Performance Reviews Are A Waste of Time

At least weekly, I am asked for feedback or thoughts on a recent commercial interaction, most obviously for one-time transactions with a company rendering services; e.g., lawn service, gutter cleaning, teeth cleaning, financial, etc. Year over year, these requests increase (prefaced with, "And anything other than 5's is considered a failure...") and you start questioning the value-add. Tipping is a form of review. Returning or repeating customers are definitely a review of the services provided. Is there any actual value?  But I digress. . .

Image Source: "White Collar, c. 1940 - Linocuts by Giacomo G. Patri" by Thomas Shahan 3 is licensed under CC BY 2.0

In the United States, employee performance reviews are fairly de rigueur and pervasive for most jobs, especially for white-collar positions, but have you ever asked yourself what is achieved? Leaders can't wait to discuss ongoing problems if the problems would worsen. Performance improvement plans are often a precursor for firing chronic under-performers (except at Netflix). Career roadmap discussions or changes in career goals need to happen more than once per year.  So what is the intended purpose of an annual performance review?

My manager at my second full-time job started my review with the following statement: 

I have not done my job if you hear anything that we haven't previously discussed.

- Jim D, CSC Consulting manager

I found this incredibly useful and insightful, and often share this with managers and peers: feedback - positive or negative - should be in the moment, relevant, and continual for maximum impact. Of course, that assumes your manager actually tracks your work, which I've discovered is often not the case: multiple managers have asked me to write reviews for their peers! 

Performance reviews, in my opinion, are a perfunctory, HR activity rather than anything useful, and in the last 15 years, I have basically stopped any active participation, just the bare minimum effort to keep my manager out of trouble.

My Turning Point

I completed my first full year at Fortune 50 Company X, and, as expected, the new calendar year starts the performance review cycle. Performance reviews are serious business here: formalized, 360-degree feedback, scored, and time-consuming. If the scuttlebutt is correct, each year the lowest 10% are released to challenge and refresh the employee base.

Personally, I'm not concerned: I've mastered the business domain, I've contributed positively to my project, my team functions at a high level, and I've expanded my reach into other parts of the org.   The wrap-up meeting with my manager confirms this: I am top 10% for my role across the entire organization. Congrats, keep up the good work, we're lucky to have you. Whoo hoo!

At the same time performance reviews wrapped up, project senior leadership changed, and managers meet with the new leaders to introduce themselves, their teams, and their responsibilities - normal stuff.  My manager used the just-completed performance reviews to start the discussion about each person on her team.  When it was time to discuss me, unprompted the new leader stated, "Scott likes to make people feel stupid."

Wha?!?

I had no idea where this comment came from: I had not met or worked with her previously, she hadn't yet been formally introduced, and my initial meet-and-greet was two weeks out. My manager was surprised and also had no idea what her opinion was based on. I was not specifically targeted, and there were others similarly surprised by her opinions.

Regardless, I went from high performer to scum-of-the-earth overnight and realized quickly that image rehabilitation was difficult if not impossible.

And If That's Not Enough...

I've had other experiences that just further enhance my thoughts on the worthlessness of performance reviews.

Mandatory Deflation

After a poor fiscal year, one company instructed leaders to reduce review scores by 10% to reduce the annual bonus payouts. Wrong approach: performance reviews should reflect the quality (or lack thereof) of your work and a way to achieve corporate goals.

Instead, I would have expected a proactive message from the president: 

I know everyone has worked really hard over the last year, and despite your hard work fiscally it's been a rough year. Therefore, I need to let everyone know that bonuses will be smaller than in recent years, for everyone at all levels. You should not take a reduced bonus personally: we must be fiscally responsible to better position ourselves for improvements this year. I know this is tough, but I hope you understand.

Unfortunately, the company was not proactive and instead chose to game the system, frustrating everyone.

Mismatched Role Expectations

One company hired architects as Director Without Reports to ensure competitive salaries and bonus structures for their technology leaders.

Unfortunately, the performance review scoring expected directors to manage direct reports, and therefore architects scored lower compared to other directors because of this. Our manager fought hard and diminished the impact, but it still impacted our raises, end-of-year bonuses, and opportunity for growth.  Despite ongoing discussions, HR seemed incapable of understanding and made no changes to better reflect a reality they didn't grok.

Unnoticed Non-Participation

By now, I was totally jaded on performance reviews and did as little as possible, enough to not cause problems with my manager: complete self-review but don't provide any information; sign the printed review without reading or discussing; click whatever is necessary to move workflow along. I now knew this was to please HR and otherwise a complete waste of time.

More recently, my overall self-review comment was:

I am a penguin, prove me wrong.  

The first time I was surprised that no one noticed: not my immediate manager, not his director who supposedly reads reviews for all direct and indirect reports, not senior leaders who make salary/bonus decisions based on reviews.  Not a peep, even when I didn't provide any other information.

Leaders knew their team and had preconceived notions: the trusted, the hard workers, the laggards, the losers. No amount of formal performance review process would change that, but HR required the formality and so they went through the motions.

Final Thoughts

Let me be clear: for all the managers who dread performance review season and make the minimal effort required, there are those who view performance reviews as important to employees and make the commensurate effort.

My wife believes her teams deserve reviews that are insightful, thoughtful, and personal, and spends hours on each person. Her meetings with each person look back at achievements - personal, team, organization - and forward-looking at upcoming projects and goals, and is a continuation of the one-on-one meetings held throughout the year. The result: a high-functioning team that understands business challenges, expectations, business, and personal goals.

Perhaps my thoughts on performance reviews would be more positive with strong management earlier in my career, but unfortunately, that didn't happen. Now, in the later stages of my career, I've learned how to get my work done with and without the expected management support.  Is it ideal? No, but it's the reality, and as such performance reviews have fallen off my list of things to trust.