A Step-by-Step Guide for Startups Building Their 360-Review Process

Make the most of your organization’s most valuable resources.

Building a 360-review process for a startup can be a valuable tool for providing comprehensive feedback and fostering personal and professional growth among team members. It is called a 360-degree process because team members conduct four reviews: Self-reviews, peer reviews, manager reviews, and company leadership reviews. In order for early-stage startups to thrive in winter, managing up the ladder must be valued just as much as managing direct reports.

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Creating Effective 360-Degree Performance Reviews

1. Determine the purpose and goals: Start by defining the purpose of the 360-review process. Are you looking to improve individual performance, promote teamwork, or identify areas for skill development? Clearly articulate the goals you want to achieve with the process.
2. Establish review criteria: Identify the key competencies, skills, or behaviors that align with your company values and objectives. These criteria should be specific, measurable, and relevant to each role within your startup. At Prime Movers Lab, our review criteria are measured against our four key values: Breaking through, going deep, providing jackpot experiences, and love in action.
3. Design the feedback instrument: Create a survey or questionnaire that incorporates the identified review criteria. Include rating scales, open-ended questions, and space for additional comments. Ensure that the questions are clear, concise, and promote actionable feedback. Our recommendations for your feedback instrument consideration are explained in more depth later in this write-up.
4. Define the review participants: Determine who will be involved in the review process. Consider the size of your startup and the reporting structure to decide the most relevant individuals to include in each review.
5. Ensure confidentiality and anonymity: Confidentiality is crucial for fostering honest feedback. Assure participants that their responses will be anonymous and that the collected feedback will be used for developmental purposes only. Use an anonymous online platform or third-party tool to collect and manage the feedback. Again, more on this later in the piece.
6. Set a review schedule: Establish a review cycle, such as biannually or annually, to ensure regular feedback. Clearly communicate the timeline for each phase, including the survey distribution, completion deadline, and feedback discussions.
7. Provide training and guidelines: Educate employees about the purpose and process of the 360 reviews. Emphasize the importance of providing specific examples and actionable suggestions when reviewing oneself and others.
8. Conduct the review process: Distribute the questionnaires to the selected participants during the predetermined timeframe. Monitor the completion rate and send reminders to ensure a high participation level. Once the feedback is collected, compile the results in a confidential manner.
9. Facilitate feedback discussions: Schedule one-on-one feedback sessions between the employee being reviewed and their supervisor or a designated HR representative. Encourage open and constructive discussions to help the employee understand their strengths, and areas for improvement, and create a development plan.
10. Implement 90- and 180-day action plans: Encourage employees to create 90- and 180-day action plans based on the feedback received. Support them in setting two realistic goals and two moonshot goals.
11. Monitor progress: Regularly follow up on the action plans and provide ongoing support and coaching to employees. Track progress over time and measure the impact of the 360-review process on individual and team development.
12. Refine the process: Collect feedback from participants about their experience with the 360-review process. Incorporate their suggestions and make improvements as necessary to ensure the process remains effective and aligned with the evolving needs of your startup.

Remember, building a successful 360-review process requires a commitment to transparency, open communication, and a culture that values continuous growth and learning.

Designing Your Feedback Instruments

Consider tools like Lattice to help with performance reviews but the hard truth is that no tool will do the real legwork for you here, the value of performance reviews lies in the quality and experience of the review itself, so it’s important to design the feedback instruments properly from the start. It will save you many headaches later.

Create two sections for your 360-review templates, culture, and performance. The first question in the 360 reviews clarifies what the person’s relationship is with the reviewee (my direct report, myself, others) and each person evaluates themselves, their peers, managers, and leadership on a scale from 1–4 on the following cultural criteria. Require written examples in an open text box after each to help prompt discussion points for the review itself.

1. This person has made me feel love in action.
2. This person shows curiosity, routinely going deep into relationships and topics, and is not satisfied with superficial interactions or understanding.
3. This person creates jackpot moments of support, joy, or insight that I and others remember.
4. This person breaks through perceived limits, consistently growing and delivering beyond expectation.

Then ask each person to rate themselves, their manager, peers, and leadership from 1–4 on the following performance criteria:

1. This person communicates effectively.
2. This person delivers results and has built the necessary credibility and reputation with internal and external stakeholders to excel in this role.
3. This person has good intentions when they interact with me and others, showing care and openness.
4. This person has integrity and the ability to demonstrate fairness, honesty, and authenticity.
5. This person has the skills, knowledge, and experience to excel in their role.

Ask one final question to each person, “On a scale of 1–10, how likely are you to give a positive recommendation on this person for their current role?”

After all the data is confidentially collected, display the results on a scatter plot for the company to see and encourage employees to find their own points by using their total culture score and performance score. The X axis on the scatter plot is Culture and the Y axis is Performance. The scatter plot represents all of the individuals at the company and please note that the quadrants are a forced curve by average and do not reflect a “problem” necessarily. It is solely meant to be used directionally to level-set where each individual should focus their growth plan discussions with their managers.

Some leaders like to display written comments anonymously to employees and others prefer to use them as discussion points during the review itself, so do what feels right for your culture and team. If your team is less than 20 people full-time, there is a good chance people will be able to identify who wrote what, so take that into consideration.

When companies poorly manage performance reviews, they lose their best performers and take a hit in morale. Getting this right from the start is one of the best things early-stage startups can do and helps people hang with you when times are tough, which is of course an inevitable part of the startup journey.

What Early-Stage Startups Get Wrong

Early-stage startups often face specific challenges when it comes to performance reviews. Here are some common mistakes that are easily avoidable.

1. Delaying performance reviews: In the early stages of a startup, founders, and managers may be preoccupied with building the business and overlook the importance of timely performance reviews. Delaying reviews can lead to a lack of accountability and hinder employee development.

2. Lack of clear expectations: Startups may fail to set clear expectations and goals for employees due to the fast-paced nature of their work. Without well-defined criteria, employees may be unsure of what they need to achieve or how their performance will be evaluated.

3. Inconsistent evaluation criteria: In the early stages, startups often experience rapid changes, and roles may evolve quickly. However, they may not update their evaluation criteria to reflect these changes. This can result in inconsistency and confusion when assessing performance.

4. Neglecting feedback and coaching: Due to time constraints and resource limitations, early-stage startups may overlook the importance of providing regular feedback and coaching to employees. This lack of feedback can hinder employees’ growth and hinder the overall development of the organization.

5. Overemphasis on individual performance: Startups often rely on a small team where collaboration and teamwork are critical. However, early-stage startups may overly focus on individual performance metrics and fail to recognize the importance of teamwork and collaboration in achieving overall success.

6. Not aligning performance with company goals: Startups often have a clear vision and mission, but they may not effectively align individual performance with the company’s strategic objectives. This misalignment can lead to employees focusing on tasks that don’t contribute to the company’s long-term success.

7. Lack of flexibility and adaptability: Early-stage startups face a high level of uncertainty and change. However, their performance review processes may lack the flexibility to adapt to evolving circumstances. This rigidity can stifle creativity and innovation among employees.

To address these issues, early-stage startups should prioritize setting clear expectations and goals, providing regular feedback and coaching, updating evaluation criteria to reflect evolving roles, emphasizing teamwork and collaboration, aligning individual performance with company goals, and fostering a culture of flexibility and adaptability. Additionally, seeking input from employees on the performance review process can help ensure it meets their needs and aligns with the startup’s unique culture and stage of development.

Prime Movers Lab invests in breakthrough scientific startups founded by Prime Movers, the inventors who transform billions of lives. We invest in companies reinventing energy, transportation, infrastructure, manufacturing, human augmentation, and agriculture.

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