Gautam’s talking about performance reviews today. He asks "If it serves so many functions why is it often such a de-energising and negative process?" It’s a fair question.

Here are two guesses:

1. – The medium is the message. If you’ve got to slog through reams of paper to do your reviews, it almost doesn’t matter what the results are. The process alone is painful enough to make the whole excercise negative.

2. -  True, reflective evaluation is hard.  Who said being fair, honest and helpful was supposed to be cake? It’s part of what makes the whole thing worthwhile. We actually take a short break from our daily efforts to think about our performance and that of others. It should be a smidge challenging.

No?