The 'Annual Story-telling competition'

Yesterday, we had at work, what a friend jokingly put as the 'annual story-telling competition'. In other words, filling up our annual performance appraisal workflow. Yes, it's *that* time of the year again! Amongst other things employees are required to fill out their key achievement during the year, the targets achieved by them, their strengths and key development needs (a euphemism for weaknesses, I guess ;) ), and their career interests and development goals. Employees also had to fill out a section where they had to fill out specific events which showcase their creativity, initiative, and a host of other 'skills'. Now filling out your achievements is something like drafting a patent application, if you ask me. You have one idea and you dress it up until it sounds like it's the next big thing of the century! Similarly, you might have only a couple of 'achievements'; But now putting down only two of them can't be good, can it?! You've been planning to buy that new car with the increment you're supposed to get! (Of course, in these times, it's good enough if you keep your job, and do not take a pay-cut, forget about an increment.) So you fill in the details of the 'story'. So for instance, if you implemented a research paper, you might put it as: 

• Designed and implemented a new method to significantly improve the accuracy of phoneme recognition. 

Heck! Did you, now?! Now, your boss might have a different take on that. He might consider the fact that you got any work done at all, as a fair and just 'achievement'. 

Well, but wait! There's more to come. You might have been the fifth author in a research paper that your group published (OK, there were six contributors - here's a nice link about author's list in papers), where you were responsible for drawing diagrams and proof-reading, but you definitely

• Co-authored a publication submitted to some of the most well-known conferences and journal. 

Note, that you delicately avoid mentioning whether it was accepted or not! You can't be blamed entirely, the date for announcing acceptance falls *after* submit the appraisal! Touche. 

The next section deals with your strengths - and weaknesses. Now, here's where you get to blow your own trumpet - or saxophone, or bugle, or any of those instruments in the opera - officially. So suddenly new strengths sprout overnight like the bean-stalk that grew overnight in the Jack-and-the-bean-stalk tale. And you mention both technical and soft-skills. So, you suddenly develop excellent presentation and communication skills, effective leadership qualities (if you're coveting that corner cubicle) besides strong analytical skills and being a technology wiz-kid, generally. And then comes the most important part - your career goals. Here's where you say that your boss deserves a promotion. Hell, NO, you aren't batting for him. But if your boss doesn't get that promotion, you wouldn't get his cubicle, will you?! So you put in your short-term and long-term goals. Of course, over a period of five years, you'd want to be managing a team of five people (who, just like you do now, will be cursing their boss and finding faults with just about everything he does). So you write: 

• Long-term goal: To lead a team of competent engineers with a strong focus on developing new products for the company. 

Ah, competent engineers. Tch-tch. A good friend of mine wanted to 'work with a strong and encouraging technical mentor to develop my technical skills', as part of short-term career goal. Ahem. The mentor has to be strong technically, and encouraging to boot! Of course, this was edited subsequently. About your key development needs - weaknesses - you need to put in how the company should spend big bucks so that *you* get that big promotion the next time around! Hehehe ;) Now isn't that exciting?!  

That was just a tongue-in-cheek look at 'the annual story-telling competition'. We all do exaggerate a little bit when it comes to this part. So a little 'story-telling' is fine, I guess. But 'weaving a fairy-tale' is not! I think this is just capping whatever you've done over the year. After all, your boss isn't blind to what effort you've put in - or not- during the year. Of course, just putting in long hours, and effort is not going to be enough. Somewhere, you also have to be a nice person. No one wants a high-performing jerk around. Well, they might put up with them, but that's just about it. 

Update: Here's another excellent post on the same topic.