It’s at this time of the year that businesses do their performance reviews.

Employees are measured against a set of KPIs, SLAs, BPIs, gate openers, whatever. Don’t worry too much about the acronyms- they all mean the same thing…targets and behaviours.

Then, all of those results are put together and plotted against a bell curve.

Management will tell you that the bell curve occurs naturally and it’s an organic measure of performance within most teams. In some it may be, in a team where all members are performing highly and killing their targets, it’s an artificial mechanism to save on pay rises and bonuses. Yes, that came out loud. Yes, I have my soapbox out…but hey, what do you expect with Mercury moving into Sag?

My old boss commented the other day that performance review time just isn’t the same without me there arguing about how we could justify moving someone who had achieved all their targets by the requisite percentage and displayed the correct behaviours, into a band 3 or average rating just so it could fit the bell curve.

‘If a 3 is defined as someone who has achieved some targets, but not all, and a 4 is defined as someone who has achieved all and exceeded some…’ I’d say.

Each year he’d sigh and finish the argument with ‘Jo, it’s just the way it is. Find a way of getting your staff into the curve.’

And each year I’d say, ‘but it doesn’t make it right.’

And each year I’d cringe and curse when the broadcast came out from the Mother-ship saying how well the process went the previous year, so would be unchanged this year.

And each year I’d storm back into his office and say ‘it only went so well because no one had the balls to tell them that it sucks.’

And each year he’d sigh and say, ‘I know, Jo, I agree with you, but just do it, hey?’

Given that there were no pay rises on offer, I really don’t know why it bothered me so much- but it did. There was a principle at stake.

The Capricorn Moon gives us an opportunity each month to check in on our achievements, to draw up action plans, to put strategies around what has to be done. It doesn’t matter whether you’re running a global empire, trying to lose 5kgs, or stay on top of the kids daily activities, the Cap Moon is when you stop and check out just how far you’ve come.

Try not to dwell on how far you still have to go- especially if you have Saturn in Aries- but rather what you need to do in order to get there. Likewise, don’t mull over the coulda shoulda wouldas and beat yourself up for your perceived failures. Instead, look for the successes and pop an action plan around how you can rectify what hasn’t worked. It doesn’t have to be complicated or formal.

Here at Jo Tracey Astrology we’ll be putting our annual performance under the microscope.

As the shareholders informed me around the dinner table last night, new revenue financial targets have been missed, although new business is up. Some staff members are sleeping on the job (Kali the wonderdog, I’m looking at you), and the CEO (that would be me) is allowing distractions to creep in and around. I suspect our performance rating will be a ND (needs development).

Over the next couple of days, I’ll be taking us on an off-site to put some structure around our mission statement, determine our go forward strategy for 2014, and get a helicopter view of what the financial targets should be looking like- and how we’ll get there.

What am I talking about? There’s just me and the dog, and my off-site will be to my favourite coffee shop…but a girl can think big…right?