Coming soon · Book Profile
HBRs 10 Must Reads on Performance Management
A curated collection of Harvard Business Review articles arguing that performance management must shift from backward-looking, individual accountability toward continuous, development-focused, collaboration-enabling systems that help employees grow and thrive.
A profile of this book is on the way.
What it’s about
Traditional annual performance reviews are widely despised, time-consuming, and increasingly out of step with modern work, yet they persist. This collection of ten essential HBR articles diagnoses why legacy appraisal systems fail—their fixation on ratings, financial rewards, and past behavior—and lays out a practical blueprint for reinvention. Drawing on companies from Deloitte and GE to Wells Fargo, Alaska Airlines, IBM, and Telstra, the book shows how to replace once-a-year ratings with frequent check-ins, avoid the traps of surrogation and bias, use people analytics ethically, design metrics that foster rather than kill collaboration, retain top talent through job sculpting, break the boss-driven set-up-to-fail syndrome, and create the conditions for employees to thrive. It equips managers and leaders to build performance systems that improve current results while developing the workforce their organizations need for the future.
The through-line
- Who it’s for
- A manager or HR/business leader who wants to get the best from their people and keep top talent while remaining competitive.
- The problem
- Traditional performance appraisals are time-consuming, disliked, and fail to improve current performance or develop future talent. They feel overwhelmed, frustrated, and unsure whether their evaluation practices are fair, effective, or driving people away.
- The plan
- Replace or radically change annual reviews with frequent, forward-looking check-ins.
- Measure performance with reliable, future-focused data and multiple metrics rather than single ratings.
- Match employees to work through job sculpting to retain and energize them.
- Recognize and reverse the set-up-to-fail dynamic by challenging assumptions and intervening candidly.
- Design shared goals and scorecards that reward collaboration across silos.
- The payoff
- Employees grow, stay, and thrive; teams collaborate; the organization builds the workforce it needs to compete. · Managers spend less time on paperwork and more on coaching, with fairer and more accurate people decisions.
See our guide
Related profiles we’ve built
Additional reading
- Design, Implementation and Evaluation of Assessment and Development Centres; Best practice guidelines · British Psychological Society (BPS)
Cited by the author as an authoritative source for best practice, covering key issues like fairness, design, and evaluation that are central to the book's guidance.
- Assessment Centres (3rd edn) · C Woodruffe
Recommended for readers seeking a broader overview and history of the assessment centre method.
- The big five personality dimensions and job-performance; a meta-analysis · Barrick, M R and Mount, K M
Provides the empirical support for the book's caution against over-relying on personality tests in selection, a key topic in Chapter 5.
- A theory of the validity of predictors in selection · M Smith
Offers a theoretical framework for understanding why different selection tools have varying levels of effectiveness, underpinning the book's core argument.
- Competence at Work · Spencer, L M and Spencer, S M
A foundational text on the concept of competence, relevant to Chapter 2 on developing a competence framework.
- Development and Assessment Centres · Charles Woodruffe
Cited as a key text for readers wanting a more recent and in-depth exposition of assessment centre work, a core topic of the book.
- Performance Management: The new realities · Michael Armstrong and Angela Baron
The book uses Armstrong and Baron's definition of performance management as its foundation, making their work a primary source for understanding this core concept.
- The Competent Manager: A model for effective performance · R. F. Boyatzis
The author attributes the current usage and definition of 'competency' to Boyatzis, making this a foundational text for a central theme of the book.
- Appraisal and Feedback: Making performance review work · Clive Fletcher
Fletcher is cited as an authority on appraisals, a key one-to-one interaction within performance management, providing deeper insight into this specific practice.
- The Easy Guide to Repertory Grids · D. Jankowicz
The book presents the repertory grid as a powerful technique for developing interview models; this book is recommended as a highly accessible introduction to the method.