Category Archives: People

Managers – Early Intervention Is Key To Getting Your People Right

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After you hire or promote a person, there is a tendency to walk away with a big smile on your face. “What a smart person I am. I hired the right person and now my job is done.” Six months later you realize that the person has drowned in their new post, everything is in disarray. But, now it is too late. The damage is done.


To correct this managers need to practice a little humility and be attentive, supportive and alert during the early stages of a new hire or promotion’s tenure. The humility arises from recognizing that more than at any other point in the life span of a manager-supervisee relationship, the early stages require the most intense application of an all important management rule: “If an employee is working below expected or required performance it is always the manager’s fault.” The first place to look is at the manager. After all, the manager hired or selected the person. The manager defines the work, provides tools, training, and all other resources required for the job.  The manager is responsible for the success of every person they supervise. By focusing on the results achieved and understanding how to move the performance towards the desired results, you can focus on tools, training, support resources that will allow your new person to succeed.


Beyond this principle, we have to acknowledge that the hiring and promotion process is one of the more flawed management practices. Some claim that in a third or a half of the cases we make the wrong decision. This merely emphasizes the need to be very observant of the performance of new hires a and new promotions because we need to be ready to act when it turns out that we’ve made a mistake.


So, when you have your new person in place and have given them clear instructions about their initial tasks, set up a time, within a week or so, at which you will have a meeting to review performance and see what further support needs to be provided. This is especially valuable in environments where you have a new hire or promotion in a new position where the variables of the goals and tasks are inherently unclear. There’s nothing like having a quick meeting to take the pulse of the new tasks and make course corrections immediately. And, remind your new person that you are readily available to discuss their work at any time.


If you find yourself in one of those rare positions where your decision to hire or promote a person turned out to be fatally flawed, don’t let the situation just linger on. If you follow that strategy, you will end up with a lot of poor performance and unhappy people. It is almost always true that other people in the organization will readily recognize that your new hire is not performing well and is in fact in the early stages of drowning. When you let a person linger in this manner, you are demonstrating to others that you are not a very competent manager, nor a caring one. And, your new hire or promotion know themselves that they’re having deep trouble performing their job. You are doing no one a favor by allowing a failing person to linger on. If you’re in a larger organization, you should seek out alternative positions where this person could perform well for the company. If such a transfer is not possible, you have to face up to it and terminate the person’s employment. When you act promptly in such situations, everyone around you sees that you are a competent manager who is facing up to an error in judgment. And, in my experience the employee involved is grateful that you dealt with the situation in an objective, fair, and caring manner.

Making tough times harder by communicating too much!

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Good communications is important to the health of the organization. However, there are moments when managers should look carefully at their communications and push on the “not-so-fast” button.

During periods of organizational stress, like changes in ownership, senior leadership, layoffs, mergers, and others, managers may think that they can calm down the troops by increasing the frequency and depth of their communications. Unfortunately, this may lead to a surprising result. Employees, like everyone else, pay attention to more than the message. Marshall McLuhan got this right.

During times of stress, the tendency of managers to increase the frequency of communication with staff in fact sends the message, “Gee, the bosses are nervous about what is going on. Look at how much they are talking about it.”

So, be careful. Focus on brevity and facts. Be as honest as you can about what is going on.

But, be a good model for your staff. During times of stress and turbulence, redouble your focus on customers and day-to-day tasks. Get in early and be at work when the staff arrives. They will get that message. No matter what happens, being productive is always a good strategy, both for the company and the individual.

Putting these off definitely makes things worse

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Performance reviews are one of those tasks that managers and organizations struggle with. Even companies that have well-developed performance review and development processes have difficulty getting managers to complete them on time and in good faith. Sluggish performance in human resource management is a leading indicator of current or near at hand organizational troubles.

It all starts at the top. The leader of the organization must make personnel selection and appraisal of job performance a central personal task. Timeliness at this level will trickle down quite quickly.

One simple method of demonstrating a commitment to timely performance reviews is to tie each manager’s own performance appraisal and all pay changes and other pay-for-performance compensation to the timeliness of performance reviews for their subordinates. If they are late with subordinates’ reviews, then their review and potential compensation changes will be delayed by the cumulative tardiness. Include the CEO and COB in this policy.

Organizations with a real commitment to great personnel make this work.

This Will happen Again!

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Change, it is happening now or just around the corner. And, the pace of change is not decreasing.

In recent work, I dealt with a client firm undergoing one of the ultimate set pieces of change in the life of a business, the sale of the company. The impending sale sent the predominantly young staff into a frenzy of fear, uncertainty, paranoia, and flight.

One step that proved useful was a series of meetings entitled, “This Will Happen Again” which focused on the facts of business life and how one might react. The initial concept named, “Its Not About You”, speaks to the external forces driving change in the business world. This closes on the simple note that each of us will experience large scale change in work life every couple of years regardless of where we land in the economy. This is now a permanent feature of our work lives.

The meetings then went on to address how people might react to all this change. First, one must acknowledge the change and the accompanying emotional turmoil. Second, change is frequently opportunity dressed in different clothes. Work patterns shift. Reporting relationships change. Fixed methods of work open for examination and improvement in ways that would be surprising under the old regime. Managers who perform well during periods of change shine and are remembered later. All of these and more are reasons for managers to think to their advantage during periods of corporate change.

Finally, these meetings closed on the note that one of the best ways to weather troubled waters to is to refocus on the work at hand, to pay even more attention to making customers happy. A day filled with work is always better than a day occupied with the latest gossip about what might be happening in the executive suite.