The annual performance review comes from a time when many jobs could be reviewed objectively, as this article points out; if employees stand in front of a conveyer belt all day polishing widgets, you can easily count the widgets as they come down the line and see which employees are hitting their goals and which folks are missing them. But current times focus on knowledge work, which cannot be quantified or understood properly from these outdated reviews. This doesn’t mean reviewing performance doesn’t work; what isn’t working is the industrial age method of measuring and reviewing work and the people doing that work. When future goals have shifted from things like “polish 10 more widgets a day,” reviews must change to reflect these new goals.
