The Danger of Maquerading Polemics

You've got to be careful about believing what you read.

For example, the Wall Street Journal Online had a short article this morning on the subject of performance reviews: Yes, Everyone Really Does Hate Performance Reviews by Samuel Culbert. It was a short little article that railed against performance reviews with the conclusion that they are hopelessly flawed and need to be abandoned. The author does a good job railing and ranting about performance reviews, but doesn't do much to present options and solutions.

I thought that there had to be more to Culbert's thought on this, so I looked at the abstract and reviews of his book at Amazon.com. And, sure enough, in his book he does propose an alternative. But why wasn't more equal weight given to both the problem and the solution in his Wall Street Journal article? I have three ideas on that.

First, problems get more readers than solutions: 'An Alternative to Traditional Performance Reviews' just doesn't attract as many readers. It's not a sensational, rah-rah sort of topic.

Second, many people  are losing the patience and failing to prioritize the time to read anything longer than a couple hundred words at a time. To do a decent job at presenting the problem and a solution for performance reviews, an author would need to get into some detail, maybe present some research, and explain some models. That takes many more words, and it requires more thoughtful attention from the reader.

And finally, polemics are an easy sale; objective debate is not. Polemics are fantastic, attention-grabbing and often enjoyable to read, and they are also often one-sided, shallow, and damaging when taken as the whole truth about a subject. Unfortunately, much news these days is polemic maquerading as debate.

Culbert's co-author for the book is an editor at the Wall Street Journal. That fact wasn't mentioned in the article, but it seems to me that could be important for readers to know. If someone is promoting a book - which this article seems to be doing - and one of the authors who benefits from that is also an editor, then the reader ought to know.

For another, more useful look at performance evaluations - both problems and solutions - see Dick Grote's article (PDF) from the September/October 2008 Conference Board Review.