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

1. 16 I N D I A N M A N A G E M E N T A U G U S T 2 0 1 5

2. I N D I A N M A N A G E M E N T A U G U S T 2 0 1 5 17
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
P
erformance 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 approach
As 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
Futurematters,
notthepast

3. 18 I N D I A N M A N A G E M E N T A U G U S T 2 0 1 5
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 andAdobe—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 InMobi
We 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
calledYaWiO.
YaWiO is about imagination (haYa inTurkish),
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.
©shutterstock.com
Maithreyi Sairam
is Associate-Talent
Branding, InMobi.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

4. I N D I A N M A N A G E M E N T A U G U S T 2 0 1 5 19
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 @ InMobi
The 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 @ InMobi
Most 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
cover
story
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
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

5. 20 I N D I A N M A N A G E M E N T A U G U S T 2 0 1 5
improve, and get feedback to
attain and work positively towards
that aspiration.
No normal distribution, no
ranking
It 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 pay
The 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.
©shutterstock.com

6. I N D I A N M A N A G E M E N T A U G U S T 2 0 1 5 21
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 managers
Generally, 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 forward
Being 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
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
cover
story