Teaching Employees to Under Perform
Teaching Employees to Under Perform
Recently I was talking with Fred, a new manager, who said he
couldn't win for losing. When he delegated and checked up,
his employees would get annoyed, stubborn, and resistant,
claiming he was micro-managing. If I don't check, he said, they
don't do it. In either case, I'm not getting what I need,
and what our clients need. Clients are complaining and my
manager thinks I'm not producing.
When we looked at a specific example, the problem started to get
real clear.
Upper management had asked for an upgrade for an existing
service. They wanted additional features, requiring new
technology. The technology was common in the industry, and
should have been easily implemented. Implementation was slated
for the end of the quarter, an easy 3 month project.
In the past, Fred would have delegated it to the appropriate
junior employee, then checked in regularly, like a couple of
times a week, to see if it was done. His employees were
understandably annoyed. They hadn't had time to source a vendor,
let alone implement any changes before he was asking if they had
finished.
So, this time, Fred delegated the task to Grant, told him when
to be done, and then didn't mention it, except in the weekly
staff meetings. Each week, Grant would have a good story why
things weren't moving along. It had now been four months for a
task that should have taken two at the very most.
Fred was past annoyed, especially when his boss asked him in
public, one more time, when was it going to be done. This latest
embarrassment was enough to trigger an angry blow up, targeted
at Grant who had let him down. He finished off the dressing down
by calling the vendor himself, only to learn this vendor didn't
supply the model necessary for the upgrade.
Four months had gone by; the project was still at step one.
Where did Fred get off track?
Rule #1.
Fred was delegating and checking, but not acting on lack of
performance. A sure recipe for continued lack of
performance, frustration, and angry blow up.
It all goes back to Rule #1: behavior that's rewarded is apt
to be repeated. And, the Corollary for Rule #1: the best reward
for bad behavior is to do nothing. By asking about
progress, and then not taking action when there wasn't progress,
Fred taught Grant that his poor performance, not meeting
deadlines, had no consequences.
Time for consequences. Timing consequences.
See the article Managing Poor Performance with Consequences for
a further discussion of this topic.
416 words
See the articles that discuss this further:
Managing Poor Performance, Coaching Conversations, and
Counseling Conversations at
http://www.patwiklund.com/infocenter/index.shtml or on this site.