At any rate, my experience with the HSPR is limited to the hiring process – these are forcibly subjective because you just don’t know enough about the candidate to do anything other than make an openly subjective call about the value you expect them to add in the future.

Like most IT folks, I have tons of experience with the dishonestly subjective performance review (the “objective” based review) and I know that it sucks.

Is there anyone out there who has been through a performance review that was future looking and openly subjective? I’d love to hear your story.

No really. One of the things your post made me think of is that if you enter the performance review like an interview, you would again be evaluating future performance instead of past performance. While I’m not advocating actually firing people (that’s cool if you’re my manager but others might not deal with that as well as I would), I do think the mind set is valuable.

If performance reviews are backward looking when they should be forward looking, we need to find another way of thinking about what their purpose is. Are you simply evaluating bonuses? Then a backward looking review may be fine. Are you thinking about staffing future projects? Then you may want to think of everyone like you are interviewing them for the first time. Are you thinking about something else entirely and you just need to do the performance review so YOUR manager will leave you alone? Then it doesn’t matter what you do, most likely you are doomed either way.

If you can’t tell by me post, I’m bitter about the idea of annual performance reviews. It’s the number one reason I became a consultant. I prefer continuous feedback. The type you talk about in your Instant Feedback post and the type Rothman and Derby talk about in their book “Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management.” It’s one of the most de-motivating management practices I know of.