"It's a move away from a rules- and planning-based approach toward a simpler and faster model driven by feedback from participants," write Peter Cappelli and Anna Tavis for HBR. "This new paradigm has really taken off in the area of performance management."
Cappelli is a professor of management at the Wharton School and director of its Center for Human Resources. Tavis is a clinical associate professor of human capital management at New York University.
A 2017 Deloitte survey notes that 79% of global executives deemed agile performance management as a top priority. Performance appraisals, coaching, teams, compensation, recruiting and learning and development are some of the areas companies are revamping to create a more agile HR team.
"Helping supervisors replace judging with coaching is a big challenge not just in terms of skills but also because it undercuts their status and formal authority," Cappelli and Tavis note. "Shifting the focus of management from individuals to teams may be even more difficult, because team dynamics can be a black box to those who are still struggling to understand how to coach individuals. The big question is whether companies can help managers take all this on and see the value in it."