Last week an e-mail went round the office touting for suggestions on ways to improve our performance appraisal system. My suggestion is dead easy and dirt cheap: get rid of the whole thing and replace it with nothing at all.

Normally, if I have any bright ideas about how this newspaper could be managed better, I propose them in private. It is not seemly to wash the Financial Times' dirty linen in public. Yet when it comes to appraisals, the linen of every other company is covered with much the same filthy stains as ours, and so there seems no shame in suggesting a mass outing to the launderette.

Over the past 30 years, I have been appraised three dozen times – as banker, journalist and non-executive director. I've lived through the craze for long, complicated forms. I've also survived the informal fashion in which appraisals are called “career chats” and where a bogus air of equality prevails. I've done appraisals across a table, on a sofa, even over a meal. I've had them à deux and à trois – with a facilitator in tow.