People Analyzer®

It belongs to the People component and it is used on the leadership team first, in the room, which is the part that gives it any credibility. After that, managers score their own people ahead of the quarterly conversation. Somebody below the bar gets a series of honest conversations rather than a surprise, and the outcome lands on the Issues List.

Discussions about values stay comfortable until somebody has to be rated against them. The grid removes the vagueness, and scoring the leaders before the staff is what stops it becoming a management weapon. It also hands an honest manager the language for a conversation they have been avoiding for the better part of a year.

Worked example: A wholesale business scored its seven leaders and found the sales director below the bar on one value about raising bad news early. It was not a firing. It was two specific incidents everybody had noticed and nobody had mentioned. He got the conversation and a quarter to change, and at the next scoring he was above the bar.

Sources: Traction, Gino Wickman, chapter on People; How to Be a Great Boss, Gino Wickman and Rene Boer