Multirater madness

In No­vartis, a “mul­tirater” was a form that you filled out dur­ing the an­nu­al per­form­ance re­view cycle as a way to give feed­back about an em­ploy­ee to that em­ploy­er’s man­ager. It was com­mon to ask seni­or lead­ers to do many of these.

Ok, I’m wiped out.

Here’s the new deal: next year, I’m only do­ing 12 mul­tiraters. First come, first serve. Step right up, get in line while you can.

The first re­questers get a free-but-mean­ing­less com­pli­ment thrown in­to the De­vel­op­ment sec­tion. (“This guy can handle spicy food like nobody’s busi­ness!”) The second half get the dregs of my cre­ativ­ity.

If you miss the cut I’ll be happy to send the fol­low­ing email form let­ter to your man­ager:

Dear Mrs. Operational, Functional and/or Company Manager:

I regret that I have run out of the mental energy it takes to write
deeply insightful, specific, and actionable commentary in sentence
form about your direct report.  Please accept the following in lieu of
anything meaningful.  Boxes appropriate to your direct report have an
X marked in them.

Relationship to employee:
 [ ] Peer
 [ ] Customer
 [ ] Project team member
 [ ] Avoid like the plague
 [ ] See in the elevator sometimes
 [ ] I’m sorry, who is this person?

Identify this employee’s most significant contributions and/or
greatest strengths:
 [ ] Articulate
 [ ] Fantastic collaborator
 [ ] Deep thinker
 [ ] Sharp dresser
 [ ] Delivers on all commitments
 [ ] Drives car I wish I had
 [ ] Did not complain to my boss about that thing I screwed up
 [ ] Sarcasm impaired
 [ ] Made the critical difference on:
     [ ] Project ______
     [ ] Presentation for ______
     [ ] A multirater for me
 [ ] Regularly buys donuts for otherwise hopeless group meeting

Identify this employee’s areas for improvement or further development:
 [ ] Tune presentation skills
 [ ] Work on cross-group collaboration
 [ ] Communicate proactively
 [ ] Learn to code in something other than Visual Basic
 [ ] Honestly, this guy is hopeless - just fire him now - but don't
     blame me!
 [ ] Shower more often
 [ ] Listen to me and do what I say
 [ ] Sarcasm impaired
 [ ] Be strategic.  Strategy, strategy, strategy!  Duh!
 [ ] Try not to waste that $4.5M next time around - probably not a
     great move, all things considered
 [ ] Should finally fix the IT mess we have here
 [ ] Quit ducking multiraters by writing silly forms

Remy Evard, NIBR Chief Irreverence Officer