Really good article. I had one supervisor in a long career who got it. He went one step farther. His feeling was that if his high-performers were thinking about their pay then they weren't thinking about their projects. He made sure that we stayed just enough ahead of the curve to be kind of grateful (e.g., the average raise in the annual cycle might be 2%, max 4% and he'd find a way to give his high performers 6% and his low performers 0.5%). It really felt good when he did that year after year. He also checked to see if we had the resources we needed on our projects (to facilitate success instead of micromanaging). Great guy. In my experience one of a kind. Whenever I had employees I tried to emulate him and it was really hard to do, and I'm certain I didn't do it nearly as well as he did.
I also agree with the article, having experienced it myself on more than one occasion in my nearly 48 year professional career. That being said, what can really be done about it?
I've been a manager, and I had a range of competencies in my group and had to deal with both high and low performers. And I was glad that the self-starters were able to do their jobs with little or no direct supervision. But I also recognized that not everyone could be left to themselves to succeed or fail. The article never touched on this, but I suspect that in many situations, the so-called "underperformers" are often new hires or people with less experience than their co-workers and therefore it's only reasonable that managers and supervisors will have to spend more time with them as they develop and gain the skills necessary to become an “A” player. That's just reality. Now don't get me wrong, I know that there may always be chronic "underperformers" in any large organization, that's just the rule of large numbers, but to assume that this can be somehow 'solved' is a bit naive at best. It's just the way thing are but as a manager, and again I was given this 'opportunity' once, if there ever is a need to let someone go, for whatever reason, if you're the person responsible for making that call, then use this to mitigate YOUR situation.
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA Siemens PLM: UG/NX Museum:
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
I think we have all experienced this to some extent.
The problem I see in this article, and in other articles just like this article, is that it is premised on the notion that there are low-performers or non-performers in every company. That is simply not true. That would be tantamount to saying - analagously or metaphorically - that the second or third liners who go to the NBA all star game or the Pro Bowl are comparative non-performers relative to the starters. What I have seen is that there are bar-setters in every place I have worked, and often the bar is set high enough that it becomes an unrealistic expectation that everyone can clear it. The people who can't aren't bad people, they're just "in tough".
I train agility dogs in my spare time. When I see an otherwise great dog struggle at, say, a 26" jump height, when I know that it has the potential to be effective at that height, then like every other reasonable trainer out there, I lower the jumps to 22" or 16" for a while until both the execution and more importantly the confidence is restored in the dog. I reward the performance of the less difficult objective and build back up to the more difficult one. That is what trainers do.
In a sense, I suppose that is what this article says, along with - also analogously - sometimes even the best dog is going to knock bars and garner course faults. It happens. What concerns me is the subconscious propensity that we all have to label those with less talent or less drive or both as "non-performers". I find it healthy to remember that, at some point, we all were good enough to get an engineering degree and - more to the point - get hired as an engineer. Some measure of talent is there in all of us. It just takes a good trainer to find it and cultivate it.
The above stated, in retrospect, it was only the first two paragraphs in the article that soured me a bit.
The rest of it, regarding how the best people always end up with the crappiest assignments on jobs already messed up by others, is probably true enough to be the norm rather than the exception. I have spent the last two decades of my career trying to escape from being sucked into that vortex, but for me, it appears that there is no escape, and never will be.
I recently made some strategic career moves in an effort to escape from just being "the mechanical guy who can do everything including run projects". I have always hated being that guy. It has meant, for me, that I get the sh*t that nobody else wants to do, or that I end up being "the goalie", the last guy who needs to save the game because there is no other avenue to turn to for assistance. The trouble is, by the time they put me in the game, there are five minutes left to play and the team is already down 6-0. We might end up only losing 7-5, but I get credit for the loss. I dont lose many games that I start...
I left Project Engineering because I was sick and tired of taking the cr*p from the Client. I moved into a pure mechanical engineering role (up to and including department lead) so I could focus on the technical aspects of the work. But no matter what I did, my employer(s) would not allow me to develop beyond what I was, and I always got called into that dreaded meeting with management, the one where they would say, "We need you to step in and take over because...nobody else comes to mind..." and Presto! There I was, running another half-finished, mostly messed-up project. A couple of moves later, I said to heck with this "mechanical engineering" nonsense; I'll join the Process group - with the full endorsement of all concerned. Well, at least it *was* - until it came to pass that a project got into trouble. This time, I had to step in and replace all of the Project Engineer, the Mechanical Engineer and lead the Process Engineering effort. I finally out and out resigned when then people involved for whom I was now placed in charge over told *me* that *I* needed to become a team player and "do a better job". The company management sat idly by and did nothing while I worked all my weekends and nights redrawing all the P&IDs and reworking the entire process from front to back, coming in on Mondays to lead all the meetings and HAZOP and face the music from a now disgruntled Client over the cost over-runs that I inherited. So, one meeting, I had enough; after 14 years, I got up from a conference room table, declared that I had had enough, typed a two line resignation and was out of the building for good inside of four minutes. This all happened less than a year after I had been formally recognized as the best employee in the company.
Human Resources took the official stance that *I* was the problem, and that the company was well-rid of me.
Fast forward to today - a little over a year later. Now a Senior Manager in a small firm. One would think I have finally clawed my way out of that cess-filled vortex. So, I have spent the first two months trying to gain - earn - the respect of those good and talented people in my charge, largely by helping them out with their day to day work and getting into the trenches with them when required. Along comes a Client who - wrongly - has an issue with one of our employees. I write one simple email memo backing up a design decision and - guess what? The Client wants our employee - an excellent employee and engineer - out and me in as the Project Engineer to finish the job. And there you have it - one award, one large performance bonus, two promotions and two companies later, and I am now sucked right back down to where I was, and where I have always been, and where I feel I am condemned to always remain: running or finishing projects.
Apparently, *that* is my reward.
My career is in a dreadful, out of control, spiraling tailspin and no amount of "performance" at my end has helped me to date.
So yes, as the article states, it takes its toll. It has pretty much destroyed me, or so it feels at this moment in time.
To me, it's generally a battle between a highly-compensated, experienced, engineer vs. using a lower-compensated, junior engineer. That's a business decision, and often, that's how you make ends meet, by bidding senior engineers and then using junior engineers, unless they run into problems.
While there's obviously desires on the part of senior engineers to just do the work correctly from the get-go, that's a personal selfish attitude that only benefits the senior engineer until they retire. But what happens after they retire, or leave; isn't the company now burdened with junior engineers that have no experience, and no senior engineers to help things out? As employees, it's easy to gripe about our own self-interests, but we do get paid well to also serve the interests of the company, and these must be balanced against our own interests. Most of the time, they all align, and the choices are easy. But for a company to be successful and grow in the long term, the number of experienced engineers must increase over time, which means that junior engineers must be given the hard tasks to train them or break them. By "break, I simply mean that not every person that graduates with an engineering degree is necessarily cut out to do certain things, but the sooner the company can identify them and place them in an optimum position for both them and the company, the better things are going to be all around.
TTFN
faq731-376
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Most managers spend 80% of their time with those who only do 20% of the work while the top talent quietly does 80% of the workload with minimal fuss. It is easy to get distracted by the high maintenance of underperformers and the requisite babysitting, investigating, cajoling, and documentation they require. - from the article.
A couple of times in my career, the high maintenance underperformers who required babysitting, investigating, cajoling and extra documentation were the managers I worked under! Unfortunately, the one skill they did have was presentation, so the management above them remained clueless to the extent of the problem, and could never figure out why there was a continuous turn-over of engineers in the department.
15% do more than is asked of them.
70% do just enough to keep their job
and 15% do nothing, they actually harm the company by their presence alone.
Find the top 15% in your company and do everything to keep them.
Find the low 15% and fire them immediately, production will increase just by getting rid of them - without replacing them.
I never saw myself as a high performer. But half of the marks fit, and the one with work-life balance does not beause I wath this point very closely. I'm still not sure if this tells me anything.
Maybe the lack of targeted development is part of a strategy of some managers - you have someone in a place where he/she is highly useful, don't let them move someplace else?
cry22: you've described the matrix of employees. On one axis you have smart and stupid, and on the other, hard-working and lazy. Smart and hardworking is of course what you want- they might generate 10x their salary in profit. Smart and lazy is OK too- they may generate only 3x but they're still making you money. Lazy and stupid is tolerable, or at least not an urgent problem- they only cost you 1x salary. But hard-working and stupid can take the whole company down- they need to be found and removed immediately.
Key failures of management include tolerating incompetence merely to avoid the unpleasantness of firing someone, and paying based on something arbitrary like age or years of service rather than performance. Tolerating incompetence sends a very clear message to the high performers, as does pay non-commensurate with performance. What you do for the top performers themselves is one thing, but what you do with the lower performers matters a great deal to the high performers as well.
Don't discount the 'Smart and Lazy' too quickly as they are often the type who are willing to try something new, if it looks like it will be easier to do or avoid a lot of 'scut work'. Sometime the 'Smart and Hardworking', while they are very competent and able to really do a good job using current procedures, sometimes miss new approaches or even discount them as being not needed, at least by themselves, and could therefore miss an opportunity to become even more productive. Something that often the naturally 'Lazy' will see and take advantage of if for no other reason than that it looks easier and less tedious.
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA Siemens PLM: UG/NX Museum:
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
I'm probably in the smart and lazy category. I had a morning meeting Friday where I got to peer at stuff outside my assigned area. Looks like my suggestions from that one meeting are going to save upwards of $10,000,000 on that project at the cost of maybe 50 man-hours (not MY time, but someone's time) of up-front work - and the suggestions can be applied to other projects in the future.
mOST OF THE TIME I GET THE o-@#$% jobs, the ones where my boss opens up the project book, says O-@#$%. The next thing he says is my name. My office is along side of his. However I did manage to skip the last O-@#$% job, someone else go that one.
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