SAP plans to kill 'dreaded' Annual Performance Review

If employees are ever-more-closely measured, if managers have ever more ways to monitor workers, where does that leave room for creativity -- including the kind of free-form, off-schedule or break-the-rules salesmanship SAP chief executive Bill McDermott says were central to top former sales colleagues at Xerox Corp., or the intensely meandering software brainstorming credited for technical breakthroughs?

CMPS will allow "much more" flexibility for creative work, insists Parkinson. "The goals will be established between the employee and the manager. The solution enables that individual flexibility: 'This is what I've achieved against those goals, linked back to that goal' -- there can be many different means" to what HR people call "performance outcomes."

Also: "Just because we are eliminating the annual review, by no means are we minimizing our expectations on high performance." More-frequent coaching "brings feedback and clarity as to what's being accomplished..."

It's still about selling more business software: "This is intended to be a performance accelerator for the workforce. We have a pay-for-performance philosophy at SAP. That isn't going away."  (Revised)