Most workers do not feel that employee performance reviews are valuable. That’s what Garry Ridge, CEO of  WD-40 Company discovered when he surveyed students in a business course he teaches at the University of San Diego. 

The problem, according to Ridge, is that most performance systems are used for the wrong reasons. They are either arbitrary, only done out of habit, or they are used to document evidence to fire someone. 

Instead, Ridge thinks that performance reviews should be used to develop people. It’s a philosophy he calls “Don’t mark my paper—help me get an “A” and it‘s a key concept in a new book he has coauthored together with Ken Blanchard called Helping People Win at Work. 

Helping People Win at Work is the first in a new series of books written by real-life CEOs describing how they have put the concept of “leading at a higher level” into practice in their organizations. 

For Garry Ridge that means having managers at WD-40 working together with their direct reports on Planning, Execution, Review and Learning. 

• Planning is all about setting goals and establishing the report card for the employee’s “final exam.”  It’s making sure that every employee knows exactly what he or she is being asked to do.
• Execution is where the manager has to keep up his or her end of the partnership relationship on a day-to-day basis, helping and coaching the employee to get an “A.”
• Review and Learning is a quarterly evaluation designed to answer the questions, “What did we set out to do? What actually happened? What should we do differently?”

 You can find out more about the concepts of Helping People Win at Work (including free access to the first chapter) by visiting the Blanchard website . You can also learn more by checking out an online interview with Dan Schawbel where Ken Blanchard discusses the book.