Executive Performance -- Whos to Blame for Incompetent Managers?
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal raised the question: Who's to blame for inept managers? The answer, of course, is the superiors who hire or promote them -- but not because they intentionally select or retain poor performers. Every leader knows that his or her own success depends on putting the right people in the right positions. It's easy to blame a manager's poor performance on his or her boss, but more often than not, managerial incompetence isn't obvious to superiors. Instead, fault lies with the systems used for evaluation and the alternatives available for dealing with performance failure. Despite their widespread popularity, standard 360 evaluations and psychometric tests are poor substitutes for informed, thorough evaluation. Standardized assessments and tests are promoted as rapid, economical alternatives for determining competence and assessing performance. Consultants and salespeople alike tout them for their objectivity and accuracy. In reality, the typical 360 evaluation is far from objective. How can a group of very different people, with very different relationships to the subject and very different priorities, be expected to evaluate an individual professionally and objectively? Additionally, reliance on these measures can cause you to miss crucial information about how senior executives and managers think and how they relate to others on a day-to-day basis - factors that can make or break your organization's ability to perform. While 360s can appear relatively cheap and quick to implement, a poor evaluation system can have very expensive repercussions. The second problem is the alternatives available for floundering executives. "Cutting poor performers loose" is a lose-lose proposition as a first-line response. If the alternative is firing, superiors may be reluctant to acknowledge a problem and even colleagues and subordinates might shrink from responsibility for destroying a career. When alternatives, such as a different position or behavioral coaching are available, problems are much more likely to be identified early on. Every executive has strengths in some arena. The first key to effective leadership is correct placement. If an executive doesn't have the talent for one area, he or she should be given the opportunity to do a different job. Richard Branson, billionaire founder of the Virgin Group of companies, believes strongly that if an employee is not excelling in one area of the company, he or she should be given the opportunity to do well in a different Virgin Group job. At Virgin, firing is seldom an option. Coaching, too, can make a difference. It's understandable that company leaders would hesitate to throw good money after bad by investing in coaching for problem managers. However, many organizations indiscriminately assign rising managers to executive development programs regardless of the specific needs of the individual. This is clearly a waste of time and money. Highly targeted and personalized executive coaching can be far more cost-effective in developing leadership competence. Today's organization can't afford to lose quality people due to managerial incompetence. But wasting time affixing blame won't help. Greater investment in effective evaluation and coaching is a drop in the bucket compared to the expense of recruiting and training new people ? not to mention the ultimate cost of employee disengagement and apathy. Dr. Robert Karlsberg and Dr. Jane Adler are senior leadership consultants and founders of Strategic Leadership LLC. They work with senior executives to maximize performance, facilitate transitions and accelerate major change initiatives. Contact them at 301-530-5611 or visit http://www.PsychologyofPerformance.com
Related News
|
 |
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Making a Decision to Outsource: Driving Factors
Most executives view offshore outsourcing most of all as a source of cost reducing. The greatest savings are expected to come from lower labor cost and reduced project timelines. However offshore outsourcing also creates new challenges and expenses for the organization involved. Those may include vendor selection costs, legal costs, costs of transition and many others. That is why despite the evidence of possible major up-front cost savings many outsourcing vendors have yet to prove that they are able to provide positive ROI in a complex project.
Turbo Charge Your Career With The Most Powerful Leadership Tool Of All: The Leadership Talk: Part 1
Leaders speak 15 to 20 times daily. You speak at meetings, you speak across their desks, you speak on the phone, you speak in e-mails, you speak at lunch, beside the water cooler, and on elevators, etc.
Creativity and Innovation Management ? Feasibility
Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation.
Let the Intern Do It - Affordable Help for Your Business
Do you have more projects than time? Help might be as close as your nearest college. Many have intern programs, where students complete tasks for businesses as part of their studies.
Effective Meetings - Quick Survey
Here's an easy quiz to check the health of your meetings.
Structure Your Payment Offers to Sell More Products
The way you structure your payment offers can increase your sales. I'm not talking about the way people pay like credit cards, digital payments, checks, and cash options. What I'm taking about is can your customers try before they buy, pay later, make payments, do they get a rebate, etc. Below are six payment offers that will sell like your products or services like crazy:
Forget The Sandwich Technique
Do you remember being told to use the "sandwich" technique
when you needed to reprimand someone? Let me give you an
example:
Pricing Strategy for Retail Flower Shops
When you create your profit and loss statement to assess the health of your business, you will see:
Three Professional Services Resolutions for 2005
With client expectations higher than ever before, and the gradual industry recovery ahead, consulting firms will need to focus more than ever on carefully identifying and serving the right clients.
Managing Change - Get it Right
In any event, getting the process right is a vital component. The credibility of the change managers will be scrutinised closely enough on the issue itself, with all processes in place. If process is at fault too, then things can get very messy indeed.
Management to the Vision-Contribution and the Role of Compliance
As a manager our role is to:
Are Your Meetings Smart?
Soon after I finished a brief seminar on how to accomplish more in less time every day, Roger shook my hand and said, "I can use what you said. But there is one thing you didn't talk about. It is something that drives me crazy. I can't get anything done because I'm in meetings all day long. We have gone overboard on meetings. We discuss practically everything as a team before making decisions." I asked Roger for his card and I called him later that afternoon with some ideas that could help get him and his
team out of their meetings trap.
Work Priorities: Where Can You Spend Your Time Most Effectively?
Understanding where you can spend time most effectively requires concentration in three areas:
Got A Meeting Planned? Ask This Question
Meetings ? they are a fact of our business lives. And while the number of meetings and the amount of time you spend in them may vary based on your job title, it is hard to argue that they are a significant part of business life today.
Optimizing Your Cash Flow With Proper Accounts Receivable Management
Businesses miss on growth opportunities and even close their doors every day, not because they aren't profitable enough, but because they are strangled by poor cash flow. The problem is that while their profit and loss statement shows success, their bank account cries poor. Excessive money tied up in delinquent receivables, bad checks, and bad debt write-offs, rob businesses of valuable cash flow, handcuffing their ability to grow or even stay in business at all.
Why Your Company Needs An E-Mail Policy
Everyone at the office thought that using the company e-mail system to share jokes and funny stories was great fun. That is, until one offended employee decided to sue his employer for having helped to create a hostile work environment.
Tales From the Corporate Frontlines: An Unexpected Benefit
This article relates to the Compensation and Benefits competency, commonly evaluated in employee satisfaction surveys. It tells the story of a company that offered a new benefit to its employees, solved the problem of lagging productivity, and boosted morale at the same time. The Compensation and Benefits competency focuses in detail on how your employees feel regarding their compensation and benefits packages. The questions included in this competency will help your organization determine whether your employees feel they are fairly paid for the work they perform when compared to a similar job at a different company. This competency also queries their feelings regarding the adequacy and quality of their benefits package. A fair and attractive compensation package is critical for hiring and retaining quality employees. A high satisfaction level in this competency requires that your compensation structure and benefits package be fair, balanced, and understood by your present employees.
Juggling Demands in an Organization
JUGGLING DEMANDS: All leaders constantly juggle a multifarious array of demands from those of their organization, employees, and themselves. Good leaders, never drop one demand at the expense of another equally important requirement. They give each demand its fair share, while balancing the organizational goals with their employees' needs, while still fulfilling their own personal/professional purposes. Successful leaders meet both these business and personal needs through their staff. They learn about their staff's aspirations, their strengths and potential contributions to the organization. From this knowledge, they mesh together a successful working team. Sounds easy, doesn't it? For starters, it becomes much easier if you know your organization.
Building A Stellar Business One Employee At A Time
Top businesses that continually lead their industry clearly understand a simple fact:
Firing Someone Without Resentment
Firing, sacking, letting go or terminating people is unpleasant. There are ways to minimise resentment, but why bother? Because most legal action and unpleasantness stems from dissatisfaction/resentment about the way things were handled - about how rather than what happened. Dismissal can be unfair because of the reason, or the way it was done, so you need to be extremely careful. In the law regarding employer-employee relationships, fairness is key. You must be fair, and be seen to be fair. But fairness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder - after being terminated, very few people have clear vision!
|
