Let's abandon performance management… really?

The current HR attention-grabbing headlines are all about abandoning performance management – it’s an ’on trend’ thing to believe…

“Performance Management – awful – who wants to do that?  I know – let’s not do it anymore”

LET’S TAKE A CLOSER LOOK

Suppose we substituted ‘performance’ with ‘budget’ or ‘sales’ or ‘health and safety’.    Would we abandon managing those things just because it might be difficult, repetitive or just plain boring?    Are those highly successful companies that are apparently abandoning performance management really ceasing to manage performance? Of course not – they know they would stop being successful pretty quickly if they did.