Devra Johnson of Intel on Driving High Performance
In her role as director of Performance Solutions at Intel Corporation, Devra Johnson has redesigned Intel’s performance management system, wherein high performance is tied to regular, meaningful conversations about what employees hope to accomplish.
In this episode, Devra discusses:
- Intel’s year-round approach to performance management.
- How HR can be a company’s evangelist in driving culture change throughout the organization.
- Why it’s essential to get clear on the purpose of the performance review.
- The benefits of real-time conversations — as opposed to backwards-looking reviews.
Full Transcript
Michael: Yes. Welcome to Performance Management Stories. This is where we get into the front line with people who are actually wrestling with the challenges around how do we evolve our performance management approach to honor the people, honor the technology, honor the needs in our different organizations?
And today, we have the privilege, the honor, the pleasure of talking to Devra Johnson, who is Director of Performance Solutions at Intel Corporation. Now, Devra has held a number of roles in human resources at Intel including: talent management, benefits, management and leadership development, performance management design and also business partnering. And her most recent role has been to redesign Intel’s performance management system.
So we are finding out from the woman who has grease and oil under her fingertips, as she has re-engineered Intel’s approach to performance management. So, Devra, really excited to have you on the call. Thank you.
Devra Johnson: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be talking to you about this.
Michael: Fantastic. I think most of us have heard of Intel. But many of us won’t know the full extent of the company. So tell us a bit about how big Intel is, how many countries it is operating in. Give us a sense of scale.
Devra Johnson: Sure. Intel is over 100,000 employees. And we are in roughly 60 countries across the globe in all, I think, pretty much all the continents. And hi tech is probably the simplest way to describe Intel, but a lot of what Intel does is everything that’s in anything technical, probably has some sort of an Intel product or Intel processor in it.
Michael: I love that. And of course you guys have, probably your brand is, the great audio signature you have, doon doon doon doon doon. I think that’s roughly how it goes.
Devra Johnson: The bong.
Michael: Yeah.
Devra Johnson: We call it the bong. Yeah.
Michael: I love that. They’re not many organizations in the world that have an audio brand. And you guys have rocked that, so that’s cool. So you have done almost every job feasible in the world of human resources, but you’ve really spent the last years working on re-imagining performance management with Intel and changing some things, not changing others.
So what has shifted, if anything, over the last two or three years?
Devra Johnson: Sure. I think the shift has actually been longer than two or three years. But what I would say is, most dramatically, is that recognition that performance management is a … it’s a year round process. It’s integral to every aspect of how we manage our employees. And so it isn’t just kind of a once a year making decisions on how people are paid. It really is a year round approach to driving high performance of our employees.
Michael: The challenge, of course, is when people think of the kind of once a year chip dip. They’re like, “Man, that’s already an immense amount of work.” Having to do that the whole year feels like, or could feel like, a little overwhelming. So how have you helped make that a normal part of regular work rather than this kind of one off event?
Devra Johnson: Sure. We’ve experimented with so many different things. Even in fact, last year, we experimented with about 10,000 employees at Intel, certain organizations that signed up to try, where we moved to quarterly check-ins starting the year with kind of a set your goals approach, and then check in quarterly.
And we have a strong culture at Intel around having one on one discussions with our employees frequently. They can be weekly, every other week, monthly. And so, to a certain extent, this is basically carving out that same aspect of our culture, meeting one on one with our employees, but focusing on: What are your plans for the year?
And then, checking in quarterly on how well those plans are being delivered to. So it’s shifting the time. It isn’t additive.
Michael: Right. Got it. Tell me a little bit more about … ’cause you have this luxury. And it’s not just a luxury, but it’s the determination as well of doing a lot of testing. I love this. You’ve like got … take 10,000 employees, which is a significant number of people, and go, “Right. Let’s run a real beta test on this to see whether it works, whether it’s effective, whether it’s scalable.”
How have you run that testing process? For lots of listening in going, “I’ve got these ideas, but I don’t know how to start.” Insights around how to beta test and do kind of little under the radar tests could be really powerful.
Devra Johnson: Sure. So this is then back to my comment about it’s just many more years than a couple of years journey. Within HR, probably six years ago or maybe even more, we started an approach to have our own HR organization try different aspects of performance management and apply new techniques and see how they work. And I think the benefit to doing that is HR professionals are very skilled in knowing what works and doesn’t work from a performance management perspective.
So if you can get them comfortable with a change, and them comfortable with an approach that can work, then they can help drive it for the whole company.
Michael: Love it.
Devra Johnson: So it’s like having … in our case, we have about 1800 HR employees across the globe. So think of it as 1800 evangelists out driving a change when we can move that to scale it to the larger corporation. So that’s part of it is we worked closely with HR to try and experiment and pilot different approaches to both writing performance reviews, doing forward looking plans versus backward looking reviews, to even changing how we might use the labels associated with performance management.
So we tried lots of things within HR in order to see what might be able to work in a broader scale. But more importantly, having HR evangelize and help drive the change because they’re in integral part of any change, I think is what really served us well.
Michael: I love that. Every answer you give me opens up about another 48 questions I want to get curious about. And I’m just going to say to everybody listening in, one of the things that I want everybody to hear is because something’s worked well in one organization, like Intel for instance, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be the answer to your organization.
What I hope you hear these stories as are not kind of commandments about what the answer is, but possibilities for you to explore and test or try out in your own culture, in your own organization.
Devra, can I ask you about the … you’ve mentioned one thing you tested, which is the looking back or looking forward. Can you just expand on what you mean by that a little bit, and then tell me what you discovered in terms of what works best?
Devra Johnson: Sure. And this I think is still part of the journey in discovery. But what we have always struggled with in HR, or I think in corporations, is: What is the purpose of a performance review?
More often than not, it’s kind of a once a year document that is backward looking, at least at Intel. It was a backward looking, here’s how you did, here’s what your strengths are, and here’s what you need to work on. Sentimentally, we used to call it a 3–3–3; three accomplishments, three areas of strength, three areas of development.
That’s how we would think about it. But what we realized is it almost became more of a legal document. Do people really use it? It just sat. Once it was written, it just sat. And so, what could we do that might become more real time? Because our environment is more complex than a once a year backward looking approach.
So what we really envisioned and tried with the 10,000 last year, and with a trial over many years was what if we sat down and said, “Let’s reflect on the year and what you’re proud of, but let’s focus on the coming year. And then, what do you want to accomplish? And based on that, we’re going to document that. We’re going to capture what you want to accomplish. And then we’re going to check in and we’re going to do real time here’s what’s working well and here’s what you could course correct or improve or develop.”
But we’re going to do it real time. We’re not going to do it backward looking. So that once a year document that sits in a file or sits on someone’s computer is not of value anymore because we’re going to be real timing. We’re going to be capturing this information and discussing it and really course correcting along the way. So that’s how I distinguished … that’s how we distinguished the two.
Michael: And Devra, one of the things I’m loving about this conversation with you is the excitement in your voice as you tell the story. It sounds like it was a really interesting journey as part of trying to test this stuff out and find it out.
Devra Johnson: Absolutely. I am very passionate about continuing to drive a change in how we think about performance, and how we actually help employees perform at their best every day.
Michael: My hypothesis in what you’ve just told us about becoming more forward and future focused rather than past measurement is that must have had some impact on how you think about ratings. So there’s a lot of conversation in journalism at the moment about ratings. Are they useful? Are they de-motivating? Where do you fall down on with Intel? There’s a bias that you might have around, well you’re a tech company so you’re full of nerdy engineers who love numbers and love ratings.
I’m curious to know where you landed?
Devra Johnson: Again, it’s still a journey. We’ve tried many things. Within Human Resources, we actually did work on … let me think about this … minimizing the labels, just to kind of experiment with that. And what’s interesting about it … maybe it is high tech, maybe it is just change is hard.
People, on the one hand hate being labeled, on the other hand miss the acknowledgment that especially a high label, a high rating, might give them. So it is still a journey. I think research would suggest, we did certainly do a lot of external research on this, that categorizing people in a large company where we have to work together, many people believe creates competition that isn’t healthy inside.
We’re competing with each other for scarce resources. But in fact, we’re still sorting through is it really the labels or those ratings that are a challenge for us? Or is it how we determine them and how people might perceive that they … they get surprised by them because we aren’t having those real time discussions so they’re not prepared.
And I think, to a certain extent, my big A-ha over several years is whether you decide on labels or not, I’m not sure that’s the real issue. I think the real, real challenge is do people know where they stand any given day, and how they’re valued? And the way their work is being accepted. Is it really … do they know where they stand? ’Cause once people know where they stand, they feel they’re being treated fairly, the rewards that come make sense to them. And right now, so much is tied to a rating to determine what your rewards are. And so I think if we’re going to continue with ratings, which we haven’t fully determined at Intel whether we will or won’t, we have them today. We have toyed with the idea of removing them, so there’s some openness to it.
But we haven’t made that decision yet. And I would say the bigger challenge is let’s really focus on making sure employees and managers are having those real time conversations and employees know where they stand all the time ’cause it’s the surprise factor that is de-motivating.
Michael: Yes. I understand. This is me digging deeper into the labeling piece. I may have misheard something. But it sounded to me like one of the things that you’ve played around with labels … and I agree with you by the way that if you have a process that gives people a sense of acknowledgment and appreciation and understanding where they stand, the labeling piece becomes less triggering and less kind of de-motivating for people.
But I’m wondering if you’ve found anything interesting in the use of language around what labels were particularly de-motivating and what labels felt more appreciative, even if you’re of the kind of bottom end of performance.
Devra Johnson: Yeah. That’s a great question. We did not play around with the changing of the labels, mostly because we couldn’t … we did, oh my gosh, we did brainstorming. We brought it out to focus groups. But no matter what you come up with, it still finds its way into you’re in the top and you’re in the bottom. So we didn’t invest a lot of time in what might be the labels that could be the best accepted, because we came to the conclusion that it didn’t matter. Again, maybe it’s we’re high tech, so it’s … think of it as roughly 90,000 engineers, probably pretty close to that.
A label is a label. Math is math. So then, you start getting into the distributions. It’s less maybe the label as it is the distributions of those labels. How many can get that top number or that bottom number? And it’s that distribution that I think is more where we need to invest some time. And we did think about that.
Michael: That’s really, really interesting. And for folks listening, if you want to listen to one of the interviews we’ve had around different language around labels, the interview with Garry Ridge, who’s the CEO of WD40, the lubricant company … they have played around with different language around where people are at. Language is a significant influence around the culture at WD40. So folks who are interested, definitely check out that interview. You’ll find that useful as well.
Devra, let me ask you about how technology happens or how technology’s used within Intel. You’re in the high tech sector. And yet, much of what you’ve been talking about is, sounds like to me anyway, person to person conversation. So I’m wondering has technology been a key part of making performance management different and better at Intel, or not so much?
Devra Johnson: I would say, in the sense that we create tools or utilize tools that facilitate that one on one conversation or that facilitate our ability to determine the best pay raised or, in our case, stock message, bonuses, all that … so having our tools and resources that guide managers to making good decisions, that’s where we invested it.
We first had to figure out what is the culture around performance management we want. What are those processes? And then, either go buy or design the tools that will enable that.
Michael: Nice. Okay. That’s great. How about helping your engineers to actually have those ongoing conversations? Because, again this is clichéd but, it turns out in my experience anyway, almost nobody really loves the ongoing performance conversations. And if you move into people who have more technical expertise and experience and the foucs, they can be even more reticent about having those conversations.
So I’m curious to know how you made these conversations feel necessary and not necessarily scary, or weird, or just another crazy thing that Devra from HR is making us do?
Devra Johnson: Well. It’s a really important point because you need to teach people, managers, employees, all of us, we need to learn how to actually have those conversations, not just how to document them, but actually how to have them. And so, we actually have a three year plan. And last year the plan was teach our managers how to do that really well.
Michael: Brilliant.
Devra Johnson: And so investing a lot in educating our managers, both in classroom training as well as online tools and resources that they can easily access to help them prepare, even to the point of giving them maybe some dos and don’ts scripts on how to do that, how to have a conversation with a high performer … we’re not necessarily any better at that than we are in having the hard conversation about performance problems.
Michael: I love that. That’s a great insight. That’s perfect. Yeah.
Devra Johnson: Yeah. It’s so important. And the three year plan is help managers get good at this, teach employees how to do this well, and then frankly teach employees how to give feedback to each other, give and receive. So again, this is a journey. It’s always something that we have to look ahead and think about how are we going to continuously make this a way in which people can, again, I use my mantra, perform at their best every day.
Michael: Beautiful.
Devra Johnson: So hopefully that answers or addresses or helps with that, because I think that’s so important. We all need to learn how to give and receive and have those conversations.
Michael: I love that you’re pointing to the richness of that support. So in classroom training, online training, scripting where that might be useful, there’s never one thing that’s going to be enough to tip people over the edge. The more you can provide that kind of rich level of support, the more likely people are going to be able to go, “I’ve got different safety nets to help me make sure that I don’t slip through the cracks.”
Devra Johnson: Yeah. Absolutely.
Michael: Devra, you’ve told some great stories and part of what you’ve emphasized, and I love it, is that it’s a journey. We’re on the journey. We’re not there yet. There’s been a few steps forward and maybe a few steps back as part of this. But progress is being made. I’m wondering if there were any things you tried that maybe you thought, “I love this idea. This is going to really rock.” And for some reason, it didn’t work, it didn’t quite take off?
Any kind of lessons learned about where things didn’t work as well as you’d hoped?
Devra Johnson: I think I have two. One is don’t underestimate how important it is for your best best contributors to feel really special and valued, and this is back to this debate about labels or no labels. Your outstanding performers, yeah they’ll get the message that they’re top contributors in other ways. But that simple one label is very powerful, and we shouldn’t underestimate that we have to take really good care of those top, top contributors. We played around with some things where we minimized that and said, “They’ll get used to it. They’ll get used to not having labels. Or they’ll get used to not being called out for their … easily identified.”
I think it didn’t harm their performance, but I don’t think it …
Michael: Elevated it.
Devra Johnson: … benefitted us to make that change, or elevated it. So that’s one. The other is there’s timing. We started our journey a long time ago. I don’t know the best timing but we got pretty far along in a new design, but our company was also, is also going through a major transformation. Some can argue it’s a good idea to kind of implement all your processes along the journey of transformation, but sometimes things can be too disruptive, and you need to be really, really thoughtful about how much can the organization absorb when it comes to change.
And given performance management is so personal, and when a company is going through a huge transformation, you need to balance how many changes you can absorb. So I think that’s a big learning for us is we wanted to go faster, but we also knew we have a big corporation in 60 countries across the globe that we have to keep focused on delivering.
Michael: I think that’s right. In some ways, there’s just never a good time.
Devra Johnson: Well, that too.
Michael: There’s always some crisis. There’s always some other priority. So you’re really going, “What’s the least bad time that we could launch this?” And knowing the situation is as it is, whatever that looks like, what’s the minimum that we want to accomplish? And what would be a lovely to accomplish if we could achieve it? Almost curtailing your ambition turns out to be often the strategic thing to do.
Devra Johnson: Yes. Which sends us back to it’s a journey. And what are the things we can introduce that aren’t going to be disruptive, but are at least on the path of continuing the journey to change?
Michael: Devra, this has been a fabulous conversation, so much great insight about what you’ve tried and continue to try at Intel, and great to hear your hard won wisdom as part of this.
I’m wondering if you have any final comments, final reflections on the journey around re-thinking and re-doing performance management at Intel.
Devra Johnson: I think I’ve emphasized it many times, but it’s change is not easy, even positive change. And I think really making sure that your HR organization is aligned to any change you’re driving is going to go a long way. And that was our big learning and our big benefit is that our HR organization was open to that change. And then I think it really is we need to test it in every aspect of the corporation, and to just recognize that baby steps are just as important as large scale change.
Michael: Perfect. Devra Johnson, Director of Performance Solutions at Intel. Thank you for such a great, thoroughly interesting conversation.
Devra Johnson: My pleasure, thank you.
