Chemistry wisdom for appraisal process in corporate

The corporate bosses and the respective HR functions must know about one of the most useful chemical laws in reaction chemistry i.e. the law of definite proportion or law of constant proportion. The above law states that all chemical compounds are made up of elements that are same and combined together in the same proportion by mass and not by either weight or number.

Only at the mass level similarity or definiteness, the similar elements at a definite proportion results in the formation of compounds and not at their number or weight.

In corporate, when the performance of people are measured or appraised against the objectives set at the beginning, the right yardsticks must be used and only then the effort versus result generated by people can be clearly ascertained and evaluated.

Unfortunately, the proportion of time spent by people for the given task or the number of people who are allotted for the given task are only largely considered as the bargaining point both by the appraise and appraiser. But neither the time nor the number of people who are assigned to a task/project will yield the result. For achieving the result one requires the understanding of the end objective, methods to be adopted, time and resource needed etc., are essential.

Only when the elements by the mass combine, the desired compound can be made or synthesized. It is not the lack of effort most people find no or less result but only due to the lack of understanding of the objectives, knowledge about the methodologies to be adopted to achieve the above and finally the resources required etc. Such knowledge is largely missing with most people.

Simply the effort or hard work alone is not sufficient. The message is not to belittle the hard work but work with proper understanding. Even to get a compound, just mixing of different elements is not sufficient but the proportion of different elements at their same proportion by mass must take place.

Unfortunately, most of the appraisal systems are subjective, prejudiced and appraiser centric. What the appraiser wish to conclude or states become the truth and the appraise gets little chance to contest. The above confusion is mainly due to the system being porous and less scientific.

The constancy of mass of elements and not their weight or number makes the compounds. Scientists have understood that and hence many compounds could be easily synthesized with great purity and activity. Therefore setting a task and measuring the achievements, the corporate bosses must follow the best scientific approaches and only then the effort versus result can be equilibrated. Otherwise, some set of people will invest great effort but still will not get a result while some get the result but do not know how they got such results.

Dr S Ranganathan