Prof. Anna Tavis

Clinical Professor for Human Capital Management at NYU

Dr. Anna Tavis is Clinical Professor and Chair of the Human Capital Management Department at NYU’s School of Professional Studies. She is the Director of NYU Coaching Innovation Lab and the host of NYU Coaching & Tech Summit. Dr. Tavis has been named to Thinkers50 Radar in 2020 and to top 100 Global Influencers in People Analytics in 2023, 2024, 2025. Dr. Tavis is the co-author of Humans at Work. The art and practice of creating the hybrid workplace. (Kogan Page, 2022) and The Digital Coaching Revolution (Kogan Page, 2024).

Prior to joining the NYU faculty, Dr. Tavis navigated a diverse global career in business, consulting and academia. In business, Dr. Tavis was the Head of Motorola’s EMEA OD function based in London, Nokia’s Global Head of Talent Management based in Helsinki, United Technologies Corporation’s Chief Learning Officer, and the Global Head of Talent and Organizational Development with AIG Investments. In academia, Dr. Tavis was on the faculty at Columbia University, Williams College, and Fairfield University.

Two of Dr. Tavis’ Harvard Business Review articles in collaboration with Dr. Peter Cappelli : “HR Goes Agile” (2018) and “The Performance Management Revolution” (2016) were published in HBR’s “Must Reads” (2016 & 2018), and “Definitive Management Ideas of the Year” (2016 and 2018) and in “Agile: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review” (2020).

Dr. Tavis is a frequent presenter at international conferences on the topics of Future of Work; People Analytics and Technology; Employee Experience; and Intelligent Automation in the Workplace. She is a Senior Fellow with the Conference Board and is the Academic in Residence with Executive Networks. She is the former Executive Editor of People+Strategy Journal, a publication of SHRM’s Executive Network and she is currently an Associate Editor of Workforce Solutions Review, a publication of the International Association for Human Resource Information Management and The Journal of Total Rewards, a publication of WorldatWork.

Contributions

  • When we think of performance management, it typically brings to mind a need to monitor employee performance, rate their performance, and compensate them for it appropriately. Anna points to General Electric in the ‘80s as being a major driver of a standard mode of performance management whereby all employees were rated and placed on a bell curve.

    But the question of how to identify the top performers remains difficult and employees have not been particularly happy with this system. Big companies like GE and Microsoft replaced these punitive systems of performance management almost as soon as their CEOs were replaced. 

    Anna is keen to highlight that, when it comes to organisational design, topics like change management and business transformation are always prioritised. Still, HR and performance management is taken for granted and innovation often stops there. She cites big companies like GSK and Google as being only now trying to innovate within that space. Anna thinks performance management must evolve with the changing economy.