplishments.If I make a mistake in this team, it is held against me.When you look at the 7-item scale that Amy Edmondson used in the article where she introduced the term, each item can be seen as a rebuttal to the idea of stank ranking. When Google studied the performance of successful teams, far and away the most predictive factor was psychological safety.Īnd stack ranking systematically destroys psychological safety. But even if you could fix all the technical issues with stank ranking, it would still be a damaging review system. It's also arbitrary: the cutoffs for rewards and punishments are not reflective of objective measures, simply comparisons to the relative performance of others.įinally, it's usually highly subjective: because performance is hard to capture in a single variable, stank ranking relies on opinions about who is better or worse, often across different types of work or projects. There are technical reasons stack ranking is a flawed system.įor example, it's highly imprecise: the person in first place and the person in last place can have wildly different performance or be separated by the smallest of margins, but the stack ranking obscures those differences. People in the first few spots are rewarded and, in the most extreme versions, the bottom few are automatically fired. When evaluating performance, team members are "stacked" against each other, rather like a Top Ten list. For those lucky enough to have never encountered it, stack ranking is basically the workplace version of Survivor. The joke is wryly funny but in the reality of a workplace, there is nothing worse than comparative versions of performance.Įvery shred of scientific evidence that we have argues that stack ranking is a terrible idea and yet many workplaces continue to use it as their primary reward system. "I don't have to run faster than the bear," replies the first hiker. "There's no way you can run faster than that bear." Immediately, one of the hikers drops to their knees, tightens their laces, and prepares to run. Two hikers are out for a walk when they come across a bear. There's an old joke my five-year-old son loves. See more stories on Insider's business page.The most troublesome issue is that there are better alternatives to increasing individual and team performance.He argues that even if all the technical issues were fixed, it would still be a damaging review system.Matt Wallaert says there are technical reasons why stack ranking is a flawed system.Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.
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