Rethinking Performance Management

Do you even remember Q1?

Neither do I - yet this is when most companies run yearly evaluations, right when recency bias hits hardest. 

If it’s tough to remember what happened last month, how can we convincingly tell our managers what made us proud in 2025? Unless our goals were crystal clear, documented somewhere, (and unchanged along the way), we’re left piecing together a blurred memory.

To make it more ironic, 2026 is already peeking around the corner, asking us to define new goals - as if we were starting from a blank page.

This is the paradox we face: in a world that’s volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous - shaped daily by politics, markets, and new technologies - we’re asked to set ambitious targets. Curveballs are guaranteed, control is limited, and yet predictions are still built on last year’s numbers and shareholder expectations. 

Annual reviews: the wrong lens

Annual reviews are not the enemy – but the way we use them often is. A blurry, backward-looking recap of what might have happened doesn’t help anyone. If anything, it’s painful.

The only part of an annual review that makes sense is data – and the story behind it. Numbers without context are meaningless; context without numbers is speculation.

In other words: the annual review should set the tone for the future. It should be the moment where leaders go deeper, understand their people better, and create alignment for what’s coming – rather than rehashing half-forgotten achievements.

Annual reviews still have a place - but not as the main event. They only work if they sit alongside mid-year reviews and regular conversations. Otherwise, we’re measuring the past instead of shaping the future.

The elephant in the room: goals without alignment

We also make the mistake of asking each team to define its own goals in isolation. The result? The old elephant and blind men parable: every department works in silos, defining objectives that make sense for them but don’t align across the organisation.

Without company-wide objectives, the whole exercise collapses. Instead of alignment, you get silos. Instead of focus, you get contradictions. And in the end, teams chase goals that cancel each other out.

A minimum viable system for performance management

Performance management isn’t a ritual to tick off once a year. It’s a system that only works when all the parts reinforce each other. Strip it down to the essentials, and you get:

• Company-wide objectives → clear direction from the start.

• Team and individual goals linked to those objectives → so everyone sees how their work connects.

• Regular conversations → touchpoints to adapt when reality shifts.

• Annual reviews → to explain the data and set the tone for the future.

That’s it. Not more forms, not more bureaucracy; just the basics, done consistently.

Otherwise, we’re just spinning in circles. Busy, but not better - and by next Q1, we won’t even remember what we were chasing.