While our article’s title may seem overly enthusiastic, it’s an appropriate counter-balance to the hysteria of the ”stop performance ratings” movement that’s recently gained traction. Articles like "Kill your Performance Ratings" in strategy+business and "Reinventing Performance Management" in Harvard Business Review have declared performance ratings to be an unnecessary evil and called for their elimination.
These articles tell us that being rated invokes a debilitating flight-or-fight response and that ratings are so biased as to not be worth gathering at all. They suggest that a “ratingless” system is far more virtuous and effective. Both in theory and in reality these arguments fail.