December 24, 2023 • 25 mins
Are you tired of outdated and ineffective performance management methods? Today, William Tincup interviews Josh Merrill, the co-founder and CEO of Confirm to tackle this very issue. With their innovative approach to performance management, Josh and his team are revolutionizing the way companies measure and recognize employee contributions.
Josh's expertise and insights shed light on why traditional performance reviews are falling short in today's rapidly changing work environment. He explains how Confirm uses Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) to provide a more accurate and comprehensive view of employee performance. By analyzing the connections and interactions within an organization, Confirm reveals who is truly driving impact and who may need support.
With Confirm's unique approach, companies can gain a clearer understanding of their employees' development and impact. By leveraging data and analytics, they can make better decisions when it comes to promotions, talent development, and even talent hygiene—ensuring the right people are in the right positions.
So, if you're ready to unlock the potential of performance management and reimagine how work is measured, this episode is a must-listen.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
William Tincup (00:25):
This is William Tincup.
You're listening to the Use CasePodcast.
Today, we have Josh on fromConfirm, and we'll be talking
about his business and why the,you know, the business case or
use case, why people pickConfirm.
So let's do some introductions.
Josh, uh, would you introduceyourself and Confirm?
Josh Merrill (00:44):
Yeah, absolutely.
So, uh, my name is Josh, uh, cofounder and CEO of Confirm.
Uh, we're in the performancemanagement, performance review
space.
Uh, and prior to Confirm, Ispent six years at a company
called Carta, uh, leadingproduct doing equity management.
Oh, I'm
William Tincup (01:00):
a huge Carter supporter, so yes, I absolutely
love it.
It's funny because I've hadentrepreneurs that I advise,
they're like, hey, is thereanything other than Carter?
I'm like, yeah, stop.
That's right.
It's like, is there anythingother than Google?
It's
Josh Merrill (01:15):
just stop.
Yeah, that's what you want tohear as, as an entrepreneur.
That's what you want to hear.
Yeah.
It's the
William Tincup (01:20):
best, it's the best product in the market.
Just don't waste your timetrying to find another product.
I hope that people
Josh Merrill (01:26):
will say that about Confirm soon.
William Tincup (01:28):
Uh huh.
So what's, uh, what's wrong withperformance management these
days?
Yeah, it's a good question.
We have, we have five hours tokill.
Because so yeah, that's
Josh Merrill (01:37):
right.
How much time you got?
Okay.
So I, I, sorry.
So I think if you look atperformance.
Um, performance management.
If you look at like the, thedrumbeat in the last 10 years
has been like, look, we all hateperformance reviews.
Don't do performance reviews, docontinuous feedback, right?
(01:57):
Do development plans.
And that's all great stuff.
But now we're kind of in thisenvironment where it's like
everyone is trying to do morewith less.
And suddenly it seems likeperformance reviews are kind of,
they're kind of back becauseit's not just about the
development.
It's about the measurement.
And the problem with how wemeasure performance today is
(02:18):
that when you look atperformance reviews, what we're
really talking about is thattraditional, you know, four or
five point manager rating scale,right?
And if you look at where thatcame from, that, that rating
scale is a hundred years old.
So it came out of the U Smilitary after world war one, it
was brought into the workplacein the 1920s and like work was
solitary work was, wasrepetitive.
(02:39):
It was pre digital.
The way that we work.
Now is totally different, right?
We work in networks.
So you can hop onto teams orslack.
You have direct access toanybody.
You can use zoom to connect withpeople all over the world.
That's how we get things done.
So the way that we that we workhas totally transformed the way
that we measure that work is isstill kind of frozen in time.
(03:01):
And what we've done with confirmthat is different is we've
brought up Organizationalnetwork analysis into the
performance review process.
And what it essentially says isanyone in the organization
should be able to review anybodyelse.
It can be positive or it can becritical, but the point is it's
the way that things are actuallygetting done.
Um, and that gives you, youknow, much more accurate,
(03:23):
detailed information that youjust can't get in any other
methodology.
I
William Tincup (03:27):
like that a lot because I've had a series of,
uh, problems with performancemanagement over the, over the
years.
One of which is like, when welook at any sport, that we like,
there's a box score.
And there's a bunch of thingsthat don't show up in the box
score, whether or not it'sbaseball or football or, you
know, pick your favorite sport.
You know, I'm thinking right nowabout Dennis Rodman, and it's
(03:48):
like the things that would showup in his box score are
rebounds, right?
It was really great at rebounds.
What wouldn't show up in a boxscore is the hustle plays.
It's how many fast breaks hestarted, you know, by rebounding
and how he did the outlet pass,you know, like there'd be a
bunch of stuff we'd go throughthat.
It's like, I think about that ifpeople in companies work in a
(04:10):
gig, there's things that theyget credit for, okay, box score,
and then there's a bunch ofother stuff that they're doing
that's valuable that they don'tget credit for.
Josh Merrill (04:21):
That's right.
I mean, when I was in college,they, they taught me to manage
by walking around and like,nobody has shown me how to do
that over zoom.
Like, there is just the numberof touch points that we have as
employees has, has justexploded.
Um, but the visibility,visibility of the managers has
actually gone down.
Right.
Um, It is interesting, by theway, this may be a little bit of
(04:43):
a, of a digression here, but,um, that you mentioned sports
because I think one of thethings that's so interesting in
sports is that both performanceand compensation follow, follow
power loss.
I mean, you have a small numberof players who are really,
really exceptional and are paidreally, really well.
I think when it comes toperformance management with that
(05:04):
traditional five point ratingscale, we've.
You know, we expect it to followa bell curve, right?
And we've sort of fooledourselves into thinking that
that talent and employeeperformance is normally
distributed, but it's reallynot.
It really is, um, power lawdistributed.
And what we find when we runperformance cycles for our
(05:26):
customers using organizationalnetwork analysis, what we
typically find Are similar powerlaws where, you know, 15% of
employees will generate about50% of the impact and about 5%
of employees will generate about50% of the problems.
Right,
William Tincup (05:43):
right.
Yeah.
And it's funny because you talkto VCs and they still use kind
of an 80 20 model, that 80%, uh,or 20% of the value of your firm
comes from these employees.
The other 80% are, they're,they're important, but they're
minutiae.
That's just kind of making themachine go.
And I've even had VCs tell meit's 90 10, which is insane to
(06:05):
think about, but you know, uh,uh, non sequitur, but the, the
first time network analysis cameon my radar was a hundred years
ago, is it related to social?
So people would do socialnetwork analysis, basically find
out like, where are thetributaries?
Inside of an organization thataren't the dotted lines, they're
(06:25):
not on the org chart, you know,Sally's the EA for, you know,
some VP, she, she knowseverything and, you know, like,
like they could figure that outwith social analysis.
What, what, uh, what, what doesit evolve to?
Because again, I haven't paidattention to it in a long time.
So what, when you say networkanalysis, what do you, for the
(06:45):
audience, what are you referringto?
Josh Merrill (06:48):
So, um, it, it's very similar to what you're
describing, except that when wetalk about organizational
network analysis, we're talking,we're talking about measuring
those connections within, withinthe boundaries of an
organization.
And so if you do a, um, youknow, if you do a performance
review on Confirm, for example,you know, rather than.
answering a bunch of questionsabout what you accomplished and
(07:11):
having to sort of self promoteand defend your, your record.
What you're going to answer arequestions like, Hey, who do you
go to for help and advice?
Or, um, who, who energizes youat work?
Or, um, who have you seen makingan outstanding contribution?
What did you see?
Right.
It's actually about the peoplearound you.
(07:31):
And I think that the, the, if,if I were to answer the
question, like why now, I thinkthat Or, social network analysis
or organizational networkanalysis in the past, it was
kind of like, well,communication happens over
there, but, but work andperformance happens over here.
And I actually think those,right, but I actually think
those two things are, are kindof one in the same now.
(07:53):
I mean, there's very, there areso few jobs that, that, uh, I
mean, really, I'm not sure I canthink of a job that doesn't have
other stakeholders whereeverything I'm, I'm producing is
for the benefit of somebodyelse.
Right.
Thank you.
Um, and, and that actually isthe way that work gets done.
And, and we need a methodologythat, that reflects that.
William Tincup (08:12):
It's interesting because as you're talking about
it, I'm thinking about cultureand how culture is also, it's,
it's like a DNA strand.
These things are following eachother, they're tethered to one
another and how we think aboutperformance.
I want to get, I want to ask youyour take on goal setting, uh,
in a second, but how we.
Look at this is also culturally,you know, companies that are
(08:34):
still struggling after COVID tofigure out like, what is
culture?
I think they're having some ofthe same struggles with what is
performance and what is ameasurement?
Okay, great.
We can, we can hire and we canfigure that out, but are we
using things for the.
The audience, the employees thatwill actually make them better,
make our company better.
And so I like, I like the 360.
(08:55):
I, first of all, I love that.
And I also love the, you know,you know, you, the public
praise, private criticism.
I love that.
In fact, years ago, I used tohave this culture model where
I'd ask employees, I'm like, allright, we're opening an office
on Mars.
There's only three employeesthat can go.
Who are they and why?
(09:18):
Do they deserve to go?
And it was just a fun culturalexperiment and exercise to find
out who are those.
And there were never the peoplethat I thought that was what was
crazy as I, you know, it's goingto be Joe.
No, it was different.
That's right.
That's right.
I mean,
Josh Merrill (09:37):
yeah, you talk about the 15 percent of
employees who create 50 percentof the impact.
Most companies have no idea whothose people are.
Maybe in a traditional managerrating system, they may be able
to spot maybe 40 percent ofthose people by our data, about
40%.
The other 60 percent of Kind offall into this bucket that we
(09:58):
call quiet contributors, uh, wealways read about like quiet
footers, but like quietcontributors are these people
who, they, they do so muchbehind the scenes, but they're
just not.
They're not natural selfpromoters, and I want to, you
mentioned 360s, and so I have totake this opportunity to hammer
on them a little bit, which is,so the 360 methodology, right?
(10:19):
Which, um, believe it or not,created in, in the, by the Nazi
military in, in the late 1930s.
That makes sense.
William Tincup (10:27):
Right?
That tracks.
Josh Merrill (10:31):
You know, when you do a 360, you're, you're talking
about this limited sample size,right?
You're going to pick three tofive, you know, peer, peer
reviewers, things like that.
Um, you know, we just ran aperformance cycle for, um, for,
for a pretty well known softwarecompany.
And when we asked that question,who do you go to for help and
(10:51):
advice, what we found is that.
The, the most helpful engineer,the most sought after engineer
in that organization, 77 peoplego to him for help and advice.
The sample sizes that we'retalking about when you do ONA
versus when you do like a 360,for example, there's just no
(11:11):
comparison.
And when you see how incrediblynetworked and valuable some
people are in the organization,it really causes you to stop and
think about the talent decisionsthat we make.
William Tincup (11:23):
So I've, and please tear this apart, I've
long since had the philosophy.
One of the fails of, ofhistorical performance
management is that you can'tserve two masters.
Your, for performance managementis either, uh, a tool of
(11:44):
management to understand andhave some visibility inside into
what's going on, or it's a toolfor the employee to figure out
how to get better.
It can't do both.
I've, I've, I've, and again,it's one of those deals, you
know, I, I stand on stage andsay these types of things and,
you know, people then have to goand figure out like actually how
to make it work.
(12:04):
But the, the idea is that, well,it's like sales management.
Like Salesforce.
com, when it first came online,struggled mightily because
salespeople saw it as, for whatit was, it's like, this is a
management tool.
You're going to be in mybusiness.
You're going to know what toolI'm talking to.
You're going to know all thisstuff.
I don't want that.
(12:24):
And then, you know, fast forwardand there's.
You have to do that to be asuccessful sales.
So people in most sales peoplehave gotten over it.
They're like, okay, it makes mebetter.
I understand I got to make ahundred calls.
I got to do this.
I got all the tactical things.
So how do you, how do youreconcile who this is actually
for?
(12:44):
With confirm in particular,who's it actually for?
Josh Merrill (12:48):
Yeah, it's a great question.
There is this sort of, uh,conflation and kind of a tension
between, like, let's call itmeasurement and development, or
you could call it measurementand feedback, you know, and I
think the reason those twothings get conflated is Um, if
you tell me I'm not doing well,if you tell me I'm not meeting
expectations, I'm going to askyou why and what I can do to get
(13:12):
better, right?
See, you already just sort ofnaturally go into this, into
this feedback phase.
But I think, um, I'll use alittle bit of a metaphor, I
guess.
I, I, I'm, I'm kind of a fitnessnut.
Um, and you know, fitness isevery day.
So like I have a, I have a mealplan that I.
Stick to like I eat the samething at the same time every
day, you know, I go to the gymand after work, that's those are
(13:34):
the things I do every day, um,once every quarter and I
actually do this.
I live in San Francisco.
So I get in my car and I drivedown to San Carlos about 25
minutes and I do a DEXA scan.
So it's actually a bodycomposition scan and it tells me
like, right, yeah, it's likehow, how, how much is muscle?
How much is fat?
What's my bone density?
And it's, it's the measurement.
(13:56):
It's the way that, that I know,um, that I, that I can answer
the question, are the things I'mdoing every day actually
working?
Or do I need to course correct?
Right.
And that's kind of how I thinkof performance management and
performance management.
Is it, it it is every day,right?
It, it is.
You know, when, when I dosomething, I wanna get that
feedback immediately from, fromeither my manager or the whoever
(14:18):
the stakeholder is, theenvironment I wanna know right
away.
But then what most of ourcustomers do is every quarter.
They'll run this ONA measurementand they'll deliver those
results back to the employee andactually be able to say, are the
things that you're doing everyday actually working?
Um, so, you know, it's difficultto have, um, it's hard to
(14:39):
imagine a world where there'sfeedback, but no measurement.
I think if you're, if you'regoing to do performance
management really well, youknow, you get what you measure,
you should get really good atperformance measurement.
Uh, and that's what ONA is greatat.
William Tincup (14:51):
Should we call it something different?
Have you, have you thought abouthaving the.
Category itself has such astigma, uh, and, and, and, and
good and bad.
Let's just, we'll just, youknow, it's not all terrible.
It's not all that stuff, but itis, it's, it should be even call
it performance management.
Like I'm thinking, I'm thinkingto myself about like goals.
(15:14):
If we're sitting down togetherand you're my boss, okay.
You've got an idea of what mygoals should be.
I've got an idea of what mygoals should be.
There's a reconciliation of whatthose should be, like the, the,
all those things that you do ona daily basis, we've got to
figure that out and you mightnot have all the answers.
I might not have all theanswers, but being together
(15:34):
might have all the answers.
That sounds a lot likecollaboration.
So, first of all, have youthought, have you, have you,
have you, have you been downthis rabbit hole?
Josh Merrill (15:45):
Oh, you know, a little bit, um, so first of all,
just sort of sharing opinionshere, uh, I think probably
performance management, maybeit's more like stage performance
because that's what it really isin most companies.
Right.
Um, you know, Um, I've struggledmore with, um, you know, at the
(16:05):
end of the day, like I, I'm alittle bit beholden to what,
what people are going to typeinto Google.
I know.
Um,
William Tincup (16:11):
well, it's the Excel spreadsheet of, of HR.
So the budgets are made in, inExcel and there's a line item in
every company, uh, calledperformance.
Yeah.
So, you know, we could call itsomething different, but would
they call
Josh Merrill (16:24):
it something different?
You sort of just sort of have toplug into, into what the world
knows.
100%.
Um, but you know what?
Hey, I'm okay with that.
Yeah.
Like performance management.
Performance reviews aren't,aren't sexy, but you know,
neither, neither were captables, uh, when I, when I
joined Carta.
So I'm okay with
William Tincup (16:39):
that.
Good point.
Good point.
All right, let's do some by sidestuff.
Let's, let's flip theconversation to, um, what's your
favorite when you have theopportunity to show software?
What is your favorite part ofthe demo?
When you know, you know, if youcan get them to this place,
maybe a report or different partof the, of the, of the software,
(17:01):
you know that their eyes aregoing to light up.
Josh Merrill (17:04):
Yeah, um, there are a couple, but one that comes
to mind is, um, this is a realexample, actually.
This, this was something thatactually happened with one of
our, our customers.
And we, we, you know,generalized it and anonymized it
so we could talk about it.
We, we had just done aperformance cycle at, at an
(17:24):
organization.
And we looked at a cohort ofpeople who were doing the same
job.
So they were, they were likeengineers, same level.
So same, same job description,same comp band together.
And Um, and we spotted twooutliers.
We have this graph that kind ofshows, um, people's development
over time.
One of the things that we noticeis, um, you know, if I ask you,
(17:48):
who do you go to for help andadvice, you're probably not
going to pick the person whostarted last week.
You're going to pick somebodywho's had enough time to become
an expert.
And we can actually plot thatover time so that we can say,
you know, if you're an engineerdoing this, you know, doing this
job at this company, this is howwe actually would expect you to
develop through the eyes of yourcolleagues.
And, and we can, we literallydraw that trend line in, in the
(18:09):
product.
And, um, and we were looking atone cohort in particular, and we
found these two outliers.
And, and one outlier, um, at thetop was this engineer named
Tracy, and she was exceptionalby all measures.
I mean, just super influential,um, Uh, super helpful making
this out an incredible impact,uh, some of the best data that
(18:31):
we've ever seen on an employee.
And then we found her colleague,Michael, who had been at the
company.
They actually started, um, twomonths apart.
They'd been at the company acouple, couple of years, but
they started two months apart.
So really the, the, the sameamount of time.
And not only was Michael notmaking an impact, people were
actually raising concerns abouthim.
(18:51):
So, so these two people doingthe same job.
Yeah, they have followedcompletely different
trajectories in thisorganization, but here was the
kicker.
They had different managers andeach manager had just rated them
meets expectations.
Wow.
That's, that's usually like the,the light bulb moment when our
customers, when our, when our,you know, a prospect sees that
(19:14):
they go, Oh, this explains somuch.
That is broken about performancereviews that I see around me.
Right?
That incredible person who justnever gets promoted or that jerk
who just always seems to stay inthe same job, even though
everybody, everybody hatesworking with him.
Like it explains so much.
And to actually put that down onpaper and see it in data is, uh,
(19:38):
is a light bulb moment forpeople.
William Tincup (19:40):
Oh my God.
Light bulb moment for me.
Um, what's your tagline?
I'm not going to look it up.
What do you, what's afterconfirm?
We are blah blah blah blah.
What's the, what's the bit?
Uh, it's
Josh Merrill (19:52):
a, it's a good question.
William Tincup (19:54):
So I'm not, I'm not trying to put you on the
spot.
I'm just like, I have an ideaand I want to roll it past you,
uh, but go ahead.
Tell me what.
Josh Merrill (20:00):
So I would say we're the all in one people
platform built on organizationalnetwork analysis to reveal who's
driving impact and who needshelp.
Um, I would also just kind of,yeah, it's a mouthful.
William Tincup (20:12):
So to me, confirm is, is confirmation.
Yeah.
You're, you're confirmingcontribution.
So, if we, if we, if we look atthe end of the day, especially
those folks that are doingquietly, they're quietly going
about their business, addingvalue, helping people, etc.
Confirm unearths thecontributions.
(20:38):
That's right.
And separates the wheat from thechaff, that whole bit, it's
like, okay, again, in thatscenario that you just said,
that, let's say in that case,that guy, he might be really
loud and, and, and likable onsome levels or whatever, but
he's not, his contribution isn'tthe same.
That's right.
And it seems like we, in a justsociety, we should be judged on
(21:00):
our contributions.
Josh Merrill (21:02):
The, the mission of the company is to rightly
recognize everyone for thedifference they make at work.
Ah, I love that.
And, and I think that, you know,when you talk about performance
management, um, what getsmissed, what doesn't get talked
about is that we work.
In an incentive structure whereone person determines my
(21:24):
advancement, one persondetermines my destiny in an
organization.
And that's my manager.
And what that really comes downto is it's not about my
contribution.
It's about what my managerthinks about me.
And it's about their ability toadvocate and influence on my
behalf.
Right.
And my actual contribution issomewhere way down the list.
(21:46):
And I think if you were to saylike, Let's redo performance
management, you know, cleansheet of paper.
I think you'd probably say,well, the contribution should
come first, right?
And my ability to self promote,that should be like a distant
second.
And then my manager's ability topromote for me, that's like,
that shouldn't even make thecut.
William Tincup (22:04):
Yeah, the, the, the, the thing that's in
education is some people arereally, really great at taking
tests.
And some people, It doesn't haveanything to do with IQ or that
other stuff, it's just somepeople aren't great at taking
tests.
And so it's like, if you're justgreat at working your manager,
like, and you come out of schoolor come out of the, and you come
(22:24):
in and you're just really,really good at I said manipulate
him, it's kind of a harsh word,but you're really good at maybe
not the job.
But about managing the politicsand managing perception and all
this other stuff that hasnothing to do with the job.
That's right.
Uh, so I, I could see this kindof, first of all, finding those,
(22:45):
that, that, those things out andthen giving that data to, uh,
confirms clients and thensaying, okay, now you know, now
whether what you do with it,that's you.
Uh, but now that's, you can'tunknow it.
Now you know who's doing what.
Um, last question.
When people are, uh, buyingConfirm, and again, this is
(23:06):
different, this is differentthan what's come in the past,
it's different than what's outin the marketplace, um, what
questions, if you could scriptthem, what questions should they
ask you?
Josh Merrill (23:18):
Yeah, um, it's a, it's a really good question.
I think the, the questions thatI, um, the questions, the
questions I get asked and thequestions I hope, hope people
will ask are often two differentthings.
Right.
100%.
The questions that I hope peoplewill ask are You know, how do I,
(23:39):
how do I use this data to makebetter decisions?
Right?
Like I want to promote the rightpeople.
When you go through a promotioncycle, like a good promotion
cycle is one where nobody issurprised who was promoted and
who wasn't.
Um, a question that I would loveto be asked is, um, how do I use
this data to practice good?
Talent hygiene.
(24:00):
You know, no turnover is notgood, right?
There are some people in myorganization who, who, who
actually shouldn't be there.
Um, there are some people whoshould be there, but need to,
need to change or develop orgrow.
How do I use this data to makethose decisions?
Um, those are some of thequestions I wish I would get
asked.
Um,
William Tincup (24:18):
yeah.
Yeah.
And a bit about contribution.
How do I, how do I figure thatstuff out?
That's right.
How do I, again, If it's, ifit's, if it's tied to
compensation and it's tied topromotion, succession planning,
all these other things, the morevisibility inside that they can
have into how work actuallyhappens, as opposed to how they
(24:40):
perceive it happens.
So using data to then say, okay,this is how things actually
happen.
This engineer is the mosthelpful.
You know, this is how this workactually happens.
Well, I could talk to you allday and, uh.
Likewise.
Turns out you've got stuff todo.
So, uh, thank you so much forcoming on the show.
Josh Merrill (25:00):
Thank you for having me.
Yeah.
Uh, we got to find some more
William Tincup (25:02):
time.
100%.
And, uh, thanks for everyonelistening to the show until next
time.
This is William Tincup.
You're listening to the Use CasePodcast.
Today, we have Josh on fromConfirm, and we'll be talking
about his business and why the,you know, the business case or
use case, why people pickConfirm.
So let's do some introductions.
Josh, uh, would you introduceyourself and Confirm?
Josh Merrill (00:44):
Yeah, absolutely.
So, uh, my name is Josh, uh, cofounder and CEO of Confirm.
Uh, we're in the performancemanagement, performance review
space.
Uh, and prior to Confirm, Ispent six years at a company
called Carta, uh, leadingproduct doing equity management.
Oh, I'm
William Tincup (01:00):
a huge Carter supporter, so yes, I absolutely
love it.
It's funny because I've hadentrepreneurs that I advise,
they're like, hey, is thereanything other than Carter?
I'm like, yeah, stop.
That's right.
It's like, is there anythingother than Google?
It's
Josh Merrill (01:15):
just stop.
Yeah, that's what you want tohear as, as an entrepreneur.
That's what you want to hear.
Yeah.
It's the
William Tincup (01:20):
best, it's the best product in the market.
Just don't waste your timetrying to find another product.
I hope that people
Josh Merrill (01:26):
will say that about Confirm soon.
William Tincup (01:28):
Uh huh.
So what's, uh, what's wrong withperformance management these
days?
Yeah, it's a good question.
We have, we have five hours tokill.
Because so yeah, that's
Josh Merrill (01:37):
right.
How much time you got?
Okay.
So I, I, sorry.
So I think if you look atperformance.
Um, performance management.
If you look at like the, thedrumbeat in the last 10 years
has been like, look, we all hateperformance reviews.
Don't do performance reviews, docontinuous feedback, right?
(01:57):
Do development plans.
And that's all great stuff.
But now we're kind of in thisenvironment where it's like
everyone is trying to do morewith less.
And suddenly it seems likeperformance reviews are kind of,
they're kind of back becauseit's not just about the
development.
It's about the measurement.
And the problem with how wemeasure performance today is
(02:18):
that when you look atperformance reviews, what we're
really talking about is thattraditional, you know, four or
five point manager rating scale,right?
And if you look at where thatcame from, that, that rating
scale is a hundred years old.
So it came out of the U Smilitary after world war one, it
was brought into the workplacein the 1920s and like work was
solitary work was, wasrepetitive.
(02:39):
It was pre digital.
The way that we work.
Now is totally different, right?
We work in networks.
So you can hop onto teams orslack.
You have direct access toanybody.
You can use zoom to connect withpeople all over the world.
That's how we get things done.
So the way that we that we workhas totally transformed the way
that we measure that work is isstill kind of frozen in time.
(03:01):
And what we've done with confirmthat is different is we've
brought up Organizationalnetwork analysis into the
performance review process.
And what it essentially says isanyone in the organization
should be able to review anybodyelse.
It can be positive or it can becritical, but the point is it's
the way that things are actuallygetting done.
Um, and that gives you, youknow, much more accurate,
(03:23):
detailed information that youjust can't get in any other
methodology.
I
William Tincup (03:27):
like that a lot because I've had a series of,
uh, problems with performancemanagement over the, over the
years.
One of which is like, when welook at any sport, that we like,
there's a box score.
And there's a bunch of thingsthat don't show up in the box
score, whether or not it'sbaseball or football or, you
know, pick your favorite sport.
You know, I'm thinking right nowabout Dennis Rodman, and it's
(03:48):
like the things that would showup in his box score are
rebounds, right?
It was really great at rebounds.
What wouldn't show up in a boxscore is the hustle plays.
It's how many fast breaks hestarted, you know, by rebounding
and how he did the outlet pass,you know, like there'd be a
bunch of stuff we'd go throughthat.
It's like, I think about that ifpeople in companies work in a
(04:10):
gig, there's things that theyget credit for, okay, box score,
and then there's a bunch ofother stuff that they're doing
that's valuable that they don'tget credit for.
Josh Merrill (04:21):
That's right.
I mean, when I was in college,they, they taught me to manage
by walking around and like,nobody has shown me how to do
that over zoom.
Like, there is just the numberof touch points that we have as
employees has, has justexploded.
Um, but the visibility,visibility of the managers has
actually gone down.
Right.
Um, It is interesting, by theway, this may be a little bit of
(04:43):
a, of a digression here, but,um, that you mentioned sports
because I think one of thethings that's so interesting in
sports is that both performanceand compensation follow, follow
power loss.
I mean, you have a small numberof players who are really,
really exceptional and are paidreally, really well.
I think when it comes toperformance management with that
(05:04):
traditional five point ratingscale, we've.
You know, we expect it to followa bell curve, right?
And we've sort of fooledourselves into thinking that
that talent and employeeperformance is normally
distributed, but it's reallynot.
It really is, um, power lawdistributed.
And what we find when we runperformance cycles for our
(05:26):
customers using organizationalnetwork analysis, what we
typically find Are similar powerlaws where, you know, 15% of
employees will generate about50% of the impact and about 5%
of employees will generate about50% of the problems.
Right,
William Tincup (05:43):
right.
Yeah.
And it's funny because you talkto VCs and they still use kind
of an 80 20 model, that 80%, uh,or 20% of the value of your firm
comes from these employees.
The other 80% are, they're,they're important, but they're
minutiae.
That's just kind of making themachine go.
And I've even had VCs tell meit's 90 10, which is insane to
(06:05):
think about, but you know, uh,uh, non sequitur, but the, the
first time network analysis cameon my radar was a hundred years
ago, is it related to social?
So people would do socialnetwork analysis, basically find
out like, where are thetributaries?
Inside of an organization thataren't the dotted lines, they're
(06:25):
not on the org chart, you know,Sally's the EA for, you know,
some VP, she, she knowseverything and, you know, like,
like they could figure that outwith social analysis.
What, what, uh, what, what doesit evolve to?
Because again, I haven't paidattention to it in a long time.
So what, when you say networkanalysis, what do you, for the
(06:45):
audience, what are you referringto?
Josh Merrill (06:48):
So, um, it, it's very similar to what you're
describing, except that when wetalk about organizational
network analysis, we're talking,we're talking about measuring
those connections within, withinthe boundaries of an
organization.
And so if you do a, um, youknow, if you do a performance
review on Confirm, for example,you know, rather than.
answering a bunch of questionsabout what you accomplished and
(07:11):
having to sort of self promoteand defend your, your record.
What you're going to answer arequestions like, Hey, who do you
go to for help and advice?
Or, um, who, who energizes youat work?
Or, um, who have you seen makingan outstanding contribution?
What did you see?
Right.
It's actually about the peoplearound you.
(07:31):
And I think that the, the, if,if I were to answer the
question, like why now, I thinkthat Or, social network analysis
or organizational networkanalysis in the past, it was
kind of like, well,communication happens over
there, but, but work andperformance happens over here.
And I actually think those,right, but I actually think
those two things are, are kindof one in the same now.
(07:53):
I mean, there's very, there areso few jobs that, that, uh, I
mean, really, I'm not sure I canthink of a job that doesn't have
other stakeholders whereeverything I'm, I'm producing is
for the benefit of somebodyelse.
Right.
Thank you.
Um, and, and that actually isthe way that work gets done.
And, and we need a methodologythat, that reflects that.
William Tincup (08:12):
It's interesting because as you're talking about
it, I'm thinking about cultureand how culture is also, it's,
it's like a DNA strand.
These things are following eachother, they're tethered to one
another and how we think aboutperformance.
I want to get, I want to ask youyour take on goal setting, uh,
in a second, but how we.
Look at this is also culturally,you know, companies that are
(08:34):
still struggling after COVID tofigure out like, what is
culture?
I think they're having some ofthe same struggles with what is
performance and what is ameasurement?
Okay, great.
We can, we can hire and we canfigure that out, but are we
using things for the.
The audience, the employees thatwill actually make them better,
make our company better.
And so I like, I like the 360.
(08:55):
I, first of all, I love that.
And I also love the, you know,you know, you, the public
praise, private criticism.
I love that.
In fact, years ago, I used tohave this culture model where
I'd ask employees, I'm like, allright, we're opening an office
on Mars.
There's only three employeesthat can go.
Who are they and why?
(09:18):
Do they deserve to go?
And it was just a fun culturalexperiment and exercise to find
out who are those.
And there were never the peoplethat I thought that was what was
crazy as I, you know, it's goingto be Joe.
No, it was different.
That's right.
That's right.
I mean,
Josh Merrill (09:37):
yeah, you talk about the 15 percent of
employees who create 50 percentof the impact.
Most companies have no idea whothose people are.
Maybe in a traditional managerrating system, they may be able
to spot maybe 40 percent ofthose people by our data, about
40%.
The other 60 percent of Kind offall into this bucket that we
(09:58):
call quiet contributors, uh, wealways read about like quiet
footers, but like quietcontributors are these people
who, they, they do so muchbehind the scenes, but they're
just not.
They're not natural selfpromoters, and I want to, you
mentioned 360s, and so I have totake this opportunity to hammer
on them a little bit, which is,so the 360 methodology, right?
(10:19):
Which, um, believe it or not,created in, in the, by the Nazi
military in, in the late 1930s.
That makes sense.
William Tincup (10:27):
Right?
That tracks.
Josh Merrill (10:31):
You know, when you do a 360, you're, you're talking
about this limited sample size,right?
You're going to pick three tofive, you know, peer, peer
reviewers, things like that.
Um, you know, we just ran aperformance cycle for, um, for,
for a pretty well known softwarecompany.
And when we asked that question,who do you go to for help and
(10:51):
advice, what we found is that.
The, the most helpful engineer,the most sought after engineer
in that organization, 77 peoplego to him for help and advice.
The sample sizes that we'retalking about when you do ONA
versus when you do like a 360,for example, there's just no
(11:11):
comparison.
And when you see how incrediblynetworked and valuable some
people are in the organization,it really causes you to stop and
think about the talent decisionsthat we make.
William Tincup (11:23):
So I've, and please tear this apart, I've
long since had the philosophy.
One of the fails of, ofhistorical performance
management is that you can'tserve two masters.
Your, for performance managementis either, uh, a tool of
(11:44):
management to understand andhave some visibility inside into
what's going on, or it's a toolfor the employee to figure out
how to get better.
It can't do both.
I've, I've, I've, and again,it's one of those deals, you
know, I, I stand on stage andsay these types of things and,
you know, people then have to goand figure out like actually how
to make it work.
(12:04):
But the, the idea is that, well,it's like sales management.
Like Salesforce.
com, when it first came online,struggled mightily because
salespeople saw it as, for whatit was, it's like, this is a
management tool.
You're going to be in mybusiness.
You're going to know what toolI'm talking to.
You're going to know all thisstuff.
I don't want that.
(12:24):
And then, you know, fast forwardand there's.
You have to do that to be asuccessful sales.
So people in most sales peoplehave gotten over it.
They're like, okay, it makes mebetter.
I understand I got to make ahundred calls.
I got to do this.
I got all the tactical things.
So how do you, how do youreconcile who this is actually
for?
(12:44):
With confirm in particular,who's it actually for?
Josh Merrill (12:48):
Yeah, it's a great question.
There is this sort of, uh,conflation and kind of a tension
between, like, let's call itmeasurement and development, or
you could call it measurementand feedback, you know, and I
think the reason those twothings get conflated is Um, if
you tell me I'm not doing well,if you tell me I'm not meeting
expectations, I'm going to askyou why and what I can do to get
(13:12):
better, right?
See, you already just sort ofnaturally go into this, into
this feedback phase.
But I think, um, I'll use alittle bit of a metaphor, I
guess.
I, I, I'm, I'm kind of a fitnessnut.
Um, and you know, fitness isevery day.
So like I have a, I have a mealplan that I.
Stick to like I eat the samething at the same time every
day, you know, I go to the gymand after work, that's those are
(13:34):
the things I do every day, um,once every quarter and I
actually do this.
I live in San Francisco.
So I get in my car and I drivedown to San Carlos about 25
minutes and I do a DEXA scan.
So it's actually a bodycomposition scan and it tells me
like, right, yeah, it's likehow, how, how much is muscle?
How much is fat?
What's my bone density?
And it's, it's the measurement.
(13:56):
It's the way that, that I know,um, that I, that I can answer
the question, are the things I'mdoing every day actually
working?
Or do I need to course correct?
Right.
And that's kind of how I thinkof performance management and
performance management.
Is it, it it is every day,right?
It, it is.
You know, when, when I dosomething, I wanna get that
feedback immediately from, fromeither my manager or the whoever
(14:18):
the stakeholder is, theenvironment I wanna know right
away.
But then what most of ourcustomers do is every quarter.
They'll run this ONA measurementand they'll deliver those
results back to the employee andactually be able to say, are the
things that you're doing everyday actually working?
Um, so, you know, it's difficultto have, um, it's hard to
(14:39):
imagine a world where there'sfeedback, but no measurement.
I think if you're, if you'regoing to do performance
management really well, youknow, you get what you measure,
you should get really good atperformance measurement.
Uh, and that's what ONA is greatat.
William Tincup (14:51):
Should we call it something different?
Have you, have you thought abouthaving the.
Category itself has such astigma, uh, and, and, and, and
good and bad.
Let's just, we'll just, youknow, it's not all terrible.
It's not all that stuff, but itis, it's, it should be even call
it performance management.
Like I'm thinking, I'm thinkingto myself about like goals.
(15:14):
If we're sitting down togetherand you're my boss, okay.
You've got an idea of what mygoals should be.
I've got an idea of what mygoals should be.
There's a reconciliation of whatthose should be, like the, the,
all those things that you do ona daily basis, we've got to
figure that out and you mightnot have all the answers.
I might not have all theanswers, but being together
(15:34):
might have all the answers.
That sounds a lot likecollaboration.
So, first of all, have youthought, have you, have you,
have you, have you been downthis rabbit hole?
Josh Merrill (15:45):
Oh, you know, a little bit, um, so first of all,
just sort of sharing opinionshere, uh, I think probably
performance management, maybeit's more like stage performance
because that's what it really isin most companies.
Right.
Um, you know, Um, I've struggledmore with, um, you know, at the
(16:05):
end of the day, like I, I'm alittle bit beholden to what,
what people are going to typeinto Google.
I know.
Um,
William Tincup (16:11):
well, it's the Excel spreadsheet of, of HR.
So the budgets are made in, inExcel and there's a line item in
every company, uh, calledperformance.
Yeah.
So, you know, we could call itsomething different, but would
they call
Josh Merrill (16:24):
it something different?
You sort of just sort of have toplug into, into what the world
knows.
100%.
Um, but you know what?
Hey, I'm okay with that.
Yeah.
Like performance management.
Performance reviews aren't,aren't sexy, but you know,
neither, neither were captables, uh, when I, when I
joined Carta.
So I'm okay with
William Tincup (16:39):
that.
Good point.
Good point.
All right, let's do some by sidestuff.
Let's, let's flip theconversation to, um, what's your
favorite when you have theopportunity to show software?
What is your favorite part ofthe demo?
When you know, you know, if youcan get them to this place,
maybe a report or different partof the, of the, of the software,
(17:01):
you know that their eyes aregoing to light up.
Josh Merrill (17:04):
Yeah, um, there are a couple, but one that comes
to mind is, um, this is a realexample, actually.
This, this was something thatactually happened with one of
our, our customers.
And we, we, you know,generalized it and anonymized it
so we could talk about it.
We, we had just done aperformance cycle at, at an
(17:24):
organization.
And we looked at a cohort ofpeople who were doing the same
job.
So they were, they were likeengineers, same level.
So same, same job description,same comp band together.
And Um, and we spotted twooutliers.
We have this graph that kind ofshows, um, people's development
over time.
One of the things that we noticeis, um, you know, if I ask you,
(17:48):
who do you go to for help andadvice, you're probably not
going to pick the person whostarted last week.
You're going to pick somebodywho's had enough time to become
an expert.
And we can actually plot thatover time so that we can say,
you know, if you're an engineerdoing this, you know, doing this
job at this company, this is howwe actually would expect you to
develop through the eyes of yourcolleagues.
And, and we can, we literallydraw that trend line in, in the
(18:09):
product.
And, um, and we were looking atone cohort in particular, and we
found these two outliers.
And, and one outlier, um, at thetop was this engineer named
Tracy, and she was exceptionalby all measures.
I mean, just super influential,um, Uh, super helpful making
this out an incredible impact,uh, some of the best data that
(18:31):
we've ever seen on an employee.
And then we found her colleague,Michael, who had been at the
company.
They actually started, um, twomonths apart.
They'd been at the company acouple, couple of years, but
they started two months apart.
So really the, the, the sameamount of time.
And not only was Michael notmaking an impact, people were
actually raising concerns abouthim.
(18:51):
So, so these two people doingthe same job.
Yeah, they have followedcompletely different
trajectories in thisorganization, but here was the
kicker.
They had different managers andeach manager had just rated them
meets expectations.
Wow.
That's, that's usually like the,the light bulb moment when our
customers, when our, when our,you know, a prospect sees that
(19:14):
they go, Oh, this explains somuch.
That is broken about performancereviews that I see around me.
Right?
That incredible person who justnever gets promoted or that jerk
who just always seems to stay inthe same job, even though
everybody, everybody hatesworking with him.
Like it explains so much.
And to actually put that down onpaper and see it in data is, uh,
(19:38):
is a light bulb moment forpeople.
William Tincup (19:40):
Oh my God.
Light bulb moment for me.
Um, what's your tagline?
I'm not going to look it up.
What do you, what's afterconfirm?
We are blah blah blah blah.
What's the, what's the bit?
Uh, it's
Josh Merrill (19:52):
a, it's a good question.
William Tincup (19:54):
So I'm not, I'm not trying to put you on the
spot.
I'm just like, I have an ideaand I want to roll it past you,
uh, but go ahead.
Tell me what.
Josh Merrill (20:00):
So I would say we're the all in one people
platform built on organizationalnetwork analysis to reveal who's
driving impact and who needshelp.
Um, I would also just kind of,yeah, it's a mouthful.
William Tincup (20:12):
So to me, confirm is, is confirmation.
Yeah.
You're, you're confirmingcontribution.
So, if we, if we, if we look atthe end of the day, especially
those folks that are doingquietly, they're quietly going
about their business, addingvalue, helping people, etc.
Confirm unearths thecontributions.
(20:38):
That's right.
And separates the wheat from thechaff, that whole bit, it's
like, okay, again, in thatscenario that you just said,
that, let's say in that case,that guy, he might be really
loud and, and, and likable onsome levels or whatever, but
he's not, his contribution isn'tthe same.
That's right.
And it seems like we, in a justsociety, we should be judged on
(21:00):
our contributions.
Josh Merrill (21:02):
The, the mission of the company is to rightly
recognize everyone for thedifference they make at work.
Ah, I love that.
And, and I think that, you know,when you talk about performance
management, um, what getsmissed, what doesn't get talked
about is that we work.
In an incentive structure whereone person determines my
(21:24):
advancement, one persondetermines my destiny in an
organization.
And that's my manager.
And what that really comes downto is it's not about my
contribution.
It's about what my managerthinks about me.
And it's about their ability toadvocate and influence on my
behalf.
Right.
And my actual contribution issomewhere way down the list.
(21:46):
And I think if you were to saylike, Let's redo performance
management, you know, cleansheet of paper.
I think you'd probably say,well, the contribution should
come first, right?
And my ability to self promote,that should be like a distant
second.
And then my manager's ability topromote for me, that's like,
that shouldn't even make thecut.
William Tincup (22:04):
Yeah, the, the, the, the thing that's in
education is some people arereally, really great at taking
tests.
And some people, It doesn't haveanything to do with IQ or that
other stuff, it's just somepeople aren't great at taking
tests.
And so it's like, if you're justgreat at working your manager,
like, and you come out of schoolor come out of the, and you come
(22:24):
in and you're just really,really good at I said manipulate
him, it's kind of a harsh word,but you're really good at maybe
not the job.
But about managing the politicsand managing perception and all
this other stuff that hasnothing to do with the job.
That's right.
Uh, so I, I could see this kindof, first of all, finding those,
(22:45):
that, that, those things out andthen giving that data to, uh,
confirms clients and thensaying, okay, now you know, now
whether what you do with it,that's you.
Uh, but now that's, you can'tunknow it.
Now you know who's doing what.
Um, last question.
When people are, uh, buyingConfirm, and again, this is
(23:06):
different, this is differentthan what's come in the past,
it's different than what's outin the marketplace, um, what
questions, if you could scriptthem, what questions should they
ask you?
Josh Merrill (23:18):
Yeah, um, it's a, it's a really good question.
I think the, the questions thatI, um, the questions, the
questions I get asked and thequestions I hope, hope people
will ask are often two differentthings.
Right.
100%.
The questions that I hope peoplewill ask are You know, how do I,
(23:39):
how do I use this data to makebetter decisions?
Right?
Like I want to promote the rightpeople.
When you go through a promotioncycle, like a good promotion
cycle is one where nobody issurprised who was promoted and
who wasn't.
Um, a question that I would loveto be asked is, um, how do I use
this data to practice good?
Talent hygiene.
(24:00):
You know, no turnover is notgood, right?
There are some people in myorganization who, who, who
actually shouldn't be there.
Um, there are some people whoshould be there, but need to,
need to change or develop orgrow.
How do I use this data to makethose decisions?
Um, those are some of thequestions I wish I would get
asked.
Um,
William Tincup (24:18):
yeah.
Yeah.
And a bit about contribution.
How do I, how do I figure thatstuff out?
That's right.
How do I, again, If it's, ifit's, if it's tied to
compensation and it's tied topromotion, succession planning,
all these other things, the morevisibility inside that they can
have into how work actuallyhappens, as opposed to how they
(24:40):
perceive it happens.
So using data to then say, okay,this is how things actually
happen.
This engineer is the mosthelpful.
You know, this is how this workactually happens.
Well, I could talk to you allday and, uh.
Likewise.
Turns out you've got stuff todo.
So, uh, thank you so much forcoming on the show.
Josh Merrill (25:00):
Thank you for having me.
Yeah.
Uh, we got to find some more
William Tincup (25:02):
time.
100%.
And, uh, thanks for everyonelistening to the show until next
time.
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