Many companies are conducting "star wars" battles daily – they are too busy managing, training, coaching or patching up the work of poor performers to spend time on their star performers.
Poor performers in your business will account for about 20 of your people management time. What’s most telling is that in nearly all cases these falling stars will never come up to speed. They will leave, or have to be managed out, you simply hired the wrong person.
Usually important work is held back from poor performers and always given to the trusted, conscientious employees - the good performers. Management can’t afford the risk of getting it wrong. In this scenario we have rewarded poor performance by stripping the falling stars of their responsibility and accountability; they don’t have to do any work!
On top of this, these bludgers are getting more attention than the stars who are taken for granted and burdened with additional work, but get paid the same. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to pick the outcome – The good performers start looking around for an organisation that will appreciate their input. So whilst the manager is trying to catch falling stars, the real stars are looking to shoot off into the blue yonder.
Most managers are poor at managing performance. Its not that they don't believe in the concept, its just that in the pressure to havest golden eggs they don't get around to feeding the geese.
Your first priority is to hire good people – notice I said good, not great, not super-stars. Your goal is to hire solid A and B players – keep the C players out of the selection loop and cut loose those you have on board now.
Flip the people management equation upside down. Starting today, spend 80 of your team A graders, 60 C graders. Just like the A graders, the bell curve tells us it’s inevitable we will have C players on board no matter how disciplined we are in hiring.
Your goal is to uncover the C players quick and practise zero tolerance for poor performance. Don’t hope these poor performers will get better, inevitable they don’t. Don’t waste time or money; admit you made a mistake and more on.
Managing and developing home grown stars is good business. It benefits both parties. Don’t fall into the scrooge trap of thinking money spent will be wasted as the good employees usually leave. Despite all the rumours to the contrary, stars my look, but seldom do they leave organisations that look after them.
Call me old fashion, but I still believe most people are honest and trustworthy. Home grown stars recognise that their success was due, in greater part, to the investment you made in them. They will remain loyal.
If you take the home grown approach, where do you start? You need to establish some initial benchmarks. To do this you need to… |
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