🖤 Open Works #43 How To Balance Results vs Behaviour In Your Performance Reviews

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If your performance reviews are tilted too heavily toward results, you risk rewarding “brilliant jerks” and burning trust. If you over-index on behaviours, you risk losing clarity on whether the business is actually hitting goals.

The art is in the balance. Here’s how we think about it.

1. Anchor in your purpose of performance

Before tweaking weightings or rating systems, zoom out…

• To drive clarity on expectations?

• To support growth and development?

• To influence promotions, reward, exits?

The answer will shape the balance you need. For example, if performance reviews are tightly tied to comp, you’ll likely need clearer rules around weighting. If they’re focused on growth, you can lean more flexibly into behaviours.

2. Build on three pillars, not one

Reviews shouldn’t just ask what someone delivered. They also need to cover how they delivered it, and whether they role-modelled the expected standards.

Our go-to structure is:

• Results → Did they hit the goals?

• Execution → Did they deliver with the expected level of competence?

• Behaviours → Did they role-model the values we expect here?

Miss one, and your reviews will always feel incomplete.

3. Get explicit about weighting

Don’t leave managers guessing how much each pillar matters.

Our rule of thumb:

• Results and Behaviours must both be met for progression.

• Execution helps spot when someone is ready for the next level.

• Behaviours are the non-negotiable. Regardless of results, if someone consistently fails here, they’re not promotable.

Document this clearly in your performance handbook so it’s not open to interpretation.

4. Embed the balance into your rituals

Even the clearest framework won’t stick if your rituals don’t back it up. A few tips:

• Run calibrations to ensure consistency across managers.

• Make “how” part of every 1:1, not just the annual review.

• Recognise people publicly for both results and behaviours (e.g. “Shoutout for hitting the quarterly target and supporting two teammates through a crunch week”).

• Hold leaders accountable to the same standard.

5. Use simple, lightweight ratings

We like a simple traffic light system across the three pillars:

It keeps reviews simple, consistent, and focused on clarity over complexity.

The bottom line

Balancing results vs behaviours is about defining, up front:

• What we assess → Results, Execution, Behaviours

• How we weight them → Behaviours as non-negotiable

• How we embed them → In 1:1s, calibrations, recognition, and leadership accountability

Do this well, and you’ll build a system that drives performance and protects culture.

GandalfAI Resource Recommendations

We asked GandalfAI (available to content pass holders) for the best resources on this subject from the Open Org codex. Here’s 3/19 recommendations.

• Learnerbly’s Performance Hub

• Open Org’s Performance Template

• Claire Lowry-Hubball’s Trust vs Team Performance Matrix

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With 🧊 & 🔥 

Adam & John

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