NEW BOOK

Performance Enablement: A New Model for Driving Organizational Improvement

This book is about the process we all love to hate: performance management. However, you won't hear the authors arguing that you need to change your rating scale, update your form, or simply train your managers or have more feedback conversations. Research has shown that these tactics have done little to improve the process.

Performance Enablement argues that we need a new paradigm. Traditional performance management was born in a different era, based on a great deal of research that has been debunked over the years. The authors offer a new philosophy about how to drive individual and organizational performance that is grounded in how modern organizations operate, and based on research from economics, management, and psychology that points to a new, more effective way to motivate, engage, and develop your talent to drive real business outcomes.

Available for Preorder on Amazon
Available for Preorder on Amazon

Advance Praise for Performance Enablement

  • “Performance Enablement brilliantly evolves performance management with a research-driven model that goes beyond traditional approaches. These scientistpractitioners show how goals plus continuous development help employees thrive in todayʼs dynamic workplace. Essential reading for HR professionals, managers, and scholars.”

    Gary P. Latham, Fellow Royal Society of Canada

  • “Shifting from management to enablement changes the assumptions, actions, and impact of delivering performance. The eight Performance Enablement Principles and four key Performance Enablement practices that Edie and Alan identify and make user-friendly come from both experience and research and lead to a valuable paradigm shift.”

    Dave Ulrich, Rensis Likert Professor Emeritus, University of Michigan; Partner, the RBL Group

  • “Performance Enablement explains why employers continue to struggle with managing employee performance and shows us how to rethink our simplistic mental models. The new path they plot is based on how employees actually think and behave and what our business goals actually are. Itʼs the best model yet for fixing employee performance.”

    Peter Cappelli, George W. Taylor Professor of Management, Director – Center for Human Resources, The Wharton School, and Professor of Education, University of Pennsylvania

  • “Traditional Performance Management approaches are sorely misaligned with the future of work. The traditional assumptions—that roles are static, that work equals full-time jobs, and that performance is easily quantifiable—have been rendered obsolete. Drs. Goldberg and Colquitt use their decades of experience to reimagine employee performance—from something to be “managed” or “evaluated,” to something to be “enabled.” They transform performance from a transactional compliance exercise into a dynamic process that builds direction, alignment, support, and progress.”

    Dr. John Boudreau, Emeritus Professor and Senior Research Scientist, Center for Effective Organizations, Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California

  • “In this important book, Colquitt and Goldberg challenge us to move beyond cosmetic reform and confront the mental models that have long kept organizations trapped in cycles of coercion and disengagement. Drawing on decades of research and hands-on experience, they offer a deeply human alternative: ʻenabling control ʼ rooted in purpose, autonomy, and genuine belonging. This is essential reading for anyone ready to leave behind the empty rituals of forced rankings and ʻpay for performance,ʼ and reimagine performance management as a source of meaning, growth, and shared accomplishment.”

    Otti Vogt, Founder, Global Society for Good Leadership, Former Chief Transformation Officer in ING

  • “As a former CHRO, Iʼve witnessed firsthand how traditional performance management can sometimes destroy more value than it creates. This brilliant work exposes why our current systems fail and presents a compelling new model. Goldberg and Colquitt donʼt just critique—they provide practical solutions for the performance enablement transformation every organization needs.”

    Libby Sartain, Former CHRO (Yahoo, Southwest Airlines), and Independent Director

  • “Finally, a book that makes sense of performance management. By reframing it as performance enablement, the authors provide a smarter, more humane, and more effective way to manage people and organizations.”

    Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Professor of Business Psychology at UCL and Former Chief Innovation Officer at ManpowerGroup

  • “Colquitt and Goldberg reimagine how organizations think about performance. Their concept of performance enablement replaces outdated systems with a practical, human-centered approach that helps people grow, contribute, and succeed together. A smart, timely guide for todayʼs leaders.”

    Eva Sage-Gavin, Board Director and former CHRO, Gap Inc., Sun Microsystems

BOOK

Next Generation Performance Management:
The Triumph of Science Over Myth and Superstition

This book provides a fresh perspective on what's wrong with performance management (PM) and how to fix it. No one knows more about PM than Alan.  He has experienced it from every perspective.  It has been done to him for 30+ years, he has done it to others for 25 years, he has designed and redesigned PM systems, he has owned it and worked with all the stakeholders, and he has studied deeply the science behind it.  He has also helped other companies improve and reinvent their processes.

Available on Amazon
Available on Amazon

Testimonials

  • When I found this book I had almost given up on finding a good scientifically based primary source for PM. Then I ran across this book, for once I was not disappointed. The book was everything it promised.

    Sam

  • Are you tired of every HR / Leadership / Management book that you read feeling like four HBR articles stretched into 320 pages? And are you equally tired of these books relying on anecdotes, poor/proprietary research, and speculation derived from corporations and VC firms with an incentive to create a narrative (hello every "gig economy" book!)? Then give this book a shot.

    SYoung27

  • Frankly put, this will be the best "professional" book in the HR domain that you'll read for some time. Dr. Colquitt carefully and logically critiques and dismantles current practice around performance management. This book will challenge some very ingrained beliefs you have about performance management, either what it should do or what consequences it should inform.

    Will

  • Dr. Colquitt has written the definitive statement for how companies need to approach their performance management (PM) processes differently, but he goes further by encouraging readers to explore some of the most hidden assumptions and paradigms that inevitably lead companies to adapt the latest PM fads. A must read for anyone who has ever had PM "done to them" and/or has "done it" to others.

    Harry

  • Evidence-based, science-based, relevant. This book is a framework that is simple and, well, quite intuitive to humanity (motivation, purpose, goals, progress, community and belonging). It's a call to refresh a system that is so very broken and yet blindly reinforced because...it's what we know and we are too afraid to take a leap of faith into the unknown of change? The book gives the faith to take that leap.

    Kristen

  • Full disclosure: this is an author after my own heart. I am an evidence-based practitioner and I fight the tide of "best practices" and "market research" on a daily basis. Well presented, evidence-based, and slightly wry at times, this book is a driving force towards a paradigm shift in the way we conceptualize and hopefully enact PM in the future.

    Greenlionplanck