Performance Reviews: A Discourse

The psychometrics of man makes some things a necessary evil. Let us take the annual performance reviews in corporate organizations for example. There can be no denying that performance reviews are absolutely critical. Why? Because of the way we’re groomed from childhood. Because we were taught, when very young, that in order to expect good results we must perform. However, as it is with any other thing, this bit of information, gets twisted in our brain and by the time we graduate and are ready to migrate from a world of academics to one of economics, it reads something like ‘If we perform we must expect good results’. And as we proceed through the first year of our career, this faith is fed by our respective managers/mentors by constant appreciations of the things we learn (and here I must state that the intended audience of this blog are not the happy-go-lucky people of the world but that minute sub-set of them that consider themselves to be achievers and are ready to debate that fact!), for freshers are expected mostly to learn trade and not do trade!(again trade is used in a much broader sense here) And then suddenly we are expected to grow up and deliver. And we do deliver, sometimes to our own astonishment! As that happens we begin to expect: Work Done => Praise Hard-earned. But industry is a whole different ball-game. And it doesn’t necessarily pay you back in the same terms. When the year ends, not all things look nice and fair; if the revenues are not good the axe has to fall. And people walk away disheartened, feeling that Newton’s 3rd law is valid no more. That makes most despondent and they hold up another perspective of it. They migrate. Leave and let live. Descent by-product of human psychometrics based on above mentioned inputs. The strong have always conquered new shores. And the strong are usually capable to migrate safely, sometimes even with bumper bonuses.


Based on the above, one should ask, whether or not is it worth the man-hours spent on achieving such a review. But the answer was clear at the beginning. It is absolutely critical to have one! It doesn’t hurt the movers for vertical change is good. It doesn’t hurt the absorbing organisations as they gain resource wealth. And lastly, it is good for ailing organisations in the sense that it gets you on a platform where you have to rethink your position and strategy and approach and that means change and change is better. Performance reviews are not de-motivating. They just are the kicks that make change necessary by placing your motivations correctly.