After one year, I'm finally switching from Blogger to a self-hosted Wordpress. Wordpress allows for more flexibility in tweaking the design, creating a unique look, making changes, etc. The content of this site is now also at http://evarykr.com. Upcoming posts on the new site (evarykr.com) will be more general.
Read more...
External motivators were excellent for the 20th Century. Today, our habit of extrinsically motivating employees is no longer effective - instead of improving performance, the carrot and stick method creates a blockage to innovation. With increasing complexity in our workplace, it is no longer the case that you can increase the incentives to increase the performance.
Here's the video that explains the details:
Dan Pink makes the argument that Management --> Compliance and Autonomy --> Engagement. For ultimate performance in the 21st Century, people need jobs that are interesting and important. To create those jobs, provide employees with Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose.
But how to repair the mismatch between What Science Knows and What Business Does? Read more...
To make an improvement, you must start with measuring what you have. To truly know the impact of a change, you must evaluate pre and post. But to make the best decisions, you must discover the seemingly unknowable. It’s not impossible, it just requires that you gather lots and lots of data. This is where analytics comes in...
That is the start of the guest post I wrote for Renegade HR, where the motto is to "recruit great people and inspire them to do amazing things that drive your business." Chris Ferdinandi, the wise author of Renegade HR, thinks you should use your employees as guinea pigs to accomplish that. I do too. To read more, get the rest of it here: http://renegadehr.net/guest-post-analytics-hr/
A derailed executive is an previously-named high-potential employee who has reached the middle management level, only to find that there is little chance of future advancement (as previously thought) due to a misfit between job requirements and personal skills. Thus, the executive either plateaus or leaves the organization altogether. That is the original CCL studies definition. Sometimes the term also refers to leaders who experience big failures after reaching the executive spot and, more recently, those involved in ethical scandals. Whatever your definition of a bad leader is, most have several of the following 10 leadership shortcomings:
Lack of energy/enthusiasm: OK so some people are less visibly enthusiastic than others, thanks to a personality trait called introversion. But there's an effort to be made, no matter what your personality style, to covey and inspire energy and enthusiasm in your team. And there is NEVER an excuse for complaining. Either do it, change it, or leave it.
Accepting your own mediocre performance: If you don't hold yourself to high standards, you can't be responsible for others' performance. Worse, yet, making excuses for your own mediocre performance. There are plenty of options for learning and development. Use them.
Lack of clear vision and direction: Too much doing and not enough thinking = Bad idea.
Poor judgment: This includes making poor decisions. Ask your team for advice. They may have data, ideas, and knowledge that you don't.
Refusal to collaborate: There is a downside to being too independent. When you see other team members as competition, you miss out on getting their support when you may need it.
Not walking the talk: When you set a standard for behavior or for performance, hold yourself accountable as well! If people see you violating your own rules, your word will not be respected.
Resisting new ideas: Don't turn down others' ideas if you cannot offer a better solution of your own.
Not learning from mistakes: It's ok to make a mistake. Most people won't blame you for that. It's when you make the same mistake. Over and over and over. And then complaining about it and/or shifting the blame.
Lack of interpersonal skills: Too mean, too harsh, or too detached. Being ignorant of others' emotions and your impact on them is not a sustainable behavioral style if you want your company/department to succeed.
Failure to develop others: By this point, the focus on your individual performance is old news. The question now becomes, what can your people accomplish as a collective group?
These may sound like obvious flaws. They're not. It is so easy to be unaware of your own bad behavior and people are very unlikely to point it out, especially if you're the boss. I like this list because it is very comprehensive. Another upside of is that all of the shortcomings are behavioral. That means even if you possess all of these undesirable characteristics, you can change and improve. Improve how? Here's an article about what you can do instead.
There was a whole ton of executive derailment research in the late 80's and 90's and they found four common themes, over and over: • problems with interpersonal relationships • failure to meet business objectives • failure to build and lead a team • inability to change or adapt during a transition
Looking at the list above, those four factors are certainly still playing a role in derailment today.
Study 1: 360-degree feedback data was collected on more than 450 Fortune 500 executives. Then the common characteristics of the 31 who were fired over the next three years.
Study 2: 360-degree feedback data from more than 11,000 leaders was analyzed. The 10% who were considered least effective were identified. They then compared the ineffective leaders with the fired leaders to come up with the 10 most common leadership shortcomings.
The skill set that is required for success at an individual contributor and entry-level job gets old quickly. As you achieve results by doing things right, you get put into a position that now requires you to do the right things. As this happens, your technical expertise matter less and less. That's pretty well-known by now. But past that mid-managerial level is where it gets fuzzy. How is success defined at executive levels? Well, it's not really. The hallmark of an exec/strategy role is that it's undefined. So there's no prescriptive way to do it, meaning there is no job analysis or a job description to go along with it:
"Executive jobs are very different than jobs at the bottom of the hierarchy. In lower level jobs, there often is a "right way" to do a job. The "right" behaviors are closely tied to the results one gets. At the top, there is not prescription of behaviors that will succeed or fail -- there are as many combinations and nuances as there are people; the same result may come from many different behaviors." -George Hollenbeck, Executive Selection -- What's Right… and What's Wrong
If that's the case, how are the appropriate people chosen for those roles? From an individual perspective, how do hi-potential wannabes know what to do to get that promotion? The June issue of Harvard Business review points out that often they don't:
"The company’s competency model included 'develop talent' but didn’t specify that having a track record for doing so was nonnegotiable for anyone who wanted to rise. The information void wasn’t a matter of malice; rather, it was due to assumptions that nobody thought to make explicit and an all-too-human reluctance to deliver bad news. Managers and HR professionals oft en provide intentionally vague feedback for fear of losing a good employee. Further, although most leadership competency models refer in some way to important management skills and attributes, they typically fail to distinguish nice-to-have from nonnegotiable skills." - HBR, Why You Didn't Get That Promotion
I think this is where that whole, You Need a Mentorto Succeed thing comes in. When you have developed a level of trust with someone, they are more likely to give you candid feedback and provide tips on what you really need to do to get where you want to be. If you don't have one, here's the Cliff Notes, courtesy of the aforementioned HBR article:
The Unwritten Rules for Executive Selection:
Nonnegotiables:
Consistently strong performance… results matter because executive performance is crucial to organizational performance
Ethics/Integrity/Character… who you are is important because there are some behavioral characteristics that don't change much
Driven to lead with more responsibility… behavior is crucial because past actions are a decent predictor of future performance
Deselectors:
Weak interpersonal skills
Insensitivity to others
Self-interest over the company
Narrow business perspective
Selectors/Distinguishers:
Strategic thinking
Trend spotter
Recruiting and developing a great team
Leading a successful implementation
Innovation enabler
Courage and tolerance for risk
Internal boundary spanning
Change management skills
Influence and persuasion
Conflict management skills
Continuous learning, growth, and professional development
Adaptability
I'm surprised the value of one's network wasn't emphasized more in the article.
To provide graduate students with insights from practitioners, Ben Baran from Foster Excellence has launched an “Early-Career Practitioner Conversations” series, which provides advice from successful practitioners who earned a graduate degree in industrial/organizational psychology, human resource management, or a related field within the past five years.
When hearing about change, the concept of inertia comes to mind. Imagine a hockey puck and the level of force it takes to make it move initially. Then imagine the level of force it takes to stop one that’s coming fast. Contrast both of those scenarios to the effort it takes to keep a puck moving or to keep it still. Therein lies the difficulty of change. Well, human behavior is not too much different.
To read the rest, go here. I wrote it as a guest post for Matt Cheuvront's blog, Life Without Pants (yes, it's work safe). Matt has rounded-up about a dozen of the most brilliant bloggers to do a series on the inconvenience of change during the month of May. To read my views on why change is so difficult, take a look at The Psychology of Change.
In this May's issue of HBR, there is an article called Why Teams Don't Work, which sort of caught me by surprise with the negativity. Because I know a good amount of teams that DO work. But as I read through, I realized I've been part of more failed teams than I originally thought. Two brains are better than one. Unless the two brains can't communicate. Says the article, "research consistently shows that teams underperform, despite all the extra resources they have. That's because problems with coordination and motivation typically chip away at the benefits of collaboration."
5 Basic Conditions of Effective Teams (from Leading Teams)
TEAMS MUST BE REAL - Know who is on the team and who is not
TEAMS NEED A COMPELLING DIRECTION - Leader must provide direction and inspire members to agree on the mission
TEAMS NEED ENABLING STRUCTURES - Well-designed tasks, productive norms, the right members
TEAMS NEED A SUPPORTIVE CONTEXT - Reward system, HR policies, and IT tools must facilitate, not inhibit collaboration
TEAMS NEED EXPERT COACHING - A focus on individual performance is not enough to improve team performance
I think the simplest (yet most difficult) thing to do from the list above to ensure greatest impact is to have the right people on the team and make it clear who's in and who's not. Just because people will feel left out is not a good enough reason to include them on the team if you want results.
Another quote to think about…
How good are companies at providing a supportive context for teams? Perversely, the organizations with the best human resource departments often do things that are completely at odds with good team behavior. That’s because HR departments tend to put in place systems that are really good at guiding, directing, and correcting individual behavior. Take a personnel system that has been honed by industrial psychologists to identify the skills of a particular job and test individual employees on those skills. In such a system, the HR department will set up training to develop the “right” people in the “right” way. The problem is this is all about the individual.
The entire time I was reading the article I couldn't help but interchange the word "team" with "company." In fact, the book I've been reading has similar principles, applied to organizations:
LEVEL 5 LEADERSHIP - Magic combo of personal humility and professional will
FIRST WHO, THEN WHAT - People are not your most important asset, the right people are
CONFRONT THE BRUTAL FACTS - Be realistic about your situation, yet optimistic about your future
THE HEDGEHOG CONCEPT - The intersection of your passion, your talent, your economy
A CULTURE OF DISCIPLINE - Rigor and structure that enables entrepreneurial spirit and creativity (aka, manage the system not the people)
TECHNOLOGY - Accelerates (rather than creates) success
Who, What, How.... People, Thought, Action.... Leadership, Strategy, Process - how many times can this be repackaged? Read more...
What is the difference between Industrial-Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior? Not much, but a recent question on LinkedIn inspired me to do some research and get to the details of it. I thought to throw the info up on here as well just in case any students decidining on grad school might find it useful. Oh yeah, and also to help with that whole I-O visibility thing, too. As far as practitioners go, they do pretty much the same thing. Both IO and OB have a mission to enhance individual performance for a result of improved organizational effectiveness. When it comes to researchers, the strength of OBM is its practical significance and focus on applied issues. I-O psychology, on the other hand, has variety and complexity of organizational research topics on its side. A compare and contrast is in the image below:
A key take-away? If you want to know how to effect behavioral change at work, go read Journal of Organizational Behavior Management. If you want to explore reasons behind behavior at work, go read Journal of Applied Psychology.
A Brief History OBM was inspired by Skinner and behaviorism while I-O psychology is a little more complex.
First there was Psychology. Hugo Munsterberg, a German guy, studied under Wilhelm Wundt ("father of psychology") at Harvard in the late 1800s. He then went on to be the first to measure abilities in workers and tie them to performance. Something that seems kinda obvious to us as something important now, but was considered weird then.
Then there was Industrial Psychology. The Stanford-Binet test was adapted to make the Army Alpha to select soldiers during World War I. Principles of Scientific Management were applied by time and motion specialists.
Then we realized people mattered too. The Hawthorne studies show that if you pay attention to them, they'll perform better, sparking the Human Relations Movement.
Standards are good. When organizations realized that interests, attitudes, and personality contribute to performance all the Bobs started selling them crap so Title VII, etc. came along.
Today, we like the interdisciplinary approach. No matter what you call it, nothing is in its own bubble. Our genetics determine our neurochemical makeup which composes our traits which predispose our behavior which then drives performance but not without the influence of your motivation, your choices, your past, your boss, or the @$$hole that cut you off this morning. Mulitply that by a few hundred or thousand and you have a formula for your organizational performance [figuratively speaking].
Related Research:
Bucklin, B.R., & Alvero, A.M. (2000). Industrial-Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior Management: An Objective Comparison. Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, 20(2), 27.
Geller, E.S. Organizational Behavior Management and Industrial/Organizational Psychology: Achieving Synergy by Valuing Differences. Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, 22(2), 111-130.
I have had this post in draft for a while but a recent article claiming it is disingenuous and irresponsible to use psychology at work made the completion of it urgent. Because I am convinced of exactly the opposite. I am convinced it is irresponsible to disregard a large and growing body of knowledge that can help your organization be better at business, operations, sales, marketing, and especially management. Not only that but employees are beneficiaries of the application of such research as well. I can't really blame the logic behind the post though. You see it in nearly every profession; the jerks that can't do their job well give the rest a bad name. With respect to the intersection of business and psychology, I can tell the difference between the latter and the former within a few seconds. But I shouldn't expect everyone else to do the same. Just like I don't know the difference between an authentic car mechanic and a crook (true story).
Some things Industrial/Organizational Psychologists (Practitioners) do:
Job Analysis/Evaluation Scientifically analyze duties, tasks, and jobs performed to accurately write an accurate job description, develop appropriate recruiting communications, design a valid selection system, assign relevant training, determine fair compensation, assess performance using appropriate metrics, and restructure the organization for efficiency. Leader in this field? Morris Viteles way back in 1922. Today, we have O*NET and competency models.
Performance Measurement/Management Developing performance evaluation systems that incorporate supervisory, peer, subordinate, self, and/or customer ratings on task performance, contextual performance, and/or counterproductive performance using graphic rating scales, checklists, weighted checklists, forced choice format, behaviorally-anchored rating scales, mixed rating scales, or behavior observation scales to rank, pair, or otherwise compare the performance of employees to make decisions about selection, development, rewards, transfer, promotion, or layoff of employees all while avoiding halo, leniency, severity, and modesty biases but yet adhering to a common frame-of-reference among raters. Today we have 360-degree feedback and fair employment practices.
Leadership Before this word appeared on everyone's resume, it was heavily debated whether leadership was an inborn trait or a learned skill. Before taking a contingency approach there was discussion of the benefits of a task-orientation vs. a relationship-orientation. Leaders in this field? Blanchard, Yukl, Fiedler, and Graen. Today, we talk about leadership ethics, gender differences in leaders, leader emergence, and the role of charisma.
Quant and Qual Research Methods and Data Analysis Techniques to Enhance Decisions Correlation, multivariate analysis of variance, hierarchical regression, structural equation modeling, classical test theory, item response theory, generalizability theory, content analysis, predictive validity, inter-rater agreement, the Likert scale, and our favorite, meta-analysis. Leaders here? Hunter and Schmidt. Today, we have assessments that carry more weight than online quizzes.
That's all common sense, though - right?
Some things Industrial/Organizational Psychologists (Practitioners) don't do:
read minds (don't laugh I get this a lot)
organize things (incidentally, I'm very good at this)
counseling
whatever Dr. Phil says
mental health
dream analysis
listen to your personal issues
employee assistance program counseling
hypnosis
brainwash employees
psychoanalysis
pop-psychology and self-help clichés
follow disproven 19th century theories (ahem Freud)
use the MBTI for selection and/or assessment
Since I love research so much, let's take a look at what the Journal of Applied Psychology, the most rigorous journal in the field, is contributing to the workplace this past month (in VERY broad language):
Who cares... just irrelevant pseudo-science, right?
If you question the validity or reliability of the results, you are more than welcome to read the full text version and pick out the methodological flaws and suggest a better process [insert evil laughter here, those who went to grad school know what I mean].
Sarcasm aside, the main issues are the good stuff gets lost in translation between the journal and your boss (or between the professor and the guy with the MBA). Not only that, there is a temporal lag between published data and applied buzzword. Hence, why I still see the Maslow hierarchy on PowerPoint slides.
Related posts:
Is Psychology a Science? Yes! "Part of the reason that people still think of psychologists as old guys with beards, pipes and couches is because we have not done a good job of popularizing our discipline."
Another Rebuttal Post "I must ask, if psychological constructs like leadership potential, dominance, empathy, independence, tolerance, and self-control aren't important, then on what are you basing your hiring decisions?"
I recently read a post called Why it's smart to quit a job after just two weeks of work, which caused some intense debate about how soon is too soon to quit your job. Most readers voiced opinions that six months is a good amount of time to quit if you are unhappy. I take the other extreme viewpoint and I think you should give it at least a year. Though it ultimately comes down to personal and situational differences, here are my reasons why you should stick it out at a job you hate:
1. You are wrong. The above-mentioned article points out that you might as well quit now rather than drawing it out because "you'll resent both the company and yourself for staying at a job that you knew you didn't like early on." But unfortunately, first impressions are overwhelmingly flawed impressions. It is unavoidable and human of us to make judgments, but to make a decision based on a judgment alone leads to error more often than not. Even if gut instinct is correct, the circumstances of your job will likely change over time. So a few months in, after you have proved yourself competent, you may have been promoted to the job of your dreams and you do not hate your job anymore.
2. You made a commitment. Maybe it's the organization's fault for setting unrealistic expectations and not giving you a realistic job preview or failing at the socialization phase. Maybe it's your fault for not doing your due diligence on the company. Either way, you agreed to fill the position they needed. Though your employment contract may not have a minimum temporal requirement, it is sort of an unspoken expectation that both you and the company will give it an honest try to make this arrangement work to suit both parties' needs. A high performer might be able to switch jobs often, but those worth the title do not. Instead, they are committed to the company that has committed to them.
3. You will learn something new. Finding your passion is great and to want to love your job is understandable. But it doesn't just happen, easily and right away. There's a long journey of self-exploration, which is usually full of both negative experiences such as awful jobs as well as positive experiences. Rather than looking at this as a failure, approach it as opportunity to learn about what you don't want to do, explore the reasons why you don't like it, and learn about what aspects of the environment are contributing to your state of displeasure. Who knows, maybe it's something about you rather than the job that is causing the feelings of discontentment.
4. You will be building relationships, contributing to society, all while earning an income. It is another flawed assumption that your job performance will be terrible if you hate your job. Actually, no, your job performance is determined mostly by you, whether you love the job or not. Some people are great at things they hate. Others partake in activities they have no skills or abilities in whatsoever. And then some people are lucky enough to be good at what they love to do. But it is by no means a requirement. By sticking it out for just a few more months, you can do a good job, add coworkers to your network, and get paid.
5. You'll get a reputation for being consistent and reliable. You don't need to switch companies to switch jobs. And you don't need to switch jobs to continue your learning. What if doctors switched specialties every few years? Constantly job hopping with no strategy or direction is just detrimental. By demonstrating a track record of job hopping, you'll set yourself up to be disrespected and dismissed in the future. People who respect others, build quality relationships, and stick to their commitments are the people who succeed.
6. You'll do the company a favor. The level of voluntary turnover is negatively related to organizational performance. By quitting, you are costing the company thousands of dollars. The exact amount varies by position and tenure, but it ranges from $2,000 for an hourly at Wal*Mart to millions for a seasoned exec. The average is somewhere around $15,000 for professional jobs. If a company cares enough to evaluate voluntary turnover, they'll do it whether a person quits after two days, two years, or two decades. If you really want to do the company a favor, you'll stick around and expand your job duties to include fixing the problems that are making you and other employees unhappy.
Related Research:
Organizational entry and exit: An exploratory longitudinal examination of early careers. 1999. Human Performance. College graduates' perception of organizational entry constructs, including aspects of preemployment anticipation, organization receptivity, adaptation difficulty, meeting with person previously in the position, feedback seeking, and organization attachment correctly predicted 73.3% voluntary turnover after Year 1.
Commitment Propensity, Organizational Commitment, and Voluntary Turnover: A Longitudinal Study of Organizational Entry Processes. 1992. Journal of Management. Commitment Propensity -- measured by the desire for a career, knowledge of organization's core values, self-efficacy, self-confidence, and positive expectations -- is related to organizational commitment.
The Harvard Business Review Online puts out case studies and even has interactive versions online where anyone can take their shot at being an executive and provide comments on the solution. This month's case study is especially interesting to me because it's about layoffs.
I've written about both layoffs and talent management during a dowturn, but those were articles written from an outsider's perspective… and in a predominantly theoretical, in an ideal world, what not to do fashion. Now it's time to look at a realistic scenario to answer well, what would I do? The Cast: Robin Astrigo, CEO Morris Meyers, CFO Lisa Warren, Head of Legal Marzita Vasquez, Head of HR Bob Slater, Exec Director of Strategy Sushil Bhatia, Vice President of Marketing and Strategy
About the Company: Astrigo Holdings (Chicago) Astrigo is made up of 12,000 teammates whose highest goal is to ‘Take Care of Our Customer.’ Astrigo Holdings accomplishes this by selling the highest-quality goods at the best price, with the best customer service, in the world. Great customer service begins with talented, innovative team members.
“Pop” Astrigo, the founder, had started out as a hardscrabble midwestern lumberyard owner. A fiscal conservative, he steadfastly believed that a strong cash position was crucial to the company’s health. But he also taught his son that to keep its reputation for great customer service, the company had to treat employees well. He always insisted on keeping several million dollars in the bank just in case the company needed to make critical acquisitions. After "Pop" Astrigo's death in 1996, Robin Astrigo has taken over the company and has ran the firm well.
The Challenge: Astrigo Holdings had missed its earnings estimate by 20 cents a share. Profits have dropped by double digits, regardless of efforts to slash inventory and expenses. Despite aggressive promotions and price cuts, the Astrigo home-improvement stores were losing sales to cheaper retailers with far worse customer service. The recession was hitting the firm hard. Though the company had millions in the bank thanks to values passed on by "Pop," Robin didn’t want to risk Astrigo’s future health by burning that cash now. The company has a policy of holding a big cash reserve for acquisitions but isn't it a little hard to justify a big bank account at the same time that people are losing jobs?
An aggressive reduction in head count looked like the only course of action. Pop Astrigo had been forced to let people go in past recessions but had loathed taking such an action. A large layoff would be crushing for the families of the affected employees—and for all the towns where Astrigo stores had long been a central fixture.
Robin had asked his executive committee to form teams of two to work through possible layoff scenarios, which would then be presented to the Chairman of the Board. This is what they came up with:
Option #1: First In, First Out - proposed by Morris Meyers, the CFO A 10% workforce reduction would generate enough savings to keep profits in line with Wall Street’s expectations. Robin doesn’t want to cut back more on store associates, because that affects customer service, so the cuts will occur at middle management level with a first in, first out policy. Cons voiced are charges of age discrimination.
Option #2: Performance-Based or Rank-and-Yank - proposed by Lisa Warren, head of Legal A performance-based layoff based on the next evaluation cycle in order to eliminate the lowest 10%. The company develops a higher-performing workforce. Cons are that people become competitive and scared all the time, office politics take a harsh turn, and the ranking system will also require a lot of effort.
Option #3: Last In, First Out - proposed by Bob Slater, Exec. Director of Strategy Use the simplest layoff policy possible, and that’s last in, first out. That way, you don’t have to pay people a lot of severance. It's great since the company doesn't have the time to do anything really complex. And it’s inherently fair -- everyone understands that you have to work up to seniority. But layoffs aren't just a financial transaction. Cons are that you lose your youngest superstars -- new doesn't mean dispensable. If last in first out is enacted, what about Yukio, that young woman we hired a few years ago to run new business development? The company courted her hard. She’s a first-in-class MBA from a top school, and she’s full of bright ideas. Two competitors were after her, but she decided to come to Astrigo in the end because she liked the company's corporate values. With a blanket last-in, first-out plan, people like her would be out. The best recruiting in the industry is for nothing when a company lets someone like her go. And that company can forget about acquiring good people in the future if there's a history of firing best new hires.
Option #4: Lose a Unit - proposed by Marzita Vasquez, Head of HR To look at layoffs as a tactical cost-cutting measure is shortsighted. Not only are good people out of work, but layoffs shout to our customers, ‘Look at us. We’re in trouble.’ They hurt morale, and that hurts customer service and, ultimately, investors. The problem can best be solved by looking at our overall strategy. The company is overreached. It could save the money by selling or closing the most recent acquisition, Prugh Furniture. It’s time to refocus on the core business. Cons are that a lot of thought and time and effort go into acquisitions and they're not made lightly. Getting rid of any strategic business units may not be a wise move.
Option# 5: Pay Cut - proposed by Sushil Bhatia, Vice President of Marketing and Strategy How about taking steps that would let the company stay truer to its core values? It’s necessary to get a bit more imaginative. Just pick a number. How about a 5% across-the-board pay cut, maybe a bigger one for people making six figures? Astrigo is not a union shop and so has the flexibility to do it. Cons are the pushback but isn't that better than the alternatives?
Eva's Solution: My first thought is that nobody mentioned budget cuts. Was that assumed?
I will eliminate Option #1 and Option #3 right away. That is quite possibly the worst way to do a layoff. Talented employees are not just assets to an organization - they ARE the organization. You lose a few key players like this and your entire organization is at significant risk. Sports analogies are always fun and intuitive; imagine letting go your all-star just because he was "first in" … consider letting go of your rookie just because she was "last in." That coach would be so fired, end of story. In fact, for an immediate cost savings, I'd rather replace Bob with Sushil.
I like all the three remaining options, and instead of choosing just one, I'll turn them into a three-step process for layoffs:
STEP 1. Re-examine strategic goals. Focus on your core business or focus on your most profitable business. Consolidate, lose a unit, or go back to the basics. Prioritize and re-evaluate spending (ahem, parties and jets), but don't take xx% off everyone's budget, do it selectively. Hike up the revenue-generating budgets that have a high ROI and cut off completely the support budgets that haven't delivered value. Put a halt to any extensive reorganization or transitions. Review your company history, and put yourself in the founder's shoes - what would you NEED to do to survive? Ask why the company is doing what it is doing…. If it makes sense-keep it, If it doesn't-lose it. Ideally, Bob Slater (Executive Director of Strategy) has done his due diligence and not much change is needed. More likely, the reason behind financial woes has spun your entire company off-course and change is needed. This is NOT a lose the unit, therefore lose the people type of layoff. Lose the unit, repurpose the people.
STEP 2. Look at adversity as an opportunity.
Fire underperformers who have slipped through the cracks through performance-based job cuts. This is NOT the lowest 10% layoff. Ideally Marzita (head of HR) has been doing her job and this is a 0% cut. More likely, the company has kept a few weak links around longer than necessary and the best time to remedy the situation is now. This is NOT a rank-and-yank. Again, if Marzita has done her job well, the rankings have already been done and the yanking is a no-brainer. More likely, you have just cut a line of business and there are 1,000 redundant positions, all performing fairly well. In this case, performance is relative. Step 3 should weed out the losers.
STEP 3. Involve the entire team.
People are anxious, emotional contagion has overtaken all motivation, negative energy in the air has zapped concentration and productivity, and the overwhelming stress of layoffs is causing a spike in illness - oops that's not a costsavings! Skip all this nonsense by making the issue transparent throughout the company. Let people know that they are still there and that is on purpose and they are very much needed to either step it up or step on out. Instruct managers to redefine their department's goals to be in line with the company's new shift in strategy and redistribute work to be most effective and focus energy on what is most needed. The worst case scenario is pay cuts across the board. Keep all but the most extravagant benefits. It stinks, but it's just temporary and a better option than the alternative.
Lately, I have been coming across some odd ideas about time and how it is wasted. Some say that the top ways employees waste time at work are:
surfing the internet
socializing with co-workers
conducting personal business
spacing out
running errands off-premises
To me, nothing noted above counts as wasted time. It can be argued that surfing the internet fosters creativity and new ideas, socializing with co-workers leads to collaboration and more effective teamwork, and spacing out is your brain boycotting you due to fatigue.
"A certain amount of slacking off is already built into the salary structure." -Senior Vice President at Salary.com
Really? Well I'll be sure to slack off for precisely the time allotted, then. With that quid pro quo attitude, how can the same people turn around and complain about employee disengagement?
"Chatting with your online friends is unethical, and wasting your boss's money." -General Manger of Sales & Marketing
Maybe it's just me, but this makes no sense. Not quite sure what is unethical about it, since answering my overly chatty co-worker is pretty much the same thing, just face-to-face rather than online. It takes about 5 seconds to type out a response to the occasional IM. In that line of thinking, you may as well add in restroom breaks as a waste of your employer's money.
Counterproductive workplace behavior is behavior that is counter to the goals of an organization and includes mundane activities such as ineffective job performance and absenteeism all the way up to the criminal such as theft or violence. My take is that much of what people consider "wasting time" is NOT counterproductive workplace behavior. Instead, it is an excuse. It is displacing blame.
If an employee is performing poorly and missing deadlines, that's a problem in the area of performance management. Don't blame it on wasting time. It has nothing to do with time. Actually, the same article that mentioned the top time wasters also mentioned that the top three reasons for it. Those reasons were:
not enough work to do
a perception of being underpaid
being distracted by co-workers
To me, that sounds like a problem with the organizational structures and processes rather than a specific employee's motivation, work ethic, or ability to perform. So let's take responsibility and fix what's broken rather than simply pointing fingers.
A psychology perspective on business. This research-based and opinion-rich blog is intended to stimulate thought and conversation around why we do what we do and how we can do it better, both personally and professionally.
I am an Organizational Psychologist and the Director of Learning at EQmentor. My passion is to apply insights from psychology to make work (and life!) better.
A key take-away? If you want to know how to effect behavioral change at work, go read Journal of Organizational Behavior Management. If you want to explore reasons behind behavior at work, go read Journal of Applied Psychology.
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