Most organizations require some level of emphasis on sustained performance to survive. This is particularly true of publically traded organizations or those concerned with profit-and-loss accountability. In short, performance needs to be managed. As a result, performance management (PM) is a key practice in business and is often one of the primary areas of responsibility for industrial and organizational (I-O) practitioners in organizational settings. It is also a key lever for change in organization development (OD) interventions (e.g., Church, Rotolo, Shull, & Tuller, 2014), particularly when linked to specific behaviors that are being introduced and/or reinforced for the future success of the organization. Unfortunately, as Pulakos, Mueller Hanson, Arad, and Moye (2015) have noted, leaders and employees in most organizations fundamentally dislike PM. In fact, this dislike is so intense that it has resulted in professional conferences, workshops, and popular business books focused on the simplification, replacement, or even demise of the field (e.g., Culbert, 2010; Effron & Ort, 2010). There is even a PM book for dummies (Lloyd, 2009).

Since 2007, my work has involved helping companies to maximize the value of a technology system that supports strategic human resource processes, including performance management (PM). This technology is largely agnostic when it comes to PM process design. It can be configured for PM processes that make extensive ratings or avoid ratings entirely, encourage elaborate goal cascading or completely forego the use of goals, focus on once a year PM events or encourage ongoing employee–manager check-ins, and so forth. In sum, the system can be configured in any number of ways.