Remember 10 years ago when Microsoft, Adobe, and everyone else started killing performance reviews?

We’re now having that moment with one-on-ones.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang made headlines when he shared that he doesn’t has one-on-ones with his 60 direct reports. He said, “Almost everything that I say, I say to everybody all at the same time.”

Clearly this works for him. But before you follow in his footsteps and go cancel all your one-on-ones, take a moment to answer these 3 questions:

1) How senior are the people on your team? The more senior, the less likely a regular one-on-one is needed. Junior folks on your team will need mentorship and guidance.

2) If you have one-on-ones, can you adjust the cadence? For most of my career the default was weekly. But is that needed? Can you meet less frequently and still operate effectively?

3) What JOB are you hiring a one-on-one to do? Go to first principles and make adjustments as needed.

Finally, don’t waste time playing semantics. When companies killed perf reviews, many still ran reviews, they just gave them a new, clever name.

Some companies have moved from managers to “coaches.” That’s cute, but if your “coach” works inside your company and largely does manager-type work, call them what they are—managers.

Shout out to the HR Heretics crew, Nolan and Kelli for sparking this discussion. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. 👇👇