This day the seed of doubt you planted months ago bloomed into the fabulous destruction of a colleagues’ project.

Your company’s performance review system is loosely based on the Highlander film series; there can only be one!  Genuine cooperation begins early in the fiscal year.  By Q2 a master performance review manipulator (or PRM Practitioner) like yourself, will begin the delicate ritual of delivering highly visible cross team work while privately trying to generate negative success for your colleagues.  As a PRM practitioner you execute this public/private dance masterfully.

The quarter before the performance review analysis started you saw that your competition, led by Jack*, was too close to delivering on their commitments.  Each day elements of his** vision statement were coming into focus.  The metrics used to show project progress indicated reduced costs and increased productivity.  Jack, there can only be one and it can’t be you.

You delegated the tactical work on your program to a subordinate of yours so they could build some leadership experience. This freed up cycles to focus on sabotage.

One anonymous call from a pre-paid cell phone to your companies compliance department “integrity hotline” changed the year for Jack.  You shared a possible conflict of interest with some of the vendors Jack hired, several expense report violations and some travel expenses outside of policy.  The compliance team follows the same review model as you do.  It was late in the year and they needed a high profile violator to show their own value. 

Just as Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramírez taught you; there can be only one.

*Jack is not his real name.
**He may be a she.