How Performance Management Is Killing Performance—and What to Do About It

Rethink, Redesign, Reboot.

Most people associate performance management with the annual review, which is universally dreaded by employees, management, and HR professionals alike. It’s a cookie-cutter, fear-based, top-down approach that emphasizes negatives over positives and stifles healthy career conversations. It’s never been shown to motivate anyone to do anything but try to avoid it, but nobody feels like they have any alternative. Tamra Chandler has one—and it works.

Actually, Chandler doesn't offer a single alternative—she offers an infinite number of them. Each organization that uses her Performance Management Reboot is able to develop its own unique version since it doesn’t make a lot of sense for organizations with different cultures, in different industries and sectors, to do things exactly the same way. Grounded in the latest scientific findings about motivation, it’s a transparent, employee-driven process that values collaboration over competition and rewards people for acquiring new skills and increasing their contribution instead of hitting arbitrary benchmarks.

Chandler lays out the general principles and then walks you through each step in creating a performance management process that employees will actually embrace rather than avoid and that will help you meet the three objectives of great performance management: developing your people, rewarding them equitably, and driving your organization’s performance. It’s the first comprehensive, step-by-step guide to creating a performance management solution that’s tailored to your organization’s needs and goals and that places the emphasis squarely on your greatest asset: your people.

M. Tamra Chandler is a bona fide people maven. Drawing on her years of experience and research into what motivates us, she offers innovative solutions for organizations seeking the ultimate win-win: inspired people driving inspiring performance. She’s also the CEO and cofounder of a thriving Seattle-based consulting company called PeopleFirm. Twice recognized by Consulting magazine as one of the top consultants in the United States, Chandler is an award-winning leader in her field with more than twenty-five years of experience guiding clients through varied and complex business transformation projects. She draws inspiration from her husband, two children, and three pedigreed mutts. 

Dave Ulrich is the Rensis Likert Professor at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan and a partner at the RBL Group and the author or coauthor of many books, including The HR Scorecard and The Why of Work.