The University of East London was introducing a new performance-review approach that asked managers to make more differentiated judgements about both current performance and future potential.
The technical process could be explained relatively easily. The harder challenge was building consistent managerial judgement across a university containing very different academic and professional roles.
MJA’s response was to make the development concrete. Rather than spend most of the time explaining forms and definitions, we created fictional but deliberately realistic UEL characters whose working lives contained the ambiguity managers encounter in practice.
One was a safe pair of hands whose reluctance to confront poor performance was allowing a team to drift. Another was a talented academic whose research contribution sat alongside serious questions about teaching. A high-performing professor was at risk of leaving but had difficult cross-organisational relationships. An ambitious administrator delivered impressive results while leaving questions about the impact of his leadership style.
Managers had to work with the evidence, distinguish performance from potential, consider aspirations and motivation and decide where each person belonged on the Performance–Potential Matrix. They then had to defend their judgement to a senior moderation panel.
The conversation was the development. Different interpretations became visible, assumptions could be challenged and managers had to become clearer about what evidence justified a rating and what development response should follow.
Consistency therefore came not from everyone completing the same form, but from managers developing a sufficiently shared standard of judgement by practising on situations that felt recognisably like organisational life.