It's not enough to do your best; you must know what to do & then do your best.
The most basic problem is that performance appraisals often don't accurately assess performance.
We want best efforts guided by theory.
Managers don't like giving appraisals, and employees don't like getting them. Perhaps they're not liked because both parties suspect what the evidence has proved for decades: Traditional performance appraisals don't work.
Put a good person in a bad system and the bad system wins, no contest.
The individual has been crushed by our style of management today.