Performance Management Redesign

The Problem

Like much of the industry, Nike was rethinking annual performance ratings. The old model rated people rather than the work, ran on a once-a-year cadence that did not match the speed of the business, and used labels that did not feel like Nike. The question was not how to tweak the form. It was how to inspire a culture of growth.

The Work

I ran the discovery. I benchmarked how other companies were moving off ratings, then spent the bulk of the effort listening inside Nike: more than 100 employees from diverse backgrounds, over 1,200 observations, sorted into six kinds of insight from goals and feedback to career and culture.

I synthesized all of it into a single-page design brief that named what we heard in plain language: one size does not fit all, our labels do not work, rich feedback is not practiced, and individual heroics get valued over the team. Then I facilitated a co-creation Design Day so the people who live inside the system could help shape what replaced it.

Impact

The discovery gave the redesign a spine: a clear point of view, grounded in real listening, that a cross-functional team could build from. Putting the whole diagnosis on one page meant leaders and designers argued from the same evidence, and the direction shifted from scoring performance to developing people.