Word: enronize
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Critics protest that forced ranking can be harsh and arbitrary. But that hasn't kept a growing number of companies from joining such firms as Enron, Ford Motor and Microsoft in adopting them. "What it all boils down to is who is in the room fighting for you," says an Enron worker who was cut from the herd. "I didn't have people there to talk for me, and I felt like I got screwed." Counters Craig Taylor, a manager in Enron's commodity-trading department: "You have to know where you stand, and I believe the system does...
Ranking and yanking is nothing new at Enron, which launched the system among its fiercely competitive wholesale-energy traders a decade ago and has since expanded it to cover all the Houston-based company's 18,000 employees. In a typically intense session, as many as 25 managers may gather around a conference table in a windowless room with a computer screen filled with employee rankings projected on one wall. Each participant comes armed with notebooks bulging with job reviews. As the discussion proceeds, the managers may shift people from one ranking to another, deciding their fate with the click...
What makes this process less Star Chamber-like is that workers can turn in self-assessments and choose up to seven colleagues and clients to write evaluations on their behalf. Moreover, anyone in the company can voluntarily submit a review of anyone else's performance. All this makes Enron's approach "a lot less subjective and a lot less random," says Steve Kean, an executive vice president, because "it doesn't depend on the views of any individual supervisor...
What it does depend on is the willingness of managers to fight for valued employees during what can swiftly become a brutal horse-trading session. "Even if everyone did great," says the former Enron employee, "someone has to fall into the 'needs improvement' category...
...those who ace their evaluations, the rankings can swell their self-esteem and wallets, a prospect that makes Enron a hotbed of overachievers. (And profitable too: Enron has reported increased earnings in each of the past four years.) The ranking system "attracts hard drivers," Kean says. "The proof is in the pudding. Our employees are very talented, and they're glad to be working here." In its latest ranking of the world's most admired companies, FORTUNE rated Enron No. 1 in innovativeness and No. 2 in getting and keeping talent...