The appraisal should measure performance in accomplishing goals, plans and performance, in regards to corporate performance management. No one wants a person in a managerial role who appears to do everything right as a manager but who cannot turn in a good record of profit making, marketing, controllership or whatever the area of responsibility may be. Nor should anyone be satisfied to have a performer in a managerial position who cannot operate effectively as a manager.

In assessing performance, systems of appraising against verifiable preselected goals have extraordinary value. Given consistent, integrated and understood planning designed to reach specific objectives, probably the best criteria of managerial performance relate to the ability to set goals intelligently and to plan programs that will accomplish those goals and to succeed in achieving them. Those who have operated under some variation of this system often claim that these criteria are inadequate and that elements of luck or other factors beyond the manager