Quarterly Calibration: Score Every Employee on Five Things, Fairly

1. Choose the two or three activities that actually produce results in each sales role, such as dials, appointments booked and appointments run.
2. Every Monday morning, have each person state last week's numbers for those activities out loud before mentioning any result.
3. Ask to see their calendar. Multiply appointments by average duration to estimate real hours worked.
4. Where the story and the calendar disagree, coach the activity gap first. Where they agree and results still lag, coach skill.

Finish with: A weekly activity scorecard per person and a habit of leading with inputs rather than excuses.

Copy exercise

1. Take the five headings: effort, attitude, leadership, innovation, results.
2. Under each, write four observable criteria. Start from the speaker's list: effort = urgency, quality control, personal development, raising standards; attitude = perseverance, buy-in, culture fit, personal character; leadership = teamwork, developing others, confronting respectfully, accountability; innovation = creative and critical thinking, improvement, implementation; results = one-club reliability, hitting KPIs, beating your prior best.
3. For each criterion, write one sentence describing what a 3, a 7 and a 10 look like in your business.
4. Share the finished rubric with every manager before the first scoring round.

Finish with: A one-page scoring guide that lets two managers score the same person within a few points of each other.

Copy exercise

1. Within a week of quarter close, every employee scores themselves 0-10 on each of the five categories with a specific example per score.
2. Each manager scores their direct reports independently on the same scale, without seeing the self-score first if you want a clean read.
3. The leadership committee meets. Each manager presents their scores. Leave 'meets' alone unless challenged. Debate every 'exceeds' and every 'does not meet' by asking 'why did you give this person that score?'
4. Agree a final number (for example self 47, manager 39, committee lands at 41).
5. The manager delivers the final score and the reasoning to the employee, opening with their self-score and the gap.

Finish with: A calibrated score out of 50 for every employee, a band (does not meet / needs improvement / meets / exceeds / outstanding), and a documented gap between self-view and company view.

Copy exercise

1. After scores are collected but before the committee meets, tabulate each manager's percentage of reports in each of the five bands, plus the manager's own self-score.
2. Flag any manager with zero people below 'meets' as a possible people-pleaser.
3. Flag any manager whose self-score sits far above their team average as a possible elitist.
4. Compare each against the steward benchmark of roughly 10 / 20 / 50 / 15 / 5.
5. Bring the flagged distributions into the committee meeting and ask the manager to walk through their reasoning person by person.

Finish with: A one-page chart of every manager's rating shape and a short list of managers who need coaching or a skip-level check.

Copy exercise

1. Open with the employee's own number: 'You scored yourself a 47. Tell me why you think you were a 47 last quarter.'
2. Listen fully. Then go to the numbers: which KPIs were hit, which were missed, what the calendar shows.
3. State your view plainly: 'At best I have you at 31.' Explain each category where the gap is widest.
4. Agree what a 40 would look like next quarter in specific, observable terms.
5. Write the agreed targets down and revisit them at the next calibration.

Finish with: A shared understanding of where the person stands, a closed expectation gap, and a written target for the next quarter.

Copy exercise

1. Pick one team per month, prioritising teams whose manager's scores looked skewed or whose turnover is high.
2. Meet two or three of that manager's reports for 15 minutes each, without the manager present.
3. Ask: What are you working on? What gets in your way? How do you find out how you are doing? Who helps you grow?
4. Do not promise outcomes. Write down where what you hear differs from the manager's scores and story.
5. Feed the difference into the next calibration committee.

Finish with: A second-source read on team health and a list of potential future stars the manager may be under-rating.

Copy exercise

1. List the levels that exist in your company for each major role family, the way Apple publishes seven engineering tiers.
2. For each level, write what the person must reliably do and the pay band attached.
3. Attach the calibration bands to money: which bands earn a raise, which earn a bonus multiplier, which earn nothing.
4. Share the document with the whole company and point to it whenever a raise or promotion is discussed.

Finish with: A public career and pay ladder that removes most arguments about fairness before they start.

Copy exercise

1. Pick one process people complain about, such as your review cycle or your customer checkout.
2. Count every step a person has to take today. Tesla counted 64 to buy a car.
3. Run the five questions in order: Is this requirement real? Can this step be deleted? Can what remains be simplified? Can the cycle be shortened? Only then, what can be automated?
4. Set a target step count and redesign toward it. Tesla reached 13.

Finish with: A shorter process with a before-and-after step count you can show the team.

Copy exercise