A Leadership Screw Driver: The 90 Day Improvement PlanLearn Management Articles on management-info.biz. A Leadership Screw Driver: The 90 Day Improvement Plan article will help answer your questions on Management Articles.We at management-info.biz specialize in Management Articles. Management Articles at management-info.biz provides the most up to date news and articles. If you have questions please do not hesitate to contact us.
Word count: 648 Summary: All leaders must eventually deal with poor performers. The author describes a method to help poor performers become good performers. It is based on developing and executing a 90-Day Improvement Plan. A Leadership Screw Driver: The 90 Day Improvement Plan by Brent Filson I was talking with first-line supervisors in a utility company about how to deal with poor performing employees. 'You've gotta put the screws to him!' suggested one supervisor to his colleague who was having trouble managing one particular poor performer. 'I've put so many screws to him he's dead weight!' the supervisor replied. We all knew what 'putting the screws to him' meant -- using rewards and punishments to force change in behavior. The trouble is, rewards and punishments are the least effective ways of dealing with poor performers. That's because poor performers are usually smart, motivated, and tenacious -- when it comes to poor performing. To change the behavior of poor performers, avoid the outside-in approach of rewards and punishments and cultivate an inside-out approach. Aesop understood that. There is the Aesop's fable of the wind and sun competing to see who can remove a coat from a man. The wind tries to blow the coat off, but the man clutches it tightly to his body. Then the sun grows hotter, and the man, perspiring heavily and getting hotter and hotter, gladly rips the coat off. The leadership lesson is clear: You can bluster and blow to get somebody to accomplish a task, but that's not as effective as setting up a situation in which the person gladly does it. Here is a way to deal with poor performers using Aesop's lesson: the 90-Day Improvement Plan. A business leader tells me that he uses such plans as tools for change. Each plan is comprised of two pages: the first page pointing out that the individual must improve and the second page detailing the precise ways that improvement must take place. 'Be specific about improvement,' he says. 'For instance, one leader I gave an Improvement Plan to was very bright but was not getting results. He tended to deal with future, strategic issues; whereas our business wants results now, preferably yesterday. We identified specific ways he could improve his performance in getting results, such as precise calls to make and exact, quick-closing targets to pursue.' The objective of 90-Day Improvement Plans should not be to get rid of people. 'Their objective is to improve performance,' he says. 'Though I do write on the first page, ‘If the objectives are not met, further actions, including dismissal, can be taken.'' He sometimes combines Improvement Plans with the force-ranking of all his leaders into a 20/60/20 continuum. The bottom 20 percent get the Plan. He says, 'My objective is to have the bottom 20 percent be indispensable leaders.' Mind you, in developing a 90-day Improvement Plan, keep Aesop's fable in mind and seek not compliance but commitment. The Improvement Plan must not be imposed from without but agreed upon. Here is a four-step process to do that. First, all parties must agree to develop a 90-Day Improvement Plan. If people are forced to do it, it won't work as it should. Second, ask the poor performers to describe what should be in it. Remember, you can veto any suggestions. However, it is best if its key components come from the other people. Only after they have run out of suggestions do you incorporate yours. Third, develop the Plan together, and agree on its action steps. Fourth, implement it. Have weekly or bi-weekly meetings to insure the Plan is being carried out. If the Plan is forced upon someone, it becomes just another screw, another imposed reward/ punishment. However, if it is put together with mutual consent, indeed with mutual enthusiasm, it becomes the screw driver by which poor performers may very well gladly put the screws into themselves. 2005 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
|
More Articles:1. Delegation For Managers: What Should You Do And What Should You Delegate? As a manager, you're expected to decide what needs to be done, gather the resources to do it, and then decide who does what. Okay, managing is a little more than that, but it certainly does include setting goals, gathering resources, and delegating tasks. Now, if you're like many managers, there sometimes isn't any clear line between the work you think you should do, and the work you think your staff should do. In fact, you may not be a 'pure' manager (is there such a thing?) in the sense that y… 2. IF YOU WANT TO BE A BETTER LEADER - OIL YOURSELF IF YOU WANT TO BE A BETTER LEADER - OIL YOURSELFMaybe this happened to you before…if you don't add oil to your car or your lawn mower, you are soon going to soon have problems. Why? Because oil is the magic ingredient that reduces friction. In the workplace, there can be tons of friction. As the leader, part of your job is to reduce that friction and keep all the units working together smoothly. One way to day that is through developing a higher level of trust between yourself and those who repo… 3. Don't Get Caught With Your PR Down By Robert A. Kelly Why risk the embarassment when with a little basic PR training, you as a business, non-profit or association manager can always be ready for battle?Never again will you fail to do something positive about the behaviors of those important outside audiences of yours that MOST affect your operation.Never again will you fail to create external stakeholder behavior change leading directly to achieving your managerial objectives.And never again will you fail to persuade those key outside folks t… 4. Managing Organizational Change – Some Basic Principles By R.G. Srinivasan Managing transition is never easy. The loss of familiarity with the new processes, necessity and ability to learn new things and new ways of working is often very painful. The people and organizations accustomed to a certain way of work will take time to change.While change is essential for progress, what are the elements to focus in preparing for the change management initiative?VisionHelen Keller said “nothing is more tragic than someone who has sight, but no vision”. Vision inspires all … |
||||
