>" While managing domestic and international sales operations (direct and
>distributor), I annually removed the bottom 20% of individual contributors
>(sales staff). "
I also have some concerns with this approach to leadership and goal
acheivement, although I can understand the pressures and apparent
necessities which drive such an approach.
My first response to the "drop the bottome X%" stance" is that if 20%,
say, is your staff non-acheivement rate and that % was transferred to
manufucturing, one would be out of business. Error rates are pretty tight
in manufacturing now. High level error rates with people are even more
expensive!
Like Eric, if we had that kind of turnover in key positions I would be
asking questions about my organisation's recruitment processes, promotion
criteria, career management and overall commitment to people.
Just on a personal note, for various reasons much of my professional
career has been spent in the not-for-profit sector, and public sector
where it is far harder to turn over "under-performing" staff. At the
moment I choose to stay as OD manager in a large University but every now
I test myself on the open market and find I have no problem being
shortlisted for national level private sector jobs so I don't think I am
too far behind my profit-driven colleagues.
My experience is that when you cannot easily move staff on, one has to
work with them and commit yourself to them. This does not mean going easy
on them. Most of my staff are in constant formal and informal training
and development themselves and one has just been offered work with a major
international consultancy firm after working on an overseas placement I
paid for her to take up.
This is not to say there are no performance problems or moments of
frustration for me, just that I do think people are the greatest asset an
organisation can have, and creating systems to treat them as such is as
important as getting rid of the "failures."
Philip Pogson
OD manager
University of Sydney
Australia +61 2 9351 3177
p.pogson@usyd.edu.au
Philip Pogson
Manager Organisation Development Unit
University of Sydney
Margaret Telfer Building, K07
NSW 2006 Australia
ph: +61 2 9351 4218
+61 2 9351 3177 (direct)
fax: +61 2 9351 4951
Training Program URL:- http://www.usyd.edu.au/su/stafdev/
"We need magic and bliss and power, myth and celebration and
religion in our lives, and music is a good way to encapsulate
a lot of it."
Jerry Garcia
--Philip Pogson <P.Pogson@perspolicy.usyd.edu.au>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>