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InMobi has reimagined its performance review system by building a culture that motivates its employees to harness their full potential.

Kevin Freitas, nanDiKa PraDeeP, anD MaitHreYi sairaM, inMobi.cover STory

Performance management serves the purpose of creating an environment that enables employees to work to their full capacity. But does it and can it, in the way it currently exists?

Though this process has not changed much over the years, the ways in which companies conduct appraisals have evolved. With varying company policies, cultures, and practices, a need for disruption in the area of performance management is inevitable.

Failings of the traditional approachAs opposed to measuring the performance of the employee, the traditional approach limits his or her work efficiency with respect to the organisation, making it more business and turnover oriented.

When an employee is evaluated by a set of people, the perception of the evaluators can hinder their opinion, leading to a biased report of the employee rather than the work done.

The process of rating every employee in the company is tedious and time consuming; it becomes a barrier to the productivity of many companies.

Teamwork is yet another factor that gets hampered owing to a lack of trust between the

Future matters, not the past

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employees and company. This type of performance management considers only the past performance of the employee rather than the future prospects.

In an organisation where creativity is of utmost importance, ratings can create disparity in the performance of the employees and affect their resourcefulness. In addition to their plummeting creativity, the traditional system creates a rift between the employees and the company.

Reimagining performance management Like many other companies—this list includes Microsoft and Adobe—somewhere in October 2013 at InMobi, we realised that our current process for evaluating the performance and contributions of our people, compensating, promoting, and training them was not amplifying our culture and values. If you are fanatically driven, you do not need the company to provide you with a system of scorecards and quarterly bonuses!

In 2013, we were on the verge of moving into the next orbit in our exponential growth trajectory—

one that would reimagine the mobile world. Yet we were confined within 20th century tools and processes that limited our imagination, our risk taking, and our ability to dream. The existing performance management system of scorecards and quarterly bonus payouts was neither driving engagement nor enhancing the performance of our people that would keep up with the business growth. It was not driving engagement because there was hardly any differentiation; bonus payouts for over 90% of InMobians was in the range of 95% to 105%. That is when we realised the need to focus on fuelling performance for the future rather than assessing the work of the past.

People practices and how it is connected to the culture at InMobiWe believe that any people practice should strongly resonate with our culture and values. And our thinking, feeling, behaviours, actions, and outcomes should reinforce that. In short, our visible actions should amplify our culture and values every day. We even have a description for our culture—it is called YaWiO.

YaWiO is about imagination (haYa in Turkish), oneness (aWirodhin in Sanskrit), and action (Opus in Latin). Everything that we do and the way we respond to situations reinforce these three pillars. The InMobi values complement the culture, and stand the test of time across teams, functions, and countries.Being entrepreneurial and thinking big. Enjoying freedom with responsibility and integrity.Being accountable, taking ownership, and being positive.Being driven and being passionate.

And if we truly believe that InMobians are fanatically driven and accountable, we do not need a report card that is mandated for them. A report card forced upon them would be antithetical to our values. So we got rid of performance management the way that most organisations know it.

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Maithreyi Sairam is Associate-Talent Branding, InMobi.

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We did not just replace performance management; instead we created a new practice and reimagined a completely new way of helping InMobians live to their potential. We call the new practice, Springboard.

Springboard @ InMobiThe germination of Springboard is predicated by three beliefs:We truly believe that we have awesome people at InMobi.There is no reason why awesome people cannot be ten times more awesome.

Awesome people are driven and work in the company’s best interest at all times.When you start with such path-breaking foundational beliefs, you create a programme that inspires everyone.

Instead of worrying about the past, Springboard gets InMobians to focus on self-development and inspires them

to live to their potential—their version of a 10x version of themselves. It is a journey from ‘you’ to ‘super you’, and it has become a way of life at our organisation.

Growing 10x @ InMobiMost organisations have forgotten that people need people. They have replaced people interaction with system interaction so that employees can look up their goals and report on it. It is an impersonal way and does not inspire great work and performance.

A new practice and programme sometimes requires radically different ways to achieve its goals. And sometimes it requires not a new way of thinking, but seeing the old things with new eyes.

We believe that people need people. And Springboard ensures that people interaction manifests itself through conversations about their aspirations and opportunities, and not through a meaningless reporting and scorecard system.

We want InMobians to think ‘big’ and we shall provide them a platform to Springboard to success. They take complete ownership of their careers, come in with aspirations, and set their own goals. The organisation provides them the opportunities across teams, functions, and roles that can be a stepping stone to fulfil their aspirations.

The guidance is facilitated by ‘conversations’, which are not restricted only with the manager. We encourage our employees to have conversations with anyone and everyone on the floor to learn and grow, personally and professionally. Managers now check in with their employees weekly and focus far more on potential than on past results. The goal is to ‘fuel’ performance rather than rate it.

People are people, not numbers!Human beings are more than just a number or a rating. So we did away with the traditional approach of assigning a number or rating to the performance; we decided to consider a whole lot of other parameters to gather the most detailed view of our employees. Then got to understand how this view supports a conversation about performance.

If the InMobi values were to form the basis of any individual here, they needed to form the basis of conversations too. We were clear from the beginning, that we do not have place for brilliant jerks! You might be the smartest at completing the task assigned to you, but if you fail on our values, there is no place for you. Conversations about values and work have become an integral part of Springboard, and it is imperative for InMobians in any capacity, across any level, to think big, to take ownership, to be driven to succeed despite the obstacles, and be responsible for their actions.

InMobians measure themselves on the goals they set for themselves. These goals, just like our strategies, keep evolving. People at InMobi started to maintain a more dynamic document of the different goals they wanted to achieve, in order to reach that one big aspiration.

And the conversation with managers, peers, and other InMobians reflects a deep desire to

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You might be the smartest at completing the task assigned to you, but if you fail on our values, there is no place for you.

Nandika Pradeep is Manager-Talent & reward Programs, InMobi

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improve, and get feedback to attain and work positively towards that aspiration.

No normal distribution, no rankingIt is no secret that in most conversations about performance,

a question that invariably comes up is: “do you use a bell curve?”

We do not use a bell curve. We do not believe we can have human potential at InMobi restricted to a pre-decided curve. It does not aid teamwork and it definitely contradicts our value of thinking big and being passionate.

The underlying assumption of all such organisations that have a performance distribution curve is ‘mistrust’—mistrust in employees’ ability,

in their efforts, and in their performance. There is always an error rate built in these processes to protect payouts and manage the budget. In order for someone to be identified in the top ten percentile, someone else needs to fall lower in the curve.

We choose to look at differentiation in another way. We start with the underlying assumption that all employees we hire are top performers. We trust them that they will do their best in their tenure with us. Instead of processes and guidelines, we use conversations. We create new opportunities for those who are not able to give their best performance in their current roles. Keeping these beliefs as our fundamentals, we will never place InMobians on a bell curve.

In a high performing organisation like ours, we will have many who will exceed their own goals through the year. This number will not, and should not be limited to the tail of the curve, at 10% or 15%. And that will be in line with our business objective, to grow 10x!

We have even taken and applied this same belief to our salary increases. It would be hypocritical to do away with ratings and then still force fit salary increases because of a budget. So we did away with salary increase budget caps as well.

Managers are not notified of any pre-approved salary increase budgets for talent reviews. Instead, they are told not to worry about budgets but do what is right. Once they do what is right, they have conversations with the rewards team that works with the managers to aid that requirement.

No variable payThe idea at InMobi is to think big, bigger than what anyone can imagine. In 2013, we were at the onset of disrupting the industry. How do we incorporate that in our practices of pay, in a manner befitting our belief and trust in our people?

In the traditional approach, how did a variable pay motivate you to perform better? You had some targets that if met, you got the benefits based on certain set parameters. This fuelled you to work

Employees are encouraged to ‘think big’, bigger than just working a little harder to get the extra incentive.

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better but limited your risk- taking mindset.

Employees are encouraged to ‘think big’, bigger than just working a little harder to get the extra incentive. We have even completely done away with variable pay for 85% of our employees. Their variable pay has

been added to their fixed pay, thereby enabling them to work more efficiently, take risks, and not be worried about taking on safe targets that would have helped them earn their quarterly bonus. We have liberated 85% of our employees from the burden of trying to prove themselves every quarter, because we believe that they are achievers, we believe they are awesome. Today, only our sales team has quarterly bonuses.

Empowering managersGenerally, in a company when an employee is rated as an average rather than a high performer, the justification by the manager is to put the blame on the bell curve and the HR department.

We have created a platform where managers are empowered to take decisions on rewarding their subordinates. But these decisions have to be supported by conversations and supporting advocacy. Managers are given the authority to decide the pay increase and rewards for their subordinates, after conversations with the rewards team. The rewards team ensures that the same lens, market relevant rewards, and yardstick of achievement and performance are used across the organisation. The final decision on employee salary increases and the conversation about opportunities and areas of development is done by the manager. The conversation about aspirations, opportunities, and areas of development precedes the conversation on rewards. We feel these are two different conversations and should be treated as such. Managers at InMobi feel more valued and approve of this, as this process builds ‘trust’ and ownership in the final decision.

InMobi has been in the news a lot recently, and for all the right reasons. Often identified as one of the most innovative Indian companies to work for, InMobi has mastered the art of making corporate culture stick. The company seems to have found the right balance between work and play, which has helped it grow rapidly while keeping its employees happy. While many global companies are revamping their performance review structure, InMobi was one of the first Indian companies to do away with annual employee appraisals. - Compiled by the Indian Management team

Super charged employees Generally, in most organisations, employees are ranked on a scale of five and at every performance review they strive to get better and aim for a one. Therefore, they try to follow the set parameters to reach that particular rating.

At InMobi, you do not hear the word ‘rating’ when it comes to performance review. We believe that every employee we hire is a high performer. This makes them soar higher and strive for greatness and go past any particular parameter set that could be set. It unleashes their discretionary effort. That is because they know that their performance and they, as individuals, are valued. They know that InMobi trusts them.

Going forwardBeing a startup company, we are driven to perform better and faster and experiment, fail, and learn. And we believe we cannot do that with the tools of the 20th century. We need new tools that solve the needs of today and foresee the needs of tomorrow. We foresee that many organisations will take the leap, sooner rather than later, and trust their people and reinvent performance management for their context. Rather than focusing on an employee’s past performance, they will focus on the future potential of their people, and create processes that trust their people and liberate the potential of their people.

The conversation about aspirations, opportunities, and areas of development precedes the conversation on rewards.

Kevin Freitas is Director-Human resources, InMobi

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