It’s time for our mid-year judgment performance reviews. Not unlike other places, my masters have asked me for a short list of clients I’ve serviced over the last six months. My masters contact these folks and ask them to provide feedback on my performance which they factor into their comments. It helps ensure employees aren’t looking at porno or down at the pub when they’re supposed to be in meetings. In other words, it keeps employees accountable. And librarians should be accountable to their communities. After all, what good are we if we’re not really helping anyone?
Even so, the review has me… unsettled. What are people going to say? Will they say anything at all? Did I do enough for them? Or for enough of them? And as I was putting together my list I realized there was an uneven distribution between the teams I support. Some teams I had a lot of contact with. Others not so much.
While I can’t control what people are going to say, I did have some control over the process…
- I chose people with whom I had a regular contact with.
- I chose people for whom I did measureable amounts of work. No ready-reference-what’s-the-fastest-animal-on-earth crap. These were meaty requests.
- I have a stack of deliverables (a “Thump File” as one author put it) I can produce if asked.
- I chose a mix of management and grunts like me.
- I kept a log of all the significant requests I fulfilled as well as other significant task I engaged in (hosting teleconferences on tech topics, helping on “other projects as assigned,” etc.) and how many people it affected.
In the end, I’m probably doing fine. I’ve seen a lot of corporate zombies do far less and still get by. And it’s good to be uncomfortable by the process. It keeps you on your toes and constantly wondering where you can engage your clients. It’s motivated me to reach out to my two less engaged groups to do a check in.
What do you think? Any suggestions on what to do next time around?
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