Don’t hide your observations about people. Explore them openly with the goal of figuring out how you and your people are built so that the right people can be put in the right jobs.
Build your synthesis from the specifics up. By synthesizing, I mean converting a lot of data into an accurate picture. Too many people make assessments of people without connecting them to specific data. When you have all the specifics that we have at Bridgewater, the dots, meeting tapes, etc., you can and must work from the specifics up and see the patterns in the data. Even without such tools, other data such as metrics, testing, and the input of others can help you form a more complete picture of what the person is like, as well as examine what they did.
Squeeze the dots. Every observation of a person potentially tells you something valuable about how they operate. As I explained earlier, I call these observations “dots.” A dot is a piece of data that’s paired with your inference about what it means, a judgment about what someone might have decided, said, or thought. Most of the time we make these inferences and judgments implicitly and keep them to ourselves, but I believe that if they are collected systematically and put into perspective over time, they can be extremely valuable when it’s time to step back and synthesize the picture of a person.
Don’t oversqueeze a dot. Remember: A dot is just a dot; what matters is how they add up. Think of each individual dot as an at-bat in baseball. Even great hitters are going to strike out many times, and it would be foolish to evaluate them based on one trip to the plate. That’s why stats like on-base percentage and batting average exist. In other words, any one event has many different possible explanations, whereas a pattern of behavior can tell you a lot about root causes. The number of observations needed to detect a pattern largely depends on how well you get in sync after each observation. A quality discussion of how and why a person behaved a certain way should help you understand the larger picture.
Use evaluation tools such as performance surveys, metrics, and formal reviews to document all aspects of a person’s performance. It’s hard to have an objective, open-minded, emotion-free conversation about performance if there is no data to discuss. It’s also hard to track progress. This is part of the reason I created the Dot Collector. I also recommend thinking about other ways that people’s responsibilities can be put in metrics. One example: You can have people note whether they did or didn’t do things on checklists, which you can then use to calculate what percentage of tasks they complete. Metrics tell us whether things are going according to plan, they are an objective means of assessment and they improve people’s productivity.
Make the process of learning what someone is like open, evolutionary, and iterative. Articulate your assessment of a person’s values, abilities, and skills up front and share it; listen to their and others’ responses to your description; organize a plan for training and testing; and reassess your conclusions based on the performance you observe. Do this on an ongoing basis. After several months of discussions and real-world tests, you and your report should both have a pretty good idea of what he or she is like. Over time this exercise will crystallize suitable roles and appropriate training or it will reveal that it’s time for the person to find a more appropriate job somewhere else.