Performance reviews can provide an important feedback mechanism that gives us a measure of our success. We want to celebrate our successes and feel like we're contributing, and we want also to be challenged to improve and become better humans. 

Traditionally, performance reviews have revolved around individual KPIs set up collaboratively with our managers the year before. Unfortunately, they often have varying results, mainly because little time is invested in them and they often end up, for one reason or another, as a box-ticking exercise. This is where a standard performance review can fall a little flat. Some feedback is better than none, but having a praise culture without constructive feedback stunts our personal growth, giving a somewhat hollow ring to the praise we do receive.

In most cases, if the organization doesn't care, why would our people? 

So, the first improvement we could make is to consider our performance through three lenses: the organization, the team, and our colleagues. Favoring shared commitments over individual performance will increase our collaboration techniques.

Next, we often rely on our manager (who leads our people) to set the system up for us, but we don't need to. We are able to easily set this up ourselves. Also, we can ask for feedback at any time we'd like to; all we need to do is to convene a feedback session with the appropriate people.

We should consider an approach that is less taxing on individuals, timely, and more meaningful to those involved. Here are a couple of ideas as to how we can do that.