In the last three years that I’ve managed performance evaluations of support engineers for an IT consulting firm, I’ve been wary of assuming a judgmental stance – either directly or through the feedback process I’ve helped manage. Performance reviews are known to be tedious exercises for all concerned so my objectives for them have been to seek and provide feedback, identify development goals and, at the end, ensure an inspired bunch.
The forms I’ve designed have meant to act as the firm’s headphones…or listening tools extended to an employee’s varied stakeholders…to i) peers to know the colleague’s collegial quotient; ii) managers on behaviors exhibited and the level of support provided; iii) vendors on clarity of communication and extent of follow-up experienced; iv) any juniors on the candidate’s openness to develop them; and, importantly v) the employee on good and bad processes he experienced, the learning he’s had, and the goals he plans for the ensuing period.
The firm is small and proactively customizes its IT solutions to its clients’ business practices and goals—whether a profit-oriented company or a philanthropy extending support on health research, an engineer placed there has been encouraged to know the organization’s programs and become a part of their work culture. This has necessitated openness to adapting to a client team’s specific IT requirements as also remaining learners of new technologies so they do not stagnate in their careers as a result of narrowly defined roles. Engineers are continually advised to be self-starters but also follow a reporting mechanism that keeps their varied stakeholders in the loop on the day’s critical incidents. This requires an engineer to be appreciative of documenting and reporting, and yet working independently. The review process provides for frequent coaching discussions to help get young engineers close to these role expectations.
The Performance review framework is guided by the following philosophies:
360 degree feedback. The manager is only one of the stakeholders in a candidate’s performance. If he’s the only person heard, the feedback sought will be only of one kind—say, with a bias towards the service tickets opened and closed. His colleagues, juniors, outside customers interact with him more frequently and are impacted by his other competencies so would provide pertinent inputs on his overall performance.
Self-appraisal. Although considered unnecessary by some HR pros, I see it as a motivation tool. It provides a clear opportunity to an individual to summarize his achievements of the period, highlight the support he needs, and chart out a course for future learning.
Two-way communication. The process aims to seek and provide feedback to a candidate on his performance. For an engaged and productive employee, it’s critical for the firm to listen to his experience of working with his external and internal customers as also suggest any changes in processes.
Avoid a Recency Effect. The combination of 360 degree and self-feedback helps ward against any recent high or low performance events coloring the whole period’s output. Besides, for a team as small as this firm, it’s been possible to record critical incidents on a candidate’s performance and include them in successive review discussions.
Continual coaching and development. Instead of scheduling one-on-one coaching sessions only around a review discussion, an engineer is coached regularly—in person and by sharing links to podcasts or resources via email. Recently, when two engineers recorded their interest in learning the use of open source tools to secure networks, their manager had a former engineer conduct a workshop which he also attended and acted as the presenter’s resource. This was inspiring for engineers and hopefully gave them a better idea of the trajectory they would follow. Or, not follow.
Manager as a role model. A manager’s own method of analyzing a hardware or software glitch and going through a checklist of possible solutions is imbibed by his engineers. So are his other attitudinal traits so it’s been important for the senior manager to regularly–not daily though– visit the client sites and be aware of his influence.
Less control, more development. The emphasis has been on empowering engineers to act and take decisions while keeping all stakeholders in the know. I’m glad to see that a conventional method of management-by-walking-around or ensuring a head glued to a screen have found no place in the firm’s approach towards developing its engineers.
Benefits only a cog in the wheel of feedback. Where performance reviews are annual exercises, they’re closely tied in with a compulsory annual raise so treated more as a procedural compliance feature of one’s work life. Here, benefits are discussed as an annual event so they cease to appear continually into an employee’s periodic development discussions.
Keep it simple. It’d be tempting to make impressive 4-pagers as tools to seek feedback but they would also continue to daunt people to fill or analyze the inputs. In consultation with the lead manager, I tweak the checklist of essential areas of focus for the period, and develop a questionnaire to cover them. The attempt has also been to ask brief questions but hope for a detailed feedback.
Is there anything else I should be including in this framework? I’d be interested to know about your experience with performance reviews and whether you’re looking forward to your next review discussion :)
Tags: employee development, employee engagement, Linkedin, performance review process
Category HR Matters |
Some food experiences have the ability to transport one back to years gone by. This porridge is one such preparation for me. Going by Kishore’s reaction to it, I can add that even if one hasn’t been connected to it since infancy, when had hot for breakfast on a wintery morning, it acts as a soul-comforting food item for many.
The original recipe calls for a tempering of whole peppercorns that I remember causing me much trouble to pick out as a kid that as an adult, I simply avoid putting them. Adding of oats is another change I’ve made to the original recipe.
Ingredients (serves 2-3):
Daliya (broken wheat): 1 cup
White oats: 1 tablespoon
Jeera (cumin seeds): ½ teaspoon
Cardamom: 4-5 grains finely ground
Almonds: 5-6 broken in big pieces
Desi ghee (clarified butter): 1 tablespoon
Water: 1 cup
Milk: 3 cups
Sugar: 4 heaped teaspoons
Here’s the way to work these items:
Melt Desi ghee in a pressure cooker.
Add jeera to it and soon enough add Daliya (without letting the jeera cook too much).
Add oats and cardamom powder.
Give it all a mix.
Roast this Daliya on a medium flame by stirring it till it acquires a light brown colour. The house by now should be smelling of it pleasantly too.
Add water while keeping some distance from the cooker and keeping a low flame.
After a stir, add 1 cup of milk and sugar.
Shut the cooker. After the first whistle, let the daliya cook for 5 min on a low flame.
Switch off the flame and open the cooker once the pressure has released.
Add 2 cups of milk at this stage, mix it well with daliya (which would be mostly dry by then).
Add almonds and add more sugar only if needed.
Let the daliya cook on a low flame till it looks creamy (10 min). Pour in some more milk if it appears too thick.
The porridge (???? as it’s called) is ready to ladle into bowls as it cools a bit.
It’s had hot but not piping hot.
Tags: Sindhi food
Category Food for Thought |
This is an easy meal to put together but one that has required some tweaking over the years. Both Kishore and Kabir enjoy it equally so I keep its ingredients close at hand for those evenings when a non-fussy Italian meal is called for.
Over the years, I’ve successfully substituted chicken mince for lamb mince and still seen enough enthusiasm for the dish. But I do use lamb mince on occasions even now. One of the wonderful aspects of the dish is that it requires very little meat but still provides adequate sauce for a filling meal.
Ingredients:
Chicken or lamb mince: 250 gm
Tomato puree tetrapacks: 2
Carrots: 2 or 3 grated finely
Cheese: ½ cup grated coarsely (Britannia or Amul block)
Garlic: 2 big cloves minced
Dried oregano: ½ teaspoon
Fresh basil: 4-5 leaves torn in small pieces
Tabasco: 1 full teaspoon
Black pepper: 1 teaspoon
Salt to taste
Sugar: 1 teaspoon (optional)
Any brand of dry spaghetti: about half a packet of Delmonte has proved to be enough for the 3 of us.
Salt and ¼ teaspoon of oregano for Spaghetti
Here’s the way to deal with it all:
Meat sauce:
In about 2 teaspoons of refined oil, fry minced garlic for a few seconds and before it gets even slightly brown, add grated carrots and oregano. Stir for a few seconds.
Pour in 2 cans of tomato puree and after a quick stir, add torn basil leaves.
After a minute of cooking on a high flame, add washed mince and mix it with the sauce on a medium flame.
Add salt, sugar and pepper and stir some more.
Add a cup of water to dilute the gravy and to buy time for the mince to cook. About half of this water has to be allowed to evaporate. Keep a medium to low flame.
In 2-3 min, add grated cheese after saving about a tablespoon.
Add Tabasco now.
Cook for 20 min or thereabouts on a low flame. The sauce should show cooked mince spread evenly and the melted cheese having lent a creamy look to the sauce. The consistency should be pourable so if the sauce appears too thick, 2-3 tablespoons of water would help lighten it. Give it another 2-3 min of cooking if you’ve added more water. Adjust the salt before turning off the flame.
Remove the sauce to a large serving bowl, sprinkle the remaining grated cheese on it and cover the bowl with a large plate to trap the steam and help this cheese melt somewhat. The dish is then ready to go to the table.
Spaghetti:
Around the time cheese was added during cooking of the sauce, the spaghetti can be put to boil. Bring water to a boil in a saucepan, add a teaspoon of salt to it, allow it to get mixed before adding spaghetti broken into two. After 10 min of cooking, spaghetti would be almost done. Take out a strand and taste it. I find the state of al dante about right for spaghetti but raw for penne so do figure out the texture you need.
Strain spaghetti in a colander. Remove to a large dish, sprinkle some oregano on it, and keep it covered till you’re ready with the meat sauce.
To eat, people can take some spaghetti onto their plates and ladle on enough sauce to make it juicy. Some grated parmesan on top won’t feel out of place.
Some of you may also enjoy a piece of warm garlic bread on the side!
Category Food for Thought |
This pasta is one of the quick dinners I fix for Kabir. I prefer to make it when Kishore and I are going out for dinner or when Kishore is outstation and I’m eating something simple fixed by the cook—the reason is the richness of this pasta that he can take in easily but it’d weigh us down significantly! It tastes lovely though.
Ingredients:
Boiled Penne – 1-1/2 cups
Grated pizza cheese – ½ cup
Milk – 1 large cup with a teaspoon of flour (maida) mixed in it
Cream from a tetrapack – 2 tablespoons
Bacon – 100 gms
Butter – 1 tablespoon
Garlic – minced to measure ½ teaspoon
Mixed dry herbs (or just thyme) – ½ teaspoon
Tabasco – ½ teaspoon
Salt – about ½ teaspoon or to taste (remember that cheese and bacon are already salty)
Here’s the way to deal with it :)
Penne is a forgiving pasta and can be over-boiled without causing it much harm. Boil it in salted water, strain it and keep it ready to use in a colander.
Fry bacon rashes in a dry non-stick pan for a minute or two both sides and keep them aside with their fat.
In a large non-stick pan, melt the butter and add minced garlic and herbs to it.
While stirring it all with a wooden spatula, get the pan off the fire and add the mix of milk and flour to it.
After a quick stir, while still off the flame, add the grated cheese and cream to the pan.
Add salt and Tabasco now itself. Mix it all up.
Get the pan on the fire but keep the fire low. A high flame is likely to split the milk.
Stir the sauce gently till the cheese has melted.
Slide in the bacon rashes with their fat. Keep a low fire and stir for a few seconds.
If the sauce has thickened too much, take the pan off the fire, pour in a bit more milk and get it back to the flame after the milk has mixed with the sauce.
Stir the sauce till the desired consistency on a low flame.
Now add the pasta and fold it in the sauce.
As the pasta has sort of evenly taken in the cheese sauce, switch off the flame. Some extra cheese sauce showing through is a good thing.
Transfer it to a serving plate and finish it by crushing pepper on it through a pepper mill.
Note: This sauce has a very low tolerance for waiting so the pasta must be eaten quickly to enjoy it!
Tags: Homemade cheese pasta
Category Food for Thought |
I got to know about peanut butter as a food item only after meeting Kishore! He loves the stuff. In the early years of our marriage, I’d see bottles of peanut butter coming his way from the family: his Mom would make it by mixing Amul butter with crushed peanuts and cousins travelling to Musoorie would get him bottles of Sunrise peanut butter. Sisters would gift him bottles of Skippy. At some point, I figured that peanut butter needn’t have any butter, and any oil used for it also can be minimal. I suppose it’s called butter because it spreads like butter. Since then, I’ve made peanut butter at home following this simple process and the outcome is a healthy spread for toasts where the toasted flavor of peanuts or the creaminess of the spread can be easily varied.
The peanuts themselves should be shelled, skinned and unsalted, and simply bought that way. I prefer to use plain peanuts sold in small packets by Keralite or Goan shops as they are browner than other brands. In desperation though, I’ve also used Haldiram’s plain salted peanuts and simply rinsed them under running water to remove their salt, toasted them in the microwave to crispness and then followed the rest of the process.
Ingredients:
Plain shelled and skinned peanuts from a packet – 200 gms
Olive oil – 2-3 teaspoons
Honey – 1 tablespoon (optional)
The simple process:
Microwave peanuts to crispness (about 2-3 minutes). Toast just a handful out of them for another minute or two for that roasted taste and a browner look. When in a hurry, I brown this handful in a pan over fire.
Upon cooling, grind peanuts in a mixie grinder to the preferred consistency – powdery if the butter should be smooth and crunchy for the Snicker-chocolate kind of crunch.
Once the peanuts have reached the right level of grind, they would be somewhat moist with their natural oil.
Drizzle olive oil into the grinder for a paste-like consistency and run the grinder for a couple more seconds.
Add honey if you’d like the butter to be inherently sweet. I don’t add any sweetener unless making it only for Kabir’s use as a spread of jam or some sugar sprinkled on the toast can bring the needed sweetness.
Remove it into a wide mouth bottle and finish it within 2 weeks.
Note: Almond or cashew butter can be made the same way.
Category Food for Thought |
Over the years, I’ve heard many generalizations made about Sindhis: that they have ‘aani’ surnames, that they are overly cautious with money, that they look and speak in a certain way and that their Sindhi Kadhi tastes good! Let’s see how much of that applies in my own case: my maiden name was Puri–a simplified version of the actual name Shahdadpuri (so non-aani); I’d give myself 6/10 on money management (so nothing fantastic); I’m often told that I look South Indian; and well, on the last one I tend to agree that Sindhi Kadhi does taste great–especially, when someone else makes it for me! Either way, I’m sharing the recipe of Kadhi the way my mother makes it. This Kadhi takes many vegetables so it’s no surprise that it’s served simply with plain rice and roasted paaper. In some Sindhi families, I’ve seen sweet boondhi offered on the side but my mother hasn’t ever put the two things together, and I haven’t dared either!
Here’s what you’d need for it (to make it for 4-5 people):
Besan – 2 large tablespoon
Oil – 3 large tablespoon
Methi dana – ½ teaspoon
Jeera – 1 teaspoon
Kookam* – 7-8 pieces
Whole dry amchoor* – 7-8 pieces
Salt, haldi and red chilli powder
Some curry leaves
Some chopped coriander
Essential vegetables:
2 medium-sized potatoes peeled and cut in quarters; 2 drumsticks peeled and cut in 3” long pieces; 1 kamal kakri (lotus stem) chopped on the slant roughly in the size of quartered potatoes, 10-12 whole bhindis (ladyfingers) cut vertically in 2 pieces; 2 large tomatoes quartered; 4 green chillies with a small slit in them
Optional vegetables:
8-10 cluster beans (gavar phali) cut in pieces smaller than drumsticks; 1 carrot sliced thickly
Here’s the way to deal with it all:
In a big pressure cooker, heat the oil and let methi dana and jeera splutter slightly.
Add besan and stir it on a medium to slow flame till it looks nicely roasted (about 8-10 min) – my mother’s tip is that the whole house should smell of roasted besan to treat it as ready for the next step.
Add about a litre of water and a cup or two more. Maintain some distance as the water tends jump about as it touches the hot cooker base.
Give it a quick stir and shut the cooker to let the pressure build till just about 1 whistle. Then switch off the gas.
As the pressure is released, open and revel in the sight of well-mixed besan in water. Earlier, you may have noticed some small lumps of besan but hopefully none after pressure-cooking.
Add salt/haldi/red chilli powder and start boiling the kadhi.
Add all the essential and optional vegetables except bhindi and tomatoes.
In 2-3 minutes, add kookam and amchoor and let it all boil on a medium to high flame.
As the vegetables are mostly cooked (10-15 min), add tomato quarters and let the boiling continue.
Taste the kadhi for sourness, salt and chilli. If Kookam and Amchoor haven’t made the kadhi sambhar-like sour, add 2-3 teaspoons of tamarind water. Add more salt and red chilli powder, if necessary. The besan and sourness moderate the effect of chilli powder so go ahead and put some more. The kadhi should keep boiling through various stages of tasting and checking.
The consistency of well-cooked Sindhi kadhi is slightly thinner than honey but not watery thin.
Somewhere in between, fry bhindi halves in 3-4 teaspoon oil in a pan.
As the kadhi looks nearly done, add fried bhindi to it and give it a quick boil before switching off the flame.
For that professional and glazed look, give it a tempering of 10-12 fried curry leaves. Finish the look by sprinkling 1 tablespoon of chopped coriander leaves.
Kadhi is then ready to be placed in a large serving bowl beside plain white rice in another large bowl.
People can take some rice in large soup bowls and ladle kadhi on to the rice till the latter is somewhat submerged.
Kadhi-chawal is then ready to savour by bowl-fulls.
* Kookam is dark brown in colour and is the peel of a sour walnut-sized fruit. It isn’t seen commonly but conventional grocery shops stock the dried peel. It’s available in abundance as fresh fruit, dried peel, sherbat and even vinegar in Goa.
* Dried whole (sabut) Amchoor isn’t easy to find either. It’s worth hunting old grocery shops for as softened Amchoor in the kadhi tastes lovely.
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Tags: Sindhi food, sindhi kardhi recipe
Category Food for Thought |
