Pando

We’ve been quiet on the product front, but I’m excited to share something new is will be here in the coming days… I founded Pando to help companies optimize the potential of all employees. Brining both my experience as a CMO and years of building community within and working with some of the best people operators on the planet (was lucky to spend time with…Beth Steinberg , Cara Brennan Allamano, Katie Burke Annie Trombatore , Lissa Minkin, Mike Joyner, 🏡 Kim Rohrer (she/her), Mark Frein, Luan Lam, Austin Sailors Melanie Oberman, Maia Josebachvili , Victoria Sevilla, Daniel M., Tony Truong Aisha Stephenson, Lorna Hagen, Roslyn F. Shelby Wolpa …and so many others!) There was a clear gap around connecting the dots for employees around their role, what’s expected of them and how performance is measured (tools were falling short—and still are). Pando’s thesis has always been: make performance continuous, just-in-time, and equitable—enable employees to level up when they’re ready, and decouple that from an annual event—leveraging real-time, always in performance calibration to compound outcomes. While that thesis remains unchanged, the environment in which it operates has evolved, rapidly. Organizations are now flatter, with fewer layers and even more responsibility for performance management has shifting to managers who are already stretched thin, also trying to adapt to a new world and pace of work. The problem we aimed to solve is still relevant, but like everything else, the solution must adapt. Performance management through forms, twice a year, combined with all the complexity and baggage of comp, and salaires reviews can’t continue to be our status quo. We now have a very unique opportunity to enable managers in a way we couldn’t before, and empower employees to iteratively improve and increase their impact, in the flow of work. Excited about the challenge of tackling the problem in a different way — eager to share and get your thoughts. Stay tuned 🚀

The team and I are building Nscale’s approach to how we enable, measure and assess high performance at work. This has become an endless debate in business. With numerous iterations. A few truths: 1. Trad. “performance management” was built for a world that no longer exists. Most work is collaborative, yet almost every process still optimises for individual outcomes. As Josh Bersin pointed out recently: the admin burden already made little sense; it makes even less sense in today’s world of AI. 2. Any system has to be clear about what it’s for. Reward results fairly, spot underperformance early, help people grow. Whatever. Pick your goals and build with this front of mind. 3. It’s not really about ratings vs no ratings. People simply want to know where they stand, how they improve, and whether the process is clear. The real question: is it helping people get work done, or getting in the way? 4. Context is Queen. What a v good approach looks like at 500 people is not what it looks like at 10,000 etc. And if we’re honest; most perf systems exist simply to feed the annual comp cycle, rather than create business value. Lucy Adams has written much about this. TLDR: Yes, agentic systems have the potential to completely strip all the unnecessary process here (AI supported calibration anyone?). What remains: we’ll still need some manager judgement, clear expectations and honest conversations about the work. Worth checking out: Thomas Forstner and Barbra Gago wrote solid pieces on this recently. Edie Goldberg also has well-researched ideas in her upcoming book.

Most orgs bundle three completely different questions into one annual event. Is this person ready for a promotion? Have they progressed in their current role? Are we paying them fairly relative to market? These are separate questions with separate timelines and separate data sources. But we cram them all into the same calibration meeting, the same review cycle, the same conversation. No wonder the process feels broken. It is. Promotion readiness should be evaluated when someone demonstrates sustained next-level performance. Not once a year. Role progression should be continuous. Competency-based, tied to clear expectations at each level. Market adjustments should be administrative. Data-driven. Disconnected from individual performance conversations entirely. At Pando, we separate these into two distinct motions. Pay-for-progression runs on the individual's timeline. Salary reviews run on the company's market cycle. Two separate processes. Two separate conversations. Two separate outcomes. Full breakdown of the framework and the five system failures it addresses: https://lnkd.in/ewgQcE-Q

What are you doing to mitigate "brain fry" from AI usage? How do we build programs with intention to reduce the impending burnout?

What if compensation increases didn't all happen at once? Most companies run one or two massive comp events per year—a spike in payroll, an enormous coordination effort, lots of time spent in "calibration", and a process that produces questionable insight at enormous cost. What if instead, increases happened in real-time as individuals level up? This isn't just a cleaner philosophy. It's better financial management: → Cash flow smooths out. No more payroll spikes. Budgeting becomes predictable and plannable. → Fast growers get recognized faster. The person who's clearly operating at the next level shouldn't have to wait six months for a window to open. That gap is exactly when high performers start looking elsewhere. → Trust goes up. A lot of employee cynicism about performance management comes from systems that feel delayed, opaque, and disconnected from reality. A continuous model makes an honest promise — and keeps it. → Process overhead collapses. No giant annual ritual. No managers manufacturing meaning at review time. No employees waiting for the cycle to catch up with their growth. This is the "just-in-time progression" model Barbra Gago makes the case for in her latest article—two separate motions, taken entirely off the annual clock. The link is in the comments.

7 PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT TOOLS YOU NEED TO KNOW 👇 Most people think their performance management processes and tools are pretty much 💩 But now we have access to much better tooling that it really changes how we can approach it. + make it way more enjoyable and useful for everyone The flexibility and the data we can now work with is amazing. So if you’re doing it the old way… Check out these: 1. Taito.ai 2. Culture Amp 3. Opre 4. Pando 5. Crewmojo 6. Topicflow 7. TeamMaven I personally don't recommend vibe coding performance tooling. There is so much to get wrong in this space. And there really are so many cool tools for this now. Check them out and 400+ more on stakkd.tech HR tech database! Am I missing some hot tech from this list? 🔥 Tag them in the comments! _________ Hi I'm Jess 👋 I am a bootstrap founder of Stakkd and Linnx Building useful and accessible products is my mission 🚀

Six experts debated whether pay for performance works. 62% of the audience voted in favor. And yet the most important question went unanswered: If not pay for performance—then what, exactly? The "for" side was right: if you don't differentiate for performance, you get adverse selection. Your best people leave. The people most comfortable in a flat structure stay. The "against" side was also right: knowledge work is collaborative and emergent. You can't OKR your way to innovations like Gmail, the iPhone, etc. Single ratings compress nuance into a number that's mostly useful for filling in a spreadsheet. The realty is that both sides were debating variations of the same broken system. A point-in-time annual cycle trying to simultaneously give feedback, assess performance, make promotion decisions, and determine comp—with undertrained managers and too much else going on to make this process valuable for anyone. The debate will never be settled if we stay inside that system. Our founder, Barbra Gago has the third position and the structural argument for why it's operationally better for the whole business, not just philosophically cleaner. Full article here 👇 https://lnkd.in/ehAM6H2d And thanks for Jessica Z., Mark Frein, Matt McFarlane, Kim Minnick, 🏡 Kim Rohrer (she/her), James A Seechurn for the lively discussion and well thought out arguements.

Reframing performance reviews to focus on impact and value can significantly enhance employee feedback. Instead of generic questions, starting with "What are the 2 most significant achievements you made during this period?" and "How did these achievements create value for the organization?" encourages more honest self-assessment and clearer connections to business outcomes. This approach not only helps employees articulate their contributions but also reinforces the link between individual work and organizational success, fostering a more engaged and results-oriented culture. Check out the full conversation here: https://lnkd.in/epvxHVzh

Establishing a feedback culture requires building the habit of giving feedback regularly. Implementing 'Feedback Fridays' offers a simple yet effective structure. Employees answer three upward feedback questions, while managers provide downward feedback through three corresponding questions. Utilizing a shared document initially helps streamline the process when formal systems are absent. Consistent feedback loops are crucial for development and performance. Check out the full convo with Hebba Youssef here: https://lnkd.in/epvxHVzh