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Jared Sandberg's column in the Journal is all about performance appraisals this week. The column is titled: "Performance Reviews Need Some Work, Don't Meet Potential." Here's the lead.

"Let's put it diplomatically and take the emotion out of it: The whole performance-review process, now in season, doesn't exactly exceed expectations. Whether these annual events are meant to weed out laggards, reward achievers, assist development or act simply as a liability shield against discrimination lawsuits is anybody's guess. Whatever their purpose, they attempt to give employees an individualized and intimate portrayal of their performance, but can end up saying more about the company than the individual."

The core problem is pretty simple. In most places the performance review is seen as an event that's centered on a form that gets filed every year. It should be a process centered on individual workers that's implemented every day.

If you see performance appraisal as a process that's a routine part of daily work you can make lots of small corrections in behavior and performance. You don't have to put in extraordinary effort to try to make big corrections at annual appraisal time.

Think of performance problems like dinosaurs. They're easy to kill when they're small or even in the egg. But let them grow up and they'll eat you, your friends, and your Land Rover.

So you have lots of chats with the people who work for you. The vast majority of them are informal, meaning they're not documented.

Some are intended to fix behavior that's wrong or improve performance that's substandard. Some are intended to help a worker grow and develop.

If you're going to start documenting, writing things down, you let the subordinate know before you do so. Yes, they probably "should" know that their behavior or performance will be written up, but nobody likes to be caught out. Besides, most of the time, the notice of intent to document will result in a change.

If a supervisor does that all year long, there will be no surprises at formal appraisal time. In fact, if either supervisor or subordinate are surprised, the supervisor hasn't been doing his or her job well.

Years ago, when I was studying top performing supervisors, we looked at how the top performers handled the semi-annual performance appraisal process in a client organization. There were two interesting differences between the top performing supervisors and the rest.

The average face time for the appraisal meeting averaged less than ten minutes across the organization. Top supervisors took more than three times that.

For most supervisors in the organization, the meeting was devoted to explaining, defending and disputing the ratings on the evaluation form. For the top performing supervisors the main subject of the meeting was the future and how things would be different.

Sandberg's got it right in his column. In too many organizations, the annual performance appraisal is a stressful exercise with little discernable impact on results and one that's easy to game, to boot. If we're going to be competitive and productive in the century ahead, we can't afford to have a performance appraisal "system" that doesn't affect performance.

Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.

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Wally Bock has helped people learn to be great bosses for more than a quarter century. His latest book, Performance Talk: The One-on-One Part of Leadership, makes learning key leadership principles almost effortless by teaching through a story and providing lists of resources for further growth.

Click here to find out more about Wally's coaching services.

For weekly tips and resources pointers, check our Wally Bock's Three Star Leadership Letter.

Click here to find out more about having Wally speak to your company or convention.