People management

People Management

The more the time passes by, the more interesting People Management topics become to me.

If I am to choose 4 key success factors that I have learnt from the best managers I have ever had, they are the following:

1. Walk the talk
2. Get rid of rotten apples, no remorse
3. Get good employees out of comfort zone
4. Give real time feedback

Walk the talk

No-brainer. You cannot ask for what you do not even do. 

Starting by little things:

• Be punctual to meetings, starting and ending them on time.
• Save costs to company: optimize travel costs, be diligent choosing providers, do not miss use company assets
• Be self-demanding, criticize yourself
• Meet your commitments 

You MUST be a role model.

Get rid of rotten apples

Here I am not talking about low performers. A low performer can be the right person in the wrong place.

I mean the other way around; the wrong person in any place. 

Let's avoid being naive or too politically correct; there are bad, negative, toxic persons.

Here the approach must be 100% logic, no empathy. What do you choose, the rotten one or the majority of good ones?

Is not only a matter of getting rid of a rotten apple; if not managed on time, it will ruin the whole basket.

Hence, no remorse, the sooner, the better; through out the rotten apple and save the good, delicious ones from getting corrupted.

Get good employees out of comfort zone

You must look at yourself as a ice skating trainer. 

You know it will be painful, you know they will even hate you...but they will do a "triple axel", getting to be the best possible version of themselves.

You will make them better professionals and eventually, better persons, proud of themselves, fearless.

It is simple: force them to do new things, to test the unknown. But at the same time support them, let them know that there is a safety net.

Give real time feedback

Direct, honest, immediate feedback is what all of us deserve.

It is the only way to get better at what we do good as well as the only way to realize and fix what we are not good at.

If anyone gives you feedback, even not very nice one, is because he cares. In terms of feedback, no news is bad news, means that the person in front of you doesn't care. 

And here we come back to point #1 "walk the talk": if you do not care, why should your employees do?!

Yearly Performance review

Yearly Performance Review

Yes, most corporations with Fiscal Year end near Calendar Year end are going through them now, thanks Jack Welch.

In principle, I agree with performance review concept. Actually when you go through most of them, they are great...on paper.

In essence they review employee performance vs. a set of objectives set at the beginning of the FY, providing feedback and ideally a sort of 360 view.

So far so good.

After that, employees are rated in a 5 bands system (it looks same HR Management consultants have sold the very same system to most corporations, we all have the 5 ratings...just names are changed).

In fact, we have gone through hundreds of them since kindergarten...doesn't it sound familiar? Is the good old A, B, C, D, E school rating.

Here it comes the 1st potential issue: if manager setting objectives didn't do a good job setting or tracking them, it is a useless act of faith.

Next, the so called 'calibration' or in other words, a ranking...and problems start right here. 

Most companies have a forced distribution, plotting employees rating in a Gauss bell; most of employee population will be around the mean, and just a few ones by the edges.

What the heck is that? Does it mean high performance teams do not exist? And, how is it possible comparing different professionals, with different objectives, assets, baselines, etc. ?

To make it worse, there is another problem: it assumes a fair behaviour. Most people have it, but not all of us. Thinking differently is naive.

There are two ways to look better in a ranking:

• The fair one: you do better than the rest. Full stop.
• The unfair one: making the rest looking worse than you...I call those employees 'rotten apple'. As they are so mediocre they cannot be better than the rest, they devote a huge share of their time and effort to undermine the others, do not share information, take credit (even from their own employees if by chance they are people managers), etc. And, like any rotten apple, if not taken apart they rot the whole basket (aka department). I'm sure all of us have somebody in mind right now...

That happens within a given department...but as Managers, Directors and VPs go through the same process, it replicates at all levels, making the whole organization weaker, instead of stronger. 

It fosters cliquish behaviour and prevents innovation as people do not take risks.

Key take aways

1. KSF for a good rating process is an excellent objective and goal setting  process ('SMART' rule) and a professional scorecard/dashboard  to track them.
2. Even with excellent goals, there is no better feedback than real-time feedback and 'walk the talk'. Don't wait 1 year!
3. Ranking/calibration is bullshit, unless everybody does exactly the same job (it might work in a factory).
4. Ranking may foster lack of collaboration and innovation, as well as worsening teams as soon as somebody behaves in an unfair way.
5. Set a good variable compensation scheme, that drives top performance, innovation AND collaboration, and forget about the rating/ranking, as the compensation will do it for you.