Joe,
I’m glad you like the idea of gathering real-time, ongoing feedback on job performance–particularly as a leader. I am tantalized by the thought of organizations requiring this of their leaders. I think you raise some good considerations in terms of how you’d put this into practice, but I’m less worried about these things. In my mind, the appropriate use of this information is less about being rational as it is being lazy. Your examples of student evaluations of professors is a great one. Students who are lazy and careless about decisions would still be lazy and careless, regardless of what information is available. But, those who are conscientious would now have more data to use in their decision. Transparency empowers this group with more information. Plus, I think that this approach would cause professors to care more about the other measurements of their role but that might be wishful thinking.
If I were to put this into practice, I think I’d just try to start with some basic questions and then sort out the issues as they evolved. I think too often we want limit the scope of the tool based on what might happen rather than just giving it a try and making adjustments on the fly as we see how it works.
So, this brings me to one critical question. If we were to use an approach like this where you could access a link to provide feedback on any one in the company (including the executives) AND this feedback (including who the feedback was for) was made visible to the entire company through a website creating total transparency, should the feedback be given anonymously or should the person have to put their name on it?
Jason