Performance Reviews

Why we don’t love performance reviews

We have big feelings about performance reviews. Here is our honest two cents: We don’t like the idea of waiting to give feedback until our annual or bi-annual review. Feedback is not helpful 4 months or 6 months later. Feedback is most useful when it’s given now - or as close to the event actually happening. Whether you want to affirm that you love someone’s work or attitude or you are trying to course-correct something that is not quite on target, feedback is most actionable and useful when it’s timely.

We also don’t like the idea of surprises at work, ever. When we don’t know what’s coming, it increases our anxiety and decreases our psychological safety. Feeling safe at work is the basis for taking risks, learning, growing, and innovating. Performance reviews often create a lot of scary feelings in employees - like we’re suddenly going to learn that we’re not valued or we’ve been doing something wrong for a while.

We should be giving feedback regularly

Instead of doing a formal performance review, we encourage you to think about giving feedback every single week in manager 1:1 meetings. You should be giving positive feedback and critical feedback regularly so that we can double down on what’s working and create a culture of continual improvement.

What if we look forward [goals], instead of backward [performance reviews]?

Instead of giving feedback that is looking backward, what if we leveraged the past to create goals for the future? Instead of calling them “performance reviews” what if we took a pause from all of the hustle and bustle and took time an hour to reflect with our managers about how we’re going to leverage the past to set individual goals for our future? To us, this is more of a “growth mindset” approach - it’s a model that encourages continual learning.

What do we do, then, about promotions?

To us, a promotion is about one of two things: 1) the quantity of work has changed from the original job description or 2) the scope of work has changed from the original job description. It’s not necessarily about the quality of work. To be able to promote someone, then, you need to have a job description - and review it at least once a year. In a fast-growing startup, this may be as often as every quarter.

How do we reward people, then, for doing a great job?

You can always increase someone’s equity, give them a spot bonus, or even a raise for doing great work. You likely want to do this quietly so that it doesn’t breed competition on your team. You can also publicly acknowledge someone for doing extraordinary work at an awards or promotions event, which can be a powerful way to model for others what sorts of work or behaviors your leadership team values.

How do we give hard feedback that will help us fire someone?

You should consider giving someone critical feedback as soon as you can. You can repeat this feedback as often as you feel is appropriate and then you can always escalate this feedback into a Performance Improvement Plan, which is a structured format for coaching someone off your team. You always want to talk to an HR professional or lawyer before you go down this path to limit risk for your company.