Performance criteria are made subjective enough that leadership can rate loyalists highly and mark down dissenters while still presenting the outcome as merit.
An example
During a reorganization, a brake-components maker added three criteria to its manager ratings: executive presence, strategic mindset, and ownership. There was no rubric. An engineering manager who had opposed moving testing to a low-cost plant shipped her line's redesign two weeks early and under budget, with warranty claims down by a fifth. Her review praised the results and rated her as needing development on strategic mindset. A peer who had championed the move, and whose own project ran a quarter late, was rated exceptional on ownership. Calibration notes were not released. Asked what evidence the strategic-mindset rating rested on, her director called it a holistic judgment by the committee. The following cycle she was left off the succession slate.
Why it works
Vague criteria let a loyalist's ordinary work be described in the strongest terms and rewarded accordingly, which is what makes loyalty pay. A dissenter's measured results lose their force once the narrative recasts them as lacking strategic mindset or being a difficult collaborator, and disagreement grows expensive, since every rating rests on an unreviewable reading that compounds across cycles. The criteria must be defensible enough that oversight does not step in. It works when calibration is opaque, no objective scorecard contradicts the story, and leaving is costly.
The thinking behind it
Oliver E. Williamson Markets and Hierarchies: Analysis and Antitrust Implications (1975) rests on bounded rationality, which makes agreements always incomplete, and on opportunism, which Williamson later described as including incomplete or distorted disclosure. Vague rating criteria are an incomplete agreement about what counts as good work, and they leave raters room to read it however suits them. Published rubrics and auditable calibration are the safeguards that close the gaps.
Herbert A. Simon Administrative Behavior (1947) analyzes organizations as systems of decisions shaped by premises the organization supplies, such as goals, information, and procedures, so whoever controls those premises influences the decisions. Rating criteria are the premises of every review. Making them subjective lets leadership supply the conclusions it wants, and separating the people who draft criteria from those who apply them takes back control of the premises.
Warning signs
Rating criteria are adjectives such as executive presence or ownership, with no verifiable artifact behind them. Calibration notes are never released. Strong measured results still earn a lacks-strategic-mindset rating. The same people are rated exceptional on the vague criteria cycle after cycle, and they are the ones closest to leadership's agenda.
How to defend yourself
Put your ratings next to objective output: shipped work, audited figures, published metrics.
- Ask in writing for the evidence behind each subjective rating, and for the rubric that defines it.
- Compare ratings and outcomes with peers where you can. Outside recruiters who value your record give you a useful second opinion.
- Push for published rubrics and calibration that can be audited.
- Take a documented gap to a board-level talent committee, or to a senior leader who insists on traceable evidence.
The approach depends on the gap staying hidden, so the more visible the comparison becomes, the weaker it gets.
How a leader shuts it down
Publish the rubric for every rating criterion, with examples of the evidence that meets each level. Separate the people who draft criteria from those who apply them. Audit calibration outcomes against objective scorecards, and require traceable evidence for any rating that contradicts measured results.