The Limitations of "Performance"
Just when, I wonder, did "performance" become important in our lives as human beings?
c. 1300, performen, "carry into effect, fulfill, discharge, carry out what is demanded or required"
Until very recently, performance was something attributed to things we made - machines, weapons, treatments - but not people. I cannot find performance assessments of Galileo, DaVinci, or Einstein, or of anybody else who made an important difference for that matter.
Performance, it seems, parallels our love affair with processes, efficiency and data. People as components to be dispassionately judged by others on criteria which, like GDP, measure what's easy, not what matters.
Performance assessment of course has always been with us in different forms - mainly some aspect of natural selection or the sort of forced ranking so beloved of corporate titans. After all, personal development is such a chore when a Gladiatorial thumbs up / thumbs down is so much more fun when the…