The Time Of The Review

Last week, a notification popped into my e-mail box at work:  "Annual Review".

If you remember from earlier this year, my review process was...well, a little stressful to say the least.  And here it is - something like seven months later - with the next review already cued up and ready to go.

Thanks to our continuing adaptation of technology,  there are no more handwritten reports or Word documents.  Everything is conveniently recorded in the online payroll program.  Just open the link, fill out the four boxes explaining accomplishments, weaknesses, challenges, and areas of growth for the next year - and click the submit button.  Your review will be whisked away into the bowels of the program to be assessed, review, and filed.

Having spent something like 20+ years completing reviews, it seems both easier and yet somehow more impersonal at the same time.

I checked in with my local assigned Human Resources representative to ask "What should I review?"

If you think about it, at best the review covers 10 months, 2 of which I was performing my old job (until I was moved into another position), 3 of which was essentially "managing the store" until my replacement showed up, 1 of which was transitioning time and information, and then really only 4 that were "doing my new job".    Which of these do I review?

And more importantly, which of these is really meaningful?

Everything that happened prior to the end of June is, at this point, ancient history in a meaningful way, irrelevant except that things did not fall apart - there is no way, I suppose, to "rate" something as bland as "Did you make sure that the department could be turned over to someone else?" And really, the last four months has been a learning exercise to makes sure that I am getting the basics of my job right.

The most difficult mental part, though, is the actual rating process:  How do you think you did?

I badly misjudged it last year, or at least I badly misjudged it vis-a-vis how others saw that I did.  This makes one almost instinctively want to rate one's self down if for no other reason that I do not want to go through the same experience twice.  It is easier - although is it more honest? - to say I "partially" met expectations, both for my own piece of mind as well as the humility (real or felt) that I apparently cannot really judge my ability to assess my work.

Rating one's self that way runs the risk, of course, that it is really true or really perceived as true.  And too many years of "partially meets" puts one in the bucket where few, if any, good things ever happen.

Perhaps it could be defined as a crisis of confidence.  That is probably fair, I suppose - given everything that has happened, I would not blame anyone else if they came to this year's review with trepidation and a general reluctance to take any action at all.  

To some extent, it plays into the wider range of career growth and advancement for whatever time I have remaining in the workforce - at this point in my career development and path, the thought that anything magical is going to come from a review has evaporated.  Which, to be honest, is fine - my days of managing others are gone and to be frank, I have no desire for them to return.

It does make me wonder though:  will this sense of mild dread continue to present itself every year at this time for the inevitable review, or does it settle back into the dull ache of duty that reappears every year, waiting to be completed and then slip into the electronic files, never to have meaning again?