Yes, I’ve written about quarterly performance reviews several times in the past but they are so valuable it is important to reiterate them. We like to ask four simple questions, adapted from a Patrick Lencioni book: What did you accomplish? What are you going to accomplish next? How can you improve? How are you following … Continue reading Time for Quarterly Performance Reviews
We normally do our quarterly performance reviews the last two weeks of the quarter but for Q4 we do them the first week of the new year due to the holidays. I’ve talked to other entrepreneurs, with modern, progressive companies, and I find it interesting that they do bi-annual or annual performance reviews. I have … Continue reading Quarterly Performance Reviews
I’m a big proponent of doing 360 degree performance reviews every quarter. Many companies do them annually or twice a year. I feel that is too infrequent and that you spend most of your time talking about the most recent quarter, at best. Another benefit of doing it quarterly is that compensation discussions aren’t tied … Continue reading Quarterly Performance Reviews
We’re mixing things up this quarter and doing quarterly check-ins instead of quarterly performance reviews. OK, so they are pretty much the same thing but we tweaked the naming to reflect that this is a conversation with your manager/direct report, it isn’t tied to an immediate raise/promotion, and is important for aligning goals. I’ve talked … Continue reading Updated Quarterly Check-ins
Today we held our quarterly off-site and developed a plan for Q4. We usually hold it two weeks before the end of the quarter, but tradeshow season and our user’s conference delayed it. The quarterly off-site is part of our meeting rhythm and comes from Patrick Lencioni’s Death by Meeting book. We hold our quarterly off-site … Continue reading Quarterly Off-Site Recap
We’re deep in the process of our quarterly performance reviews, and, I must say that I really look forward to these every quarter. There’s something rewarding about sitting down one-on-one and talking about what was accomplished, what’s coming up next, how we/they can improve, and then discussing anecdotes about how we/they followed each of our … Continue reading More Quarterly Performance Review Thoughts
It’s that time of the quarter to do our performance reviews. We try to make them very simple and focused using a methodology from Patrick Lencioni. Everyone in my company has to answer the following four questions personally as well as for their direct reports: What did you accomplish? What will you accomplish next? How … Continue reading Quarterly Performance Review Time
Once a startup finds a repeatable business model and gets out of the seed stage, they then enter early stage (e.g. 20 – 50 employees) before (hopefully) moving on to growth stage (50+ employees). With five employees in a startup everyone wears multiple hats and things are so crazy the topic of career paths don’t … Continue reading Career Paths are Tough for Early Stage Startups
David Cummings on Startups 