A festive carol for the performance management season, to be sung during calibration meetings and merit freeze announcements.
VERSE
Dashing through the year,
With targets on my back,
O’er the quotas we go,
Still stuck in middle pack—
Calibration night
Makes spirits shrink and fall,
What fun it is to learn tonight
The curve decides it all!
CHORUS
Jingle bells, merit smells,
Ratings went away,
Oh what fun it is to find
Your four turned three today, hey!
Jingle bells, merit smells,
Ratings went away,
Oh what fun it is to find
Your four turned three today!
The title refers to the phenomenon where performance ratings spread through organizations like a virus—infecting adjacent departments, mutating through calibration sessions, and eventually reaching endemic equilibrium at “Meets Expectations”—rather than harmonizing into anything resembling a symphony of aligned incentives.
For best results, perform during the annual “compensation philosophy” presentation, preferably after the slide explaining why the merit pool is 2.3% but inflation is 6%.