Articles / Performance management
Seven readable articles on goals, ratings, feedback, fairness and changing the way performance is managed.
Each article ends with a practical next step.
Seven questions, each answered in one line, with how solid the evidence is. Read the ones you disagree with.
| The question | The short answer | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Do individual goals add up to organizational performance? | Not automatically. Goals add up when someone reconciles the commitments that conflict, when what teams learn travels back up, and when the system is built to enable work rather than to police it. | Contested |
| Expectations, KPIs, KRAs, OKRs: does the label change anything? | Less than the rollout promises. What changes performance sits underneath every label, and which format helps you depends on your context, not on which one is fashionable. | Not yet established |
| Does more frequent feedback produce better work? | It can, when the conversation is close enough to the work to change it. Frequency alone is not the ingredient, and feedback aimed at the person rather than the work can make things worse. | Not yet established |
| Do ratings actually improve performance? | Rarely on their own. A rating is a decision aid, and it serves whoever it was designed for. Decide who that is before you defend it or dismantle it. | Contested |
| Does calibration make performance decisions fairer? | It can, and the deciding factor is what people bring into the room. Calibration run on evidence raises the credibility of a decision. Calibration run on opinion launders it. | Contested |
| What actually happens when organizations remove ratings? | The score disappears; the judgment does not. It may move into pay decisions, talent reviews and private labels, while the replacement remains hard to see. | Observed |
| What should we retain, redesign, or remove? | Start from the outcome you are buying and the people problem you are solving. The right system for an ambitious organization is the wrong one for an organization that needs reliability, and neither is decided by what the form looks like. | Contested |
It runs from the goals people are set to the decision about what to change. Pay design, promotion decisions, hiring and development sit outside it, and are named inside the articles only where they collide with the performance system. The next investigation takes pay: what the evidence says about linking money to judgment, and what that does to both.
If you know a study that answers one of these questions better than we have, or contradicts us, write to us. We publish corrections.
2 articles
Not automatically. Goals add up when someone reconciles the commitments that conflict, when what teams learn travels back up, and when the system is built to enable work rather than to police it.
Less than the rollout promises. What changes performance sits underneath every label, and which format helps you depends on your context, not on which one is fashionable.
4 articles
It can, when the conversation is close enough to the work to change it. Frequency alone is not the ingredient, and feedback aimed at the person rather than the work can make things worse.
Rarely on their own. A rating is a decision aid, and it serves whoever it was designed for. Decide who that is before you defend it or dismantle it.
It can, and the deciding factor is what people bring into the room. Calibration run on evidence raises the credibility of a decision. Calibration run on opinion launders it.
The score disappears; the judgment does not. It may move into pay decisions, talent reviews and private labels, while the replacement remains hard to see.
1 article
Start from the outcome you are buying and the people problem you are solving. The right system for an ambitious organization is the wrong one for an organization that needs reliability, and neither is decided by what the form looks like.
How to use these articles
Each guide separates what is known, what is uncertain and what you can try next. You do not need a research background to use it.
About the evidence behind the guidesOnce a month
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Questions or corrections
Share a practical question, a correction or an example from your organization.