Why Companies Can't Quit Jack Welch's Much-Hated Employee-Ranking System
&gt; The problem here is that Blizzard Entertainment and their performance management system mixes the two approaches,” Grote said by email. “They’re using absolute comparison terms to make a relative comparison judgement.”<p>I think this is an interesting take. If you have to stack rank employees, then that&#x27;s at least a valid piece of data, a relative comparison. We can argue about the value of that relative data and how it&#x27;s appropriate to use it, but at least it&#x27;s a fairly honest piece of data.<p>If you attempt to portray this as an absolute piece of data, either by saying the bottom 5% don&#x27;t meet expectations, or by applying quotas to absolute ratings (i.e. 5% must not meet expectations), then now you&#x27;re producing something fundamentally dishonest.