Total Quality Management

Felix turned six months old on Friday. As it fell on a Friday, I allowed the family a rare dress-down casual day and we celebrated with some local hemp microbrews in the conference room.

As I’ve written about many times before, I strongly believe in raising a family according to the same principles that you would use to build a successful corporation. With this in mind, it this seemed like an appropriate time to give Felix his first performance review to make sure we’re all on the same page moving forward. I’m happy to report that he met or surpassed nearly all of his expectations for Q3 and Q4 of 2009. Overall, his high performance scores indicate that he’ll be a valuable member of our “team” in the coming years. I did, however, lay out a few “growth areas” for him to work on over the next two quarters, especially regarding his erratic and sometimes tardy attendance record for our Monday morning staff meetings. I’m confident that he will be able to address these points in time for his next review.

(Sample performance review for a previous employee, no longer with the family)

My wife refused to participate in the review process, saying something about how it’s “wrong to treat a 6 month old child like an employee.” Whatever. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised given the occasional skepticism she’s voiced in the past about my family-as-corporation analogy. I can understand her perspective to a point, but it does disappoint me that Felix didn’t get the benefit of a full “360 degree performance review” so favored by today’s top management consultants.