If you are a company (startup/SME) willing to put an end to bureaucracy in your organization and focus on a productive team, read on.

Typically, companies tend to create a complex performance metrics that eventually serves one purpose – justify your decision. The decision that is shared at the D-day, i.e. appraisal cycle (could be of salary cut, promotion etc) and is hardly based on quantitative data (bell curve, anyone?).

But then, that complex structure works for big companies. Objective/Goal setting is done at the beginning of the cycle and tends to lose meaning during the year.

Startups, on the other hand have their own challenges – apart from the fact that they have no formal processes in place, the founders are mostly clueless about the HR/performance measurement part of the team. They tend to adopt a simple process – or to be honest just go with their subjective assessment. Works for a small team, but in the long run creates the same frustration that employees of big companies face – decision based on boss’ mood/relationship/proximity etc.

So here is how to cut through all of that and create a fair balance of performance awareness in the team.

DO:SAY RATIO

Whatever task management system you are using, people in your team are committing to doing certain tasks every week. That’s SAY (#measurable).

After every week, measure how much they have done. That’s DO (#measurable).

It’s as simple as that. Unless you have a team that doesn’t want to commit to doing quantifiable tasks, the system will work without much of complexity.

Benefits? : Measuring a number brings transparency to the system. It will help you (the manager/founder) understand who deserves a hike and who needs to reminded of slipping performance. It is also a great scoreboard to keep track of on a day to day basis – or should that be say to say basis? :).

Unless you have a bias (which means you should go back to bell curve), the DO:SAY will transparently bring performance metrics to the team and will back any future action (be it hike or layoff).

For illustration sake, here is a 2*2 of DO:SAY that you could follow in your company.

What About the Founder? How does one measure the performance?

Well, abide by what Rowdy Rathore famously said!

What DO you SAY?