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by Samuel A. Culbert
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Every year, millions of people participate in a ritual that almost nobody believes in. Managers spend hours filling out forms they don't trust. Employees sit through conversations that make them defensive and anxious. HR departments enforce processes that generate paperwork but little genuine improvement. And everyone pretends it's working.
**Author:** Samuel A. Culbert
**Estimated Reading Time:** 45 minutes
**What You'll Learn:** - Why the traditional performance review is fundamentally broken and cannot be fixed - How reviews damage relationships, honesty, and teamwork - The hidden ways reviews serve the interests of bosses and HR rather than employees or companies - A practical alternative called the "performance preview" that actually improves results - How to implement previews in your own work relationships
**Who This Book Is For:** Managers who dread giving reviews. Employees who dread receiving them. HR professionals questioning whether their systems actually work. Leaders who suspect their evaluation processes create more problems than they solve. Anyone who has ever sat through a performance review and wondered, "What was the point of that?"
Every year, millions of people participate in a ritual that almost nobody believes in. Managers spend hours filling out forms they don't trust. Employees sit through conversations that make them defensive and anxious. HR departments enforce processes that generate paperwork but little genuine improvement. And everyone pretends it's working. Samuel Culbert, a professor at UCLA's Anderson School of Management, has spent decades studying why organizations cling to practices that fail so consistently. The performance review, he argues, is one of the most destructive rituals in modern business. It doesn't improve performance. It doesn't provide useful feedback. It doesn't even accurately measure what it claims to measure. What it does accomplish is more troubling: it reinforces power hierarchies, stifles honest communication, and creates fear that undermines the very results companies are trying to achieve. The problem isn't that managers are bad at giving reviews. The problem isn't that employees are too sensitive to receive criticism. The problem is the review itself. The entire premise is flawed. Consider what a performance review actually asks of people. A boss sits in judgment of a subordinate, evaluating their work over the past year. The subordinate is expected to listen, accept the assessment, and commit to improvement. But this setup ignores several uncomfortable truths. The boss may not fully understand what the subordinate does. The subordinate may have valuable insights about how the boss's behavior affects their work. The results being evaluated are almost always produced through collaboration, not individual effort. And the whole conversation takes place under the shadow of compensation decisions, which means neither party can be fully honest. Culbert's argument is radical but simple: the performance review cannot be reformed. It must be eliminated. In its place, he proposes something fundamentally different: the performance preview. Instead of looking backward to assign blame, previews look forward to solve problems. Instead of one-sided evaluation, previews involve mutual accountability. Instead of annual rituals, previews happen whenever they're needed. This shift requires…
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Get the complete summary in the appPerformance reviews are fundamentally flawed and cannot be fixed. They must be eliminated.
Reviews create fear that destroys honesty, teamwork, and problem-solving.
Objectivity in evaluation is impossible. All reviews reflect the boss's biases and self-interest.
Pay and performance don't have much to do with each other. Linking them distorts both.
Reviews don't create accountability; they create self-protection and blame.
HR perpetuates reviews to maintain its own power, not to improve performance.
"Get Rid of the Performance Review!" is a strong fit if you want practical ideas around business, management, leadership, especially themes like performance reviews are fundamentally flawed and cannot be fixed. they must be eliminated; reviews create fear that destroys honesty, teamwork, and problem-solving. The MinuteRead summary distills these concepts into a focused read, whether you're deciding whether to buy the book or applying its lessons at work.
Motivated to help readers with it's time to finally put the performance review out of its misery, Samuel A. Culbert wrote “Get Rid of the Performance Review!” to package those ideas for a fast, focused read. In “Get Rid of the Performance Review!”, Samuel A. Culbert focuses on it's time to finally put the performance review out of its misery. Through “Get Rid of the Performance Review!”, Samuel A. Culbert distills the core ideas on business into lessons readers can absorb in a single short sitti…
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