If performance reviews were that useful, why are they done only once a year? I feel like this should be a weekly conversation. Employee growth needs constant attention, but unfortunately it only happens for a handful of hours once a year.
My attitude is more pessimistic. I feel like these reviews are only useful for HR, so that they have a paper trail in place in the event that an employee needs to be terminated.
Edit: Just so my intentions are clear, I'm a cofounder of ididwork
My personal take, and what I try to do with my reports, is to give periodic feedback, good or bad. That way people have plenty of time to either bask in the glory or improve before the final review is upon them.
Your profile didn't have your email listed - if you could shoot me an email at gupta[at]ididwork.com I'd really appreciate it!
No doubt the idea of the performance review was meant to create a additional channels of communication. But human beings are human beings and things don't always work out the way they're intended (Communism being a supreme example).
If we are empirically honest, we should conclude that performance reviews don't work, whilst avoiding undue judgement of managers who are still compelled to do them.
To critique something, you first define why it exists. Maybe I missed it, but in my opinion this was treated extremely lightly in the article. Instead it was all about the execution -- a sure sign that the point isn't a real discussion of the thing, but the popular feeling about the thing.
It's a short leap to complete anti-managerialism once one sees malice (I am often guilty of this).
You're right: it's easy to drag out the guillotine without asking honest questions.
I'd say "since it's a bad idea, it is therefore commonly done very poorly" instead. It's not a demonstration, but a cue.
Populist messages have a tendency, however, to fall apart upon further inspection. There is no doubt that people hate performance reviews -- managers and employees alike. There's no doubt that in most cases they cause and create behavior that nobody wants.
I think he misses the boat right off the bat with the purpose of the review. The purpose of the review is to make sure the manager is doing his job with the employee, knowing what's going on in the employee's work, having an interest, offering to help, seeing where the employee and the company's interests can be aligned. Some of these conversations are tough, and if you didn't require them, a lot of employees would never have the chance to say no, I don't want to be a tech lead, I'd rather get into teaching (or something similar). To view the review process as primarily raise and checklist based is to see how it's done instead of seeing what it's supposed to do. A common argument in populist writing is to say "since X is commonly done very poorly, X is therefore a bad idea altogether"
He gets even further into the cool-aid with this comment "I'm sick and tired of hearing about subordinates who fail and get fired, while bosses, whose job it was to ensure subordinate effectiveness, get promoted and receive raises in pay."
Sounds good -- as long as you think bosses should always be able to make/help subordinates be happy and productive. But while managers are definitely super people, they're not superman. Things happen in life. People get accepted at jobs they will never like. Companies take directions employees simply can't agree with. There are lots of reasons why somebody can get fired while management is not responsible. I'm not even sure that most times management is responsible, but I know that it's not all of the time. Generalizations are always false: including this one.
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