Manager tools
Quarterly check-ins and annual reviews, without the blank page.
Use AI to draft an assessment from your notes. Review the wording and choose the rating yourself.
Between reviews, keep a light record: goals, a ten-minute check-in each quarter, and what you owe each person. When a review is due, answer a few guided questions and edit the draft that comes back.
The people you write about never need an account.
How it works
Three parts, in the order they happen.
1 · Through the year
Keep the record
Goals for the year, each with a measure and a target. At the end of every quarter, a short check-in: where each goal landed, what went well, what got in the way, and a performance band for the quarter (below, meeting or exceeding expectations). Ten minutes, while you still remember it.
2 · When a review is due
Answer the guided questions
4 questions for a quarter, 7 for the year, most with a tick-list to jog your memory before you type. Notes are enough. In either, you can ask up to ten colleagues three written questions — a couple of people for a quarter, more for a year.
3 · The document
Edit the draft, set the band, export
Your notes, the record and any colleague input become a document a person can read. Every sentence is editable. The band is yours to set with a reason beside it, and the whole thing downloads to hand over.
Worked example
Watch one being written.
Explore a fictional quarterly or annual review, from notes to finished assessment. The two people and their figures are invented. The questions, tick-lists and documents are the ones the app uses, and both drafts pass its checks. Pick a period and step through what went in and what came out.
Q3 2026 · Ravi, Customer Support Lead
Four questions and two colleagues, both of whom say the same thing the record already says. The short one that gets written four times a year.
Quarterly — Q3 2026 · Ravi, Customer Support Lead
What was already recorded about Ravi
Kept through the year, a quarter at a time. Every number the draft uses has to come from here — it may not use a figure that was never recorded.
Ravi's goals for 2026, and how each quarter landed
Set at the start of the year. Each quarter, a ten-minute check-in records where every goal stands and a performance band for the quarter.
| Goal | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cut first response time on the self-serve queueTarget: Under 4 working hours | At risk11 hours | On track6 hours | On track4 hours in September, holding for six weeks | — |
| Write the billing escalation runbook and get it usedTarget: Two other people running them unaided by the end of the year | not recorded | not recorded | Off trackDrafted, nobody else running escalations | — |
| Bring repeat contacts downTarget: Under 12% | not recorded | At risk17% | On track13% | — |
| Check-in band | Meeting expectations | Meeting expectations | Meeting expectations | — |
The latest check-in (Q3), in the manager's words
- Went well
- Down to 4 hours and holding.
- Got in the way
- Escalations still all coming to him.
- Ravi needs from their manager
- The review slot, from me.
Open follow-ups from 1:1s
- I will book the review slot for the billing runbookmanager · due Sep 5, 2026 · overdue
- Ravi will pick the two people to train on billing escalationsRavi · due Oct 31, 2026
What the manager answered when the write-up was due
4 questions, in note form. Each has a list to tick through first, so the answer reaches the whole quarter rather than the last six weeks. About fifteen minutes, plus the week the colleague input was open.
The 4 guided questions, as the manager answered them
What did they actually deliver this quarter?(needed)
Specific occasions are what make an assessment defensible. A sentence with a date, a project or a number in it survives being questioned; an adjective does not.
Ticked 4 of the 15 on the list
- Kept something running that had to keep running
- Took on work that was never planned
- Handled something urgent that could not wait
- Covered for someone who was away
Typed
Held the queue through the August pricing change with two people out. First response is at 4 hours and has stayed there for six weeks. Wrote the runbook draft. Took the escalation rota over when Nadia moved teams and did it without any handover time.
Where did the quarter fall short of what you both expected, and what happened?
The second half of that question matters as much as the first. An assessment that records a miss without its cause reads as a verdict; one that records both reads as a record.
Ticked 3 of the 19 on the list
- I did not give them what they needed
- Time went to urgent work that came out of nowhere
- Reviews or approvals took longer than expected
Typed
The runbook exists and nobody else is using it — every billing escalation this quarter still came to him. Part of that is mine: I never booked the review slot, so the draft has sat since August. Repeat contacts came down to 13% but the target is under 12% and we are not there.
What did they get noticeably better at?
Easy to leave out when a quarter was busy, and the thing people most often say is missing when they read an assessment of themselves.
Ticked 2 of the 17 on the list
- Explains things more clearly in writing
- Decides at their own level instead of passing it up
Typed
Started handing tickets over instead of finishing them himself, which is new. Writes the weekly queue note without being asked now, and it is the thing the rest of the team reads.
What did you say you would do for them that you have not done?
The question managers skip. Naming it here puts it in the record and in the conversation, which is the only reliable way it gets done.
Ticked 2 of the 15 on the list
- Make an introduction I promised
- Make a decision they are waiting on
Typed
The review slot for the runbook. And I said in June I would get him in front of the billing team, which has not happened.
What colleagues were asked, and what came back
Optional, in any period. Up to ten people, three written questions, no rating scale. Named to the manager, never named or quoted in the document. For a quarter, two people close to the work is a realistic ask.
What two colleagues wrote
Shown to the manager with names attached — each colleague was told that before they typed. Names are stripped before any of this reaches the draft.
Priya Raman · On the support team with him
- What do they do well?
- The morning the pricing change landed he had rewritten the triage note before standup and the rest of us just worked off it. I have never once seen him get sharp with anyone on a bad day.
- What would make working with them even better?
- Hand the billing tickets over. If one arrives while he is online it never reaches the rest of us, so none of us are any closer to being able to run one on our own.
- An occasion that shows what you mean
- Two Fridays running I picked up a billing escalation and both times it was back with him inside the hour. I had not asked him to take it.
Helena Vogt · Billing team — handles the escalations he sends over
- What do they do well?
- His escalations are the only ones that tell me what the customer already tried, so I am not spending a day asking before I can start on anything.
- What would make working with them even better?
- I only ever hear from him. The weeks he is away the same case comes to me from someone who has not read the history, and that is the one that drags on.
And if you ask nobody, which is common for a quarter.
The draft then has no section about working with others — not a paragraph hedging about how little is known, no section at all. At the other end of the same rule, a single reply is used and used as one person’s view: two colleagues agreeing is the smallest thing the write-up will call a pattern, and the document says which of the two it had.
The draft it wrote
Written from steps 1 to 3 and nothing else. The band is left blank — nothing in the tool is allowed to set one. Every sentence is editable.
The draft, exactly as it came back
Rendered by the same component the app uses, at the width the app uses. Nothing has been trimmed — including the parts where the manager is the one who did not deliver.
What this document cannot support
- Two people replied, which is the fewest this will describe as a pattern. Read it as two people's account of one quarter rather than as a reading of the team. Both of them wrote about the billing work, which is the part of the quarter that went wrong; neither speaks to the response-time goal, which is the part that improved.
- This covers one quarter of a goal set that runs to the end of the year. Two of the three goals cannot be finally judged until then, and nothing here should be read as settling them.
- Where this records that the runbook stalled, it also records that the review it was waiting on was his manager's to book. Both belong in the account, and a reader who takes only the first half has the wrong quarter.
A quarter where the queue held under real pressure, and the work meant to stop it depending on Ravi did not move.
Ravi's third quarter is recorded against three goals. First response time improved from 11 hours to 4 and has held there, including through the August pricing change with two of the team away, but it is not yet under the 4-hour target. Repeat contacts came down but are still above target. The billing runbook was written and is not yet in use by anyone else, and his manager records that the review it has been waiting on was theirs to book. Two colleagues were asked and both replied, and both describe the same dependency that goal exists to remove, seen from outside it. What follows sets out what the quarter contained, where it fell short and why, and what the next one should carry. Everything here is measured against the goals Ravi and his manager agreed, not against anyone else.
Drawn from three recorded goals, three check-ins, input from two colleagues, and his manager's written answers to the assessment questions, together with the guided lists they worked through.
Goals
Cut first response time on the self-serve queue
On track
Recorded at the check-in: 4 hours in September, holding for six weeks, against a target of under 4 working hours. It was 11 hours at the start of the year, so it has improved but is not yet under the target.
Write the billing escalation runbook and get it used
Off track
Recorded at the check-in: drafted, nobody else running escalations. The draft has waited on a review slot since August, and every billing escalation this quarter came to him.
Bring repeat contacts down
On track
Recorded at the check-in: 13% of tickets reopened within seven days, down from 17% in the spring, against a target of under 12%.
Strengths
The queue held when it had reason not to
His manager records that first response stayed at 4 hours through the August pricing change with two of the team away, and that he took the escalation rota over with no handover time when the person holding it moved teams.
What the quarter contained beyond the goals
Marked by his manager as part of this quarter: kept something running that had to keep running; took on work that was never planned; handled an incident or an escalation; covered for someone who was away. These were ticked from a list rather than written up, so no occasion is attached to any of them — they are his manager's account of what the quarter held, not evidence of a particular day.
What changed this quarter
He has started handing tickets over rather than finishing them himself, and now writes the weekly queue note unprompted; his manager records it as the thing the rest of the team reads. Marked alongside it: writes clearer updates and documents; decides at their own level instead of passing it up.
What both colleagues valued
Both replies put the same thing first, without being prompted towards it: what he writes down is what makes the work usable by somebody else. One cites a triage note rewritten on the morning of the pricing change, which the rest of the queue then worked from. The other, on the receiving end of his escalations, says they are the ones that arrive already carrying what the customer had tried, which is the difference between starting on a case and spending a day establishing it. One added that they have not seen him lose patience with anyone on a bad day. Paraphrased, and no colleague is named or quoted.
Development
The runbook is written and unused
The goal was two other people running billing escalations unaided by the end of the year. The document exists; nobody else has run one. His manager records the missing step as a review slot they owed and did not book, and that capacity in the quarter went to unplanned support.
Next step: Book the review, then name the two people and put a date on the first escalation each of them runs. The goal is unchanged; only the sequence needs settling.
What got in the way
Marked by his manager as causes: their manager did not give them what they needed; capacity went to incidents or unplanned support; reviews or approvals took longer than expected. Two of the three sit outside Ravi.
Next step: Go through these together and separate the ones either of you can change from the ones neither of you can, before agreeing anything for the next quarter.
Repeat contacts are moving in the right direction and are not there
Reopened tickets came down to 13% from 17% after the follow-up template changed. The target is under 12%.
Next step: Agree whether the remaining gap is worth another change this quarter or whether it holds while the escalation handover takes priority. Write down which, so the next check-in is not a surprise.
What both colleagues would like to see change
Both replies name the same thing, and it is the goal that is off track described from outside it: the billing work does not leave him. One says a billing ticket picked up by somebody else is back with him within the hour, unasked, so nobody else on the team ever gets a first one. The other, on the billing side, says every escalation reaching them comes from him — and that in the weeks he is out, the same case reaches them from a colleague who has not seen the earlier tickets, and takes far longer to settle. Paraphrased, and no colleague is named or quoted.
Next step: Raise it as something colleagues named rather than as your own observation, and ask how it looks from where they sit before agreeing a change. The second half — what reaches the billing team when he is away — is not in the goal as written, and may be the more urgent half of it.
Working with others
Two colleagues were asked about working with Ravi and both replied, paraphrased here and not attributed. What worked: he writes things down in a form somebody else can act on, and both accounts reach for that independently — the triage note he rewrote on the morning of the pricing change, and escalations that arrive with the history already in them. What could be better, from both: the billing work does not leave him, whether or not somebody else reaches it first, and when he is away the cases that reach the billing team turn up without that history. There is no manager's account of the same ground set beside this one, and that is the quarterly form rather than an omission — the four quarterly questions do not ask how someone worked with other people. The end-of-year set does.
Paraphrased. Colleagues are not named or quoted here, which is what they were told when they were asked.
What you owe them
In the document on purpose. An assessment that only records one person's obligations is half a record.
- Book the review slot for the billing runbook. It has been the blocking step since August and it is his manager's to book.
- Get him in front of the billing team, which was promised in June.
- Still owed, marked by his manager: an introduction that was promised; a decision they are waiting on.
- Carry these into the conversation and give each one a date, rather than leaving them as an acknowledgement.
Next period
- Two other people running billing escalations unaided — the goal's own target, unchanged, with a date on the review this time.
- Protect the handovers and the weekly queue note. Both are new this quarter, and both are the first things to go when the queue spikes.
The one line only the manager can write
Below, meeting or exceeding expectations, with a reason beside it. Then export the whole document.
The band the manager set, and why
Judged against this person's recorded goals for the year, not against their colleagues.
Why this band
Two of three goals are on track for where we agreed they would be by now, through a quarter that was harder than the one we planned for, though response time is not yet under its target. Meeting rather than exceeding because the handover was the whole point of the runbook goal and it has not happened — and I am not marking him down for it either, because the step it stalled on was mine.
Then edit anything, mark it final, and download it.
Every sentence of the draft is editable. The band and its reason are saved with the document, and the whole thing downloads as one file written to be handed to Ravi. A document that carries a band with no reason beside it fails its checks.
End of year — 2026 end of year · Jonas, Senior Product Designer
What was already recorded about Jonas
Kept through the year, a quarter at a time. Every number the draft uses has to come from here — it may not use a figure that was never recorded.
Jonas's goals for 2026, and how each quarter landed
Set at the start of the year. Each quarter, a ten-minute check-in records where every goal stands and a performance band for the quarter.
| Goal | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ship the onboarding redesignTarget: Live before the end of the year | On trackResearch done, flow agreed | At riskBuild slipped four weeks | On trackIn front of a test group | MetLive for all new accounts in November |
| Cut drop-off in setupTarget: Above 60% | not recorded | At risk51% | not recorded | Missed58% in December |
| Bring the component library to one sourceTarget: Under 20 by the end of the year | not recorded | not recorded | On track41 left | Met18 left |
| Bring the new designer up to speedTarget: By the end of the year | not recorded | not recorded | not recorded | MetRan the November review unaided |
| Check-in band | Meeting expectations | Below expectations | Meeting expectations | Meeting expectations |
The latest check-in (Q4), in the manager's words
- Went well
- Live for all accounts in November.
- Got in the way
- Six weeks is not long enough to judge the number.
- Jonas needs from their manager
- The library ownership decision.
Open follow-ups from 1:1s
- I will get a decision on who owns the component library next yearmanager · due Nov 30, 2026 · overdue
- Jonas will write the handover note for the onboarding flowJonas · due Jan 16, 2027
What the manager answered when the write-up was due
7 questions, in note form. Each has a list to tick through first, so the answer reaches the whole year rather than the last six weeks. About forty minutes, spread over the fortnight the colleague input was open.
The 7 guided questions, as the manager answered them
What did they deliver this year that mattered?(needed)
Specific occasions are what make an assessment defensible. A sentence with a date, a project or a number in it survives being questioned; an adjective does not.
Ticked 5 of the 15 on the list
- Took something all the way from start to finish
- Unblocked or sped up someone else's work
- Brought someone new up to speed
- Rebuilt or replaced something that was failing
- Ran a recurring meeting or review
Typed
Owned the onboarding redesign end to end — research, flow, build support, staged rollout. Live for all new accounts in November. Got the component library down to 18 one-offs from 74. Brought the new designer to the point of running her own project reviews by November. Also absorbed the billing incident in May, which cost the redesign four weeks.
Where did results fall short of what you both expected, and what happened?
The second half again. A year's assessment that lists misses without their causes is the version people dispute, and usually the version they are right to dispute.
Ticked 3 of the 19 on the list
- The time it needed was underestimated from the start
- The work grew and the deadline did not move
- Time went to urgent work that came out of nowhere
Typed
Setup completion finished at 58%, under the 60% we set. Most of that is timing — the new flow only reached everyone in November, so it had six weeks to move a number we measure over a year. The four weeks lost to the incident in May are the other part of it. I also let the scope grow twice without moving the date, which is mine.
What did they get noticeably better at over the year?
The clearest signal of trajectory, and the part a person most wants to see recognized in writing.
Ticked 3 of the 17 on the list
- Handles disagreement better
- Takes feedback and acts on it
- Took on a kind of work they had not done before
Typed
Much better at putting unfinished work in front of people. A year ago a flow sat with him until it was right; now it goes up rough on the Tuesday. He still goes quiet when something is going badly, but the gap between it going wrong and me hearing about it is shorter than it was.
How did they work with other people? Name occasions.
Where peer input will be weighed against your own view. If your account and theirs disagree, the write-up says so rather than picking one.
Ticked 5 of the 15 on the list
- Other people seek them out for help
- Explains their work clearly to people outside it
- Works mostly alone, by the nature of the role
- A working relationship has needed repair
- Friction we have already talked about together
Typed
Ran the weekly design and engineering sync all year and it is the reason the redesign did not fall over in the summer. A rough patch with the billing team in the spring over who decided the invoice layout, which he largely repaired himself. Tends to work alone on the library, and it shows — nobody else knows how it is put together.
What one change would make the biggest difference next year?(needed)
One. A list of six development areas is a list nobody acts on, and the discipline of picking one is most of the value of writing this down.
Typed
Say early when something is going badly. Everything else this year would have been easier.
What did you say you would do for them that you have not done?
The question managers skip. Naming it here puts it in the record and in the conversation, which is the only reliable way it gets done.
Ticked 2 of the 15 on the list
- Make a decision they are waiting on
- Have the pay or level conversation we deferred
Typed
The decision on who owns the component library next year — he has asked three times and I keep not settling it. And the level conversation we deferred in September.
What should next year look like for them?
Turns the assessment from a verdict on a year into the start of the next one.
Ticked 2 of the 15 on the list
- Wider scope in the same role
- Ready for the next level; the case needs making
Typed
Ready to own a whole area rather than a project, and he wants more of the billing work. Whether that comes with a title change depends on the conversation I have not had.
What colleagues were asked, and what came back
Optional, in any period. Up to ten people, three written questions, no rating scale. Named to the manager, never named or quoted in the document. For a year, this is where most of the outside view comes from.
What three colleagues wrote
Shown to the manager with names attached — each colleague was told that before they typed. Names are stripped before any of this reaches the draft.
Priya Raman · Engineer on the onboarding rebuild
- What do they do well?
- He puts something in front of you before it is finished, which saves the rest of us a fortnight of guessing at what he means.
- What would make working with them even better?
- When a piece of work is in trouble he goes quiet, and by the time the rest of us hear about it the options have narrowed.
- An occasion that shows what you mean
- We found out the setup build had slipped at the weekly sync, not before it.
Marcus Bell · Product manager, billing
- What do they do well?
- He will argue hard about a decision and then commit to it properly once it has gone the other way.
- What would make working with them even better?
- The component library is a closed book to everyone but him. Nobody else on the team can change anything inside it.
- An occasion that shows what you mean
- The invoice layout disagreement in the spring finished well because he came back with three options rather than a position.
Nadia Osei · Designer he mentored this year
- What do they do well?
- He gave me real work early and then let me get it wrong, which is the only reason I can run a review now.
- What would make working with them even better?
- More of his time at the start of a project rather than at the review.
A feedback summary Jonas chose to share
Feedback they gathered about themselves on the developmental side of Facets, passed on by them. It is kept separate from the colleague input above and the draft says so.
Trusted for judgment, and asked to be more visible when work is going badly.
I asked for this in the summer. The loudest theme is the same one you keep raising with me, so I have stopped arguing with it.
- Makes a decision legible
- People could follow why a design ended up the way it did, months after the fact.
- Gives time when it is asked for
- Named by more than one person as the reason they got unstuck.
- Saying early when something is in trouble
- They would know it is working when: The people depending on the work hear about a slip in the week it happens.
Based on: Several colleagues, gathered by Jonas.
And if you ask nobody, which is common for a quarter.
The draft then has no section about working with others — not a paragraph hedging about how little is known, no section at all. At the other end of the same rule, a single reply is used and used as one person’s view: two colleagues agreeing is the smallest thing the write-up will call a pattern, and the document says which of the two it had.
The draft it wrote
Written from steps 1 to 3 and nothing else. The band is left blank — nothing in the tool is allowed to set one. Every sentence is editable.
The draft, exactly as it came back
Rendered by the same component the app uses, at the width the app uses. Nothing has been trimmed — including the parts where the manager is the one who did not deliver.
What this document cannot support
- Setup completion is judged on six weeks, because the flow it depends on only reached all accounts in November. Treat the figure as early rather than final, and re-read it after a full quarter.
- His manager records the weekly sync as the thing that kept the redesign upright. One colleague's account of the same meeting is that it was where a slipped build was first heard about, later than it should have been. Both are recorded above and neither is resolved here.
- The summary Jonas shared is his own account of himself, gathered by him from people he chose. It is kept separate from the colleague input his manager collected, and it carries no rater count by design.
- No band is set in this draft. That is not an omission — nothing here is allowed to set one.
A year where the work the year was built around shipped late and shipped, and the number it exists to move has not moved yet.
Jonas's year is recorded against four goals, three of which were met. The onboarding redesign went live for all new accounts in November after slipping in the summer. Setup completion finished under target, on six weeks of data. The component library reached its target and the new designer reached hers. Colleagues who were asked, and Jonas's own account of himself, converge on the same development point, and it is the same one his manager names. What follows sets out the year, where it fell short and why, and what next year should hold. Everything here is measured against the goals Jonas and his manager agreed, not against anyone else.
Drawn from four recorded goals, four check-ins, input from three colleagues, a summary Jonas chose to share (several colleagues, gathered by Jonas), and his manager's written answers to the assessment questions, together with the guided lists they worked through.
Goals
Ship the onboarding redesign
Met
Recorded at the fourth-quarter check-in: live for all new accounts in November, rolled out in stages with no rollback. It was at risk mid-year, when the build slipped four weeks, two of them to the billing incident in May.
Cut drop-off in setup
Missed
Recorded at the check-in: 58% in December against a target above 60%, measured on six weeks of the new flow. The baseline before the redesign was 51%.
Bring the component library to one source
Met
Recorded at the check-in: 18 one-off components left, against a target of under 20, down from 74 at the start of the year. The remaining ones are all in the admin screens.
Bring the new designer up to speed
Met
Recorded at the check-in: she ran the November review unaided, and a second one without him in the room.
Strengths
The year's largest piece of work landed
His manager records the onboarding redesign as his end to end — research, flow, build support, staged rollout — and records that he absorbed the billing incident in May, which cost the redesign four weeks, without the design coming apart.
What the year held beyond the goals
Marked by his manager as part of this year: shipped something end to end; unblocked or sped up someone else's work; brought someone new up to speed; rebuilt or replaced something that was failing; ran a recurring meeting or review. Ticked rather than written up, so no occasion is attached to any of them.
What colleagues consistently valued
Three colleagues were asked and all three replied. Two independently described the same habit: he shows work while it is still rough, which lets other people react early instead of guessing at the finished thing. One described being given real work with room to get it wrong, and traces being able to run a review on her own to that. One noted that he will disagree hard and then back the decision once it has gone the other way. Paraphrased, and no colleague is named or quoted.
From feedback Jonas gathered and chose to share
His own summary, passed on by him rather than collected here: that people could follow why a design ended up the way it did months afterwards, and that he was named by more than one person as the reason they got unstuck. This is his account of himself, not evidence his manager gathered.
Development
Going quiet when work is in trouble
Named by his manager, by colleagues, and by Jonas himself, which is unusual and worth saying out loud. His manager records that the gap between something going wrong and hearing about it has shortened over the year but is still there. A colleague described the options having already narrowed by the time the rest of the team heard. Jonas's own shared summary names the same thing and sets the indicator himself: that people depending on the work hear about a slip in the week it happens.
Next step: Take his own indicator as next year's goal rather than writing a new one. It is more specific than anything his manager would have set, and he arrived at it without being told.
Setup completion finished under target
58% against a target above 60%. His manager records three causes: the new flow only reached all accounts in November, so the figure rests on six weeks; four weeks were lost to the billing incident in May; and scope grew twice without the date moving, which his manager records as theirs.
Next step: Re-measure at the end of the first quarter on a full period of the new flow, and agree before then what result would count as the goal having been met after all.
The component library depends on one person
His manager records that he works alone on the library and that nobody else knows how it is put together. A colleague was blunter about the consequence: no one but him can make a change in it. The goal it belonged to was met; the dependency it created was never part of that goal.
Next step: Settle the ownership question — it is an open action on his manager, not on him — and pair someone through one real change before the decision is made.
What got in the way
Marked by his manager as causes: the estimate was optimistic from the start; scope grew and the date did not move; capacity went to incidents or unplanned support.
Next step: Go through these together and separate the ones either of you can change from the ones neither of you can, before agreeing anything for next year.
Working with others
Two accounts of the same year, kept apart because they do not entirely agree. His manager's: he ran the weekly design and engineering sync all year and it is why the redesign did not fall over in the summer; a rough patch with the billing team in the spring over who decided the invoice layout, largely repaired by him; and a tendency to work alone on the library that shows. Marked alongside it: other people seek them out for help; explains their work clearly to people outside it; works mostly alone, by the nature of the role; a working relationship has needed repair; friction the two of them have already talked about. From the three colleagues who replied, paraphrased and unattributed: the same sync reads to one of them as the place a slipped build was first heard about, later than it should have been. Both readings of that meeting are recorded here rather than reconciled.
Paraphrased. Colleagues are not named or quoted here, which is what they were told when they were asked.
What you owe them
In the document on purpose. An assessment that only records one person's obligations is half a record.
- Settle who owns the component library next year. It has been asked three times and is an open action already past its date.
- Have the level conversation deferred in September, before next year's goals are set rather than after.
- Still owed, marked by his manager: a decision they are waiting on; the pay or level conversation that was deferred.
- Carry these into the conversation and give each one a date, rather than leaving them as an acknowledgement.
Next period
- A wider area rather than a single project, with more of the billing work in it — his manager's account of what he wants and what he is ready for.
- Directions his manager marked for the next period: wider scope in the same role; ready for the next level, the case needs making.
- Say early when something is going badly. His manager named it as the one change worth making, and it is the change Jonas named himself.
The one line only the manager can write
Below, meeting or exceeding expectations, with a reason beside it. Then export the whole document.
The band the manager set, and why
Judged against this person's recorded goals for the year, not against their colleagues.
Why this band
Three of four goals met, including the one the year was built around. Setup completion finished under target and I am not counting the whole of that against him: the flow shipped in November, four of the weeks it lost were the billing incident, and two more were scope I let grow. Meeting rather than exceeding because the thing all three of us have now named — going quiet when work is in trouble — is the same sentence I wrote last year, and this is the year to change it rather than record it again.
Then edit anything, mark it final, and download it.
Every sentence of the draft is editable. The band and its reason are saved with the document, and the whole thing downloads as one file written to be handed to Jonas. A document that carries a band with no reason beside it fails its checks.
Guardrails
Five things the draft may never do.
Checks that run over the finished text every time, whichever writer produced it. Both drafts above pass them.
Quote a colleague
Any run of six or more words that also appears in someone's raw answer is caught — checked against what they actually wrote, not the anonymized copy.
Attribute a view to someone who was not asked
“Colleagues felt…” is flagged when no colleague input was collected. Your own account of how someone works with others is fine; that is your observation.
Call one person's view a pattern
One reply is used, and used as one person's view. Two people agreeing is the smallest claim of a pattern that can fairly be made, and the draft says so.
State a number that is not in the record
Every figure in the prose is matched against the recorded goals, targets, results and check-ins. This is the check that most often catches something, and a plausible invented number is the most damaging thing a generated document could contain.
Open a formal process
Warnings, performance plans, dismissal and severance are processes with legal form, and the language for them is rejected outright. An assessment records; it does not initiate.
A draft that fails a check is still shown to you, with the failures listed above it. This is your private preparation, and withholding it would leave you with nothing and no idea why.