UCLA Anderson School of Management professor Dr. Samuel A. Culbert shows no restraint in his Wall Street Journal article, Get Rid of the Performance Review!

His article subtitle summarizes his position: It destroys morale, kills teamwork and hurts the bottom line. And that's just for starters. The subject of performance reviews and his take on it surely struck a chord. It was among the most read articles on the day of publication and now—in the Business Insight section—has prompted many pages of reader comments.

Dissatisfaction by both employees and managers with the legacy once or twice a year backwards-looking review process is not a new issue, although for many the practice has been inescapable. Traditional annual performance reviews, often still done on paper or spreadsheets, do little (or worse) for employee development and forward-looking organizational goals achievement.

Instead, a new approach to performance reviews can embed performance management in the flow of daily business and change it from a dreaded lagging indicator to a leading process.