ACE Your Performance Review

Recently, I was totally impressed by a guy I met at a technology conference who has an amazing technique for organizing his projects and interests at work.

What he showed me was something simple, but very effective.

Mark Jacques has a ’swipe file’ of information he collects and uses on a day-to-day basis. During any business conversation, he can choose to pull out a page from his file to contribute to the conversation. It saves a lot of time and effort and it immediately helps the discussion get to the point and move on. Sounds too simple, but it blew my mind on how effective it is.

He collects pages from trade magazines, prints from web articles and just as importantly, scraps of paper that contain his own notes and data that he has generated himself.

We all need a swipe file of some kind. We waste so much time re-iterating information and sharing knowledge from scratch, time which could  be best used working, and to be frank, we sometimes forget – this tactic solves this problem.

What struck me is that this technique can be easily adapted to gather up information on our achievements during our appraisal period ready for presenting at our Performance Appraisal, and it also serves as a great way of reminding ourself about progress and achievements to date.

This isn’t the same as formal self-assessment documentation. The kind of information I am thinking about is the stuff we’re asking to show in the moment. These might be Thank You emails from colleagues or customers, or project closure notes, or even stats/data from your Management Information system that demonstrates the effect of your hard work. It can be anything you like, and as unstructured as you like, as long as it shows the evidence and impact of your achievements.

There is a much longer term benefit to this tactic Mark found. When he prepares documents this way and has them on hand, he is much more confident about discussing the subject. In turn, this makes him appear more impressive (as I found) and the impact he had on the listener is much greater, which increases his authority and trust placed on him. Because each presentation of the subjects are essentially well-practiced and highly-tuned. (I did note that when I asked Mark about some details on the info, he filled in more detail and can now use it again should he need to.)

How Do You Get Your Swipe-File?

Easy. It starts with a cardboard folder and a ring-bound notebook.

Many people use fully-bound books during their day-to-day activities, but tearing these pages out is a risky move (I’ve tried it, and torn right through my work!). Avoid these kinds of books.

When you’re collecting information, write it in your book as you normally would. Review it afterwards and see if there are ways it could be presented better. Redraw it on a fresh page, and tear it out an place it in your folder.

When you receive information by email, print them and place them in the folder (hey, be green and use double-sided print!)

Each week, fortnight or month (depending on how often your environment changes), empty your folder and systematically replace the papers as you re-read them and familiarize yourself with what you have achieved. It might sound a bit odd (why re-read what you know?) but guess what – constant reminders about what you’ve achieved and how you achieved them has a great psychological effect and gives you a well-deserved confidence boost.

This is such a simple technique, but so effective it was worthy of an article.