Sense on Cents

The Goldman Sachs Senate subcommittee hearing the other day included a focus on a Wall Street process I viewed with a significant degree of disdain, that is the self-evaluation and 360 review. Why such disdain? These reviews struck me as a colossal waste of time, not in theory but in practice. Why? A lack of real integrity and honesty encompassing what I define as one of corporate America’s greatest failings, superficial congeniality.

During my tenure on Wall Street, employees always utilized the self-evaluation to promote their case for maximum compensation. Can you blame any employee for doing so? We saw this the other day during the Goldman hearing in which the Goldman employees’ self-evaluations were used against them for their self-aggrandizing tone. I chuckled when the senators referenced these evaluations as I appreciated the fallacies of the process. The senators used the evaluations strictly to score political points. That approach was weak, as the Congressmen neither appreciate nor understand the context of the evaluations themselves. (more…)