Prof. Samuel A. Culbert on Getting Rid of the Performance Review

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Episode #117 is a conversation with Prof. Samuel A. Culbert of the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

Along with Daniel Pink, he is a fellow alum of Northwestern University. Prof. Culbert has a BS in Systems Engineering, the precursor of the Industrial Engineering department in which I was a student. Dr. Culbert then earned a PhD in clinical psychology from UCLA.

Today, we are talking about his most recent book, Get Rid of the Performance Review!: How Companies Can Stop Intimidating, Start Managing–and Focus on What Really Matters.

Much like Dan Pink's take on incentives in the workplace, Culbert is a contrarian about the generally accepted (yet dysfunctional) practice of the “annual performance review.” In his writing, Culbert calls them “corporate theatre,” as well as a “sham,” a “facade,” “immoral,” and “intimidating.” In the podcast, we talk about the problems and alternatives to this common management practice.

For a link to episode, refer people to  www.leanblog.org/117.

Recent articles by Prof. Culbert via my blog posts:

• Professor Channels Dr. Deming and Writes “Get Rid of the Annual Review”
• New Book Gives Negative Review to Performance Reviews

Prof. Culbert mentioned that he only discovered the work of Dr. W. Edwards Deming a few years back, although they were both railing against the annual performance review in 1980. They must be “long lost cousins,” Culbert says, and I would agree.