3. Performance Management
Continuous performance
The cycle that replaces the annual event
Where a collective agreement applies, it governs. Check the agreement before applying any of this.
Use when
Designing or redesigning enterprise performance management
- 1
Expectations
Clear goals + behaviours, set together, written down
- 2
Check-ins
Regular, short, forward-looking; the manager habit
- 3
Feedback
In the moment, specific, both directions
- 4
Review
Summative conversation with no surprises in it
- 5
Recognition
Consequences that match the record, visibly fair
“The annual review should be the most boring meeting of the year.”
How to use it
Design principle: the annual review should be the most boring meeting of the year because everything in it has been said already. Invest the change effort in the check-in habit, not the form. In a unionized environment the case is consistency: the same expectations, the same conversations, documented the same way for everyone. Bring it to the union early rather than presenting it finished.
Card details
- Model type
- Loop
- Origin status
- Synthesis
- Content last reviewed
- 28 July 2026
Origin
SynthesisPractitioner shift away from annual ratings, documented across Adobe, Deloitte, GE and others; assembled here as a cycle.