HRM304 · Skill 2 · Pitcher · Scenario 1

LumiTech Shenzhen — pitch one specific change

Your group of 4–5 has 13 minutes to draft a 90-second pitch on one structural change to a broken performance-review system. You won't fix everything. Find the one change that would make this system bring real information into the open.

The scenario — what's in place

LumiTech Shenzhen

320-person Chinese subsidiary of LumiTech Corp., a US-headquartered enterprise SaaS firm. Six months into running the parent's annual review template, translated unchanged from San Francisco. Something is wrong.

The four parts of the system

1. Annual cycle, seven rated dimensions

Every employee rated by line manager (and self-rated) on a 1–5 scale for:

Productivity — does the volume meet the role?
Quality of execution — is the work right, or does it come back?
Ownership — does the person drive issues to resolution unprompted?
Collaboration — do they work well across teams?
Communication — do complex points land?
Customer focus — does the work serve a real downstream user?
Growth mindset — do they seek and act on feedback?

The gap between manager and self-rating is meant to be the conversation.

2. Calibration meeting

All line managers in a department meet for a half-day with the department head. Each manager defends their ratings to their peers. The department head moderates; ratings are adjusted in the room to fit a soft distribution (target: ~15% at 4–5, ~70% at 3, ~15% at 1–2). No employee is in the room.

3. Review meeting

30-minute scheduled meeting between line manager and employee. Manager walks the employee through all seven dimensions with the calibrated rating and a written comment. The employee adds written comments. The skip-level (the department head) signs off on every form before it goes to HR.

4. Translation and tooling

The form is in English. The conversation is in whichever language the pair prefers. The HRIS (Workday) translates UI labels into Chinese but not free-text comments.

San Francisco benchmark

The same template runs at LumiTech HQ with neither enthusiasm nor exits. People accept it.

What's happening in Shenzhen, six months in

The HR director has been asked by the regional VP to diagnose and fix before the next cycle.

Forms come back flat. Ratings cluster in one band; written comments are general and positive. One regional manager called the cycle "elaborate form-filling." None of this is in any official report yet.
Departures rising. Voluntary exits have risen since the cycle ran — anecdotally concentrated among the people the system was supposed to identify and retain. HR has not yet broken numbers out by review outcome.
Calibration absenteeism. Several managers now join the half-day calibration by video. Two have skipped recent calibrations entirely.
Skip-level rubber stamp. Department heads sign off everything. No one can remember a form coming back for revision.

Your redesign question. You have authority to make one specific change to the architecture — the structure of how this system works. Not "communicate better." Not "train managers more." Change the form itself, the timing, who is in the calibration room, the channel, the criteria, the language, who can see results, or who signs off. The one change most likely to make this system bring real performance information into the open. What is the change, why does it work, who pays the cost?

Your pitch — four parts

You have 90 seconds for the pitch and 60 seconds for the panel question and your answer. Decide who plays which role before you stand up.

What's broken. One specific failure mode. Not a list of three. One thing.
What changes. Your one concrete change. Change the structure, not just the wording.
Who pays the cost. Whose job becomes harder, whose face is at risk, whose budget shrinks, whose freedom shrinks. If nobody pays a cost, nothing has actually changed.
What evidence backs it. One source from Session 3 (feedback architecture, attribution, developmental vs evaluative feedback, J-PAL) or Session 4 (face, voice, authoritarian leadership and silence).

Roles in your group

Writer
Drafts on paper during prep. Knows the design best.

1–2 presenters
Deliver the 90s. Split parts 1+2 and 3+4 if two.

Answerer
Takes the panel question. Not one of the presenters — usually the writer.

The answerer rule is strict, not optional: it forces the whole group to know the pitch.