Billboarding performance

There’s a growing trend in organizations: “making your work visible.”

On the surface, it sounds harmless—useful, even. Transparency is good, right? But dig deeper, and you’ll find it’s an insidious practice that wastes time and shifts focus away from what matters: actually doing the work.

It’s like we’re all walking around with Times Square-style billboards, screaming:

“Look! I’m working! Here’s what I’m working on!”

What used to be simple—managers managing (facilitating) performance —has turned into a circus of self-promotion.

It’s no longer enough to perform; you must also narrate your performance.

Why Visibility Became the New Metric

This trend stems from two key issues:

1. Centralized decision-making moved too far up the chain. Every performance, promotion, or compensation decision must be validated by higher and higher management—people often far removed from the actual work. Middle managers, stripped of authority, now act as conduits, feeding updates into the visibility machine. But why? If we don’t trust managers to evaluate performance, what exactly are they managing? Have we turned direct managers into walkie talkies?
2. A lack of coherent performance definitions. In the absence of clear frameworks—whether job descriptions, level matrices, or coherent goals—visibility becomes a lazy substitute for actual performance metrics.

“Seen” work becomes valued work!

When visibility has to happen, the result is a reverse micromanagement dystopia, only by people far removed. Employees must constantly broadcast their progress to ensure the bosses’ bosses' bosses' bosses' ... (and their peers) are aware of their contributions. The managers also have to participate in this show ... they need to make sure that the work of their teams has visibility.

If they don’t, the perception is that people are not working. It’s ridiculous.

The Harm?

• Performance becomes theater. Employees spend significant energy managing perceptions rather than solving problems. Teams waste time crafting updates instead of delivering results. Work becomes a performance, not for customers or end-users, but for an internal audience.
• Biases creep in. Visibility bias leads to inflated ratings for employees who work on flashy, high-profile initiatives and other equally relevant initiatives get ignored. Meanwhile, those in quieter, equally impactful roles—especially remote workers or introverts—get overlooked.
• Burnout. The pressure to both perform and narrate creates inefficiencies, overwhelms employees, and saps engagement.
• Collaboration suffers. Instead of teamwork, visibility culture pits individuals against one another in a race for recognition, eyes, attention, memory.
• Management has information fatigue and no room in their calendar from all the updates. Who can process this much?
• Middle management gets skipped - People will skip their manager and manage upper and upper where the decisions on ratings are made. So you get to the point where senior management or executives end up with hundreds and hundreds of direct reports because they cannibalised the management layer in between.

Here are some hypotheses of how we got here:

• Trust in managers has eroded. Organizations don’t trust managers to assess performance accurately, leading to calibration sessions and validations that happen several levels up. This undermines and burdens employees with proving their worth directly to higher-ups.
• It’s not always about trust—it’s about avoiding accountability for unethical decisions. In some cases, decisions about performance, promotions, or compensation require a level of detachment because they involve actions that might not hold up under scrutiny. For example, moving the goalposts at the end of the year, demanding significantly more performance than what was contracted, or ignoring external factors that made performance hard or complicated. When these decisions are made at a distance, it becomes easier to disregard fairness or context. However, employees quickly figure this out, and to protect themselves, they focus on gaining visibility with decision-makers further up the chain.
• Performance definitions are missing or inconsistent. Without clear performance definitions (via job descriptions, OKRs, or level descriptors), visibility fills the gap. If no one knows what performance looks like, work that’s seen is work that’s valued.
• Hybrid and remote work environments create a visibility gap. Leaders who feel disconnected from the day-to-day work of their orgs rely on visibility as a substitute Employees are expected to “be seen” to prove they’re contributing.
• Middle manager pressure amplifies visibility culture. Managers feel compelled to make their teams’ work visible to justify its value to leadership. This pressure trickles down to employees, creating a visibility race.
• Cultural borrowing from social media. The expectation to maintain a "personal brand" has spilled into the workplace, where employees are rewarded for self-promotion but also expected to. The focus shifts to crafting a narrative about work.
• Visibility bias and selection. Organizations unintentionally reward visibility by promoting or recognizing employees who make their work highly visible, often through high-profile initiatives or constant updates. This creates a selection effect: employees who prioritize visibility are more likely to succeed, while those focused on quiet, impactful work are overlooked. Over time, visibility becomes the survival mechanism, reinforcing the obsession.

Now what?

To tell you the truth ... I would need some help with what would fix this. Here are some ideas I have ... but it still feels as not enough.

1. Start with clear performance definitions. A well-written job description, career matrix, or set of shared performance criteria eliminates the need for constant narration. Employees and managers can focus on performing, not advertising.
2. Reinforce managers’ role. Performance evaluations, compensation decisions, and promotions should primarily rest with those closest to the work: managers. Calibration sessions should validate fairness, not re-do managers’ jobs.
3. Focus on facilitating performance, not controlling it. Move beyond the obsession with visibility. Equip managers with the tools, training, and autonomy to facilitate performance.
4. Measure outcomes, not theatrics.

Visibility is not a metric.

Focus on meaningful contributions, not who shouts the loudest in Slack or builds the most impressive slide deck.

Performance should not require spectacle.