This is one of many short notes on management that I'm planning to post on Substack. I might crosspost to the Forum/LW if there's interest. Happy to discuss in comments!

There’s a difference between:

• Local feedback (”That email was really well clear, it would have been great if there were a summary too.”) and
• Global feedback (”I’m glad you work here. You’re especially strong at written communications, but it would be great if you could improve your attention to detail”).

You could be synced up with your direct report locally but not globally, or vice versa.

You could be giving too much negative local feedback and too much positive global feedback, or vice versa.

The weekly mini performance review

I’ve found it useful to write a short (3-4 sentence) piece of global feedback, like a mini performance review, for each person I manage. I copy this across in our meeting notes from week to week, occasionally tweaking things if my overall assessment has changed.

This means that we’re always synced up on their overall performance, so there won’t be any surprises come the annual performance review.

It also helps to put specific feedback in context: if they made a big mistake one week, then I’ll share that, but right next to that they’ll see my overall assessment (which is usually positive!).

It doesn’t take long - maybe less than a minute on average - to copy this mini performance review across from last week’s agenda to this week’s, and check that it’s still accurate. If I need to tweak it, that might take a bit longer, but in that case it’s worth it to stay synced up on their overall performance.

(Some people imagine that it’s terrifying to get a weekly performance review, but because we do this every week and it rarely changes, it makes performance management almost boring.)

What might these look like?

Here’s a rough template:

• Start with a sentence that says how they’re performing overall (below expectations / performing well / exceeding expectations)
• One sentence summarizing their strengths
• One sentence summarizing what you’d like them to improve (maybe framed in terms of what they’d need to achieve the next promotion)
• Maybe one final summary sentence

Example (for a hypothetical product manager)

You’re performing well, and I’m excited to keep working with you. Because of your regular, perceptive user interviews, you have a really great understanding of our users; you iterate quickly; and you come up with creative product ideas. To become a senior product manager, I want to see you improve on your planning and delivery: particularly in making sure that the team always knows what the top priority is and anticipating roadblocks. Overall I’m really excited that the team hit our goals for the year, and I’m excited to see even more progress this year.

(Normally these claims would be things you’d already synced up on, for instance through a performance review or weekly feedback, so this would just be a summary.)