What box are you in? Is it one where you feel inspired, innovative, collaborative and willing to go the extra mile? I rather doubt it and I wonder being contained in a box would generate that kind of feeling and experience – aren't boxes by definition bounded, confining, claustrophobic, and limiting in their horizons?
This week I've noticed a lot of information flowing my way about the 9-box grid. For those of us who don't know what it is, it's a very commonly used way of categorising an employee's performance and potential on two axes on a 3 by 3 matrix giving 9 categories. There are some variations on what each of the nine categories is labelled, (you can see images of some of them here) but basically each has a 'star performer' category in the top right hand box (high performance and high potential), and a 'poor performer' (low performance and low potential) in the bottom left hand box.
In most organisations using this categorization method there is a mid-year and annual re-calibration of the employee pool - usually not by the employees being boxed. Once all the individual names are agreed to be in the 'right' boxes decisions are made on investment (or not) in that employee.