Rob McKay for NZ Herald
Recently I was in Singapore. What really struck me were the low crime rates, genuine honesty and politeness of its citizens.
Singapore has zero tolerance for bad behaviour. They achieve this by being tough on those who break the rules. The phrase "political correctness" is nonexistent. You talk on your cellphone in the car: you lose the phone and $500. You eat on the train and there goes another $500. Drop a lolly paper on the ground and that will cost another $500 - all of this compliance and not a policeman in sight.
Singapore is full of novel ideas that make the city so safe and prosperous. The place is run like an efficient organisation. Why? Because Singapore has an over-riding policy of "zero tolerance for poor performance and bad behaviour".
We have become so PC in this country that people are too afraid to do anything for fear of repercussions. Managers are constantly accepting below average performance - why?
In many cases the manager has hired a person who does not "fit" the job, and they try to "fix" the problem by embarking on a treadmill of coaching and training, or a mixture of other "touchy feely" processes. Let me tell you straight up, if you have hired a person who does not have the innate personality, mental ability and attitude to do the job, no amount of training will make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. You might as well toss the training budget - and the six months of your time pandering to the situation - out the window.
Poor performance must be addressed immediately. The longer it's left, the worse it gets. Then one morning, you will wake up and decide enough is enough, go to the office and deal with it in an inappropriate manner that will probably cost you an expensive personal grievance claim.
Most organisations have three kinds of employees - have a look around your team now - you'll see people who were born to perform well (20%), some who have the capacity to perform well (60%) and those who will never perform (20%). Jack Welch, the famous American CEO, used to grade his team into As, Bs and Cs. The As were groomed for higher things. The Bs were trained to maintain, or fill the A slots and Cs were targeted to be managed out.
Often, managers take work off the Cs and lump it onto the As because they can be trusted to do quality work without a fuss. So the Cs are automatically rewarded for bad performance and usually get the same take-home pay. Here we see motivation working in the negative. There is motivation to perform badly because you get paid to do nothing.
It's time to get tough - "zero tolerance for poor performance" should be your new mantra. Don't allow the C team the luxury of passing off their responsibility to perform - set goals, introduce targets, measure output - ride hard, reward well.
Usually, when the pressure to perform comes on the C brigade, these slackers fold like a deck of cards and leave. But be very diligent when looking for a replacement: the next candidate could be the joker who was dealt off the deck of the last company because of poor performance.
As managers and leaders we have three opportunities to do something about our people performance. The first is at the front door - hire the right people first time - hire for attitude, train for aptitude.
The second opportunity is training and coaching your current people - ideal for your A and B people, but a huge waste of management time and money if you never got the first opportunity right. And finally, show the poor performers the back door - almost impossible to achieve in today's litigious employment environment.
Getting rid of poor performers is a long, morale-sapping, customer-killing, bank-balance-denting process. You have to face up to the fact, fast, that you screwed up and hired poorly. Many times this situation is not the employee's problem; they simply didn't "fit" the position and you never identified this.
"People" are the only lasting competitive advantage your business has, so here's another mantra - hire tough and manage easy.
Rob McKay MA(Hons) is a business psychologist and director of AssessSystems Aust/NZ Ltd
www.assess.co.nz
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