November 19, 2006
plus ca change.…
Forty-seven percent of your most productive, most creative, most valuable workers are mailing out resumes, going on job interviews, even contemplating other offers.
Even worse, many managers are actually accelerating those departures by how they treat those employees, said Mark Murphy, chief executive of Leadership IQ and co-author of The Deadly Sins of Employee Retention: Cutting Edge Strategies for Keeping Your Best People.
“Frankly, we treat our high performers worse than any other employee,” he said.
“When a manager has a tough project upon which the whole company depends, to whom do they turn?
“Who gets the late hours and the stress? It’s not the low performers, because managers want the project done right. Instead, managers turn to their handful of high performers.
“Over and over we ask our high performers to go above and beyond, making their jobs tough and burning them out at a terrible pace. Meanwhile, low performers often get easier jobs because their bosses dread dealing with them and may avoid them altogether.“
Little wonder that “high performers hate slackers,” he said. “Eighty-seven percent of (high performers) say working with a low performer or a slacker has actually made them want to change jobs. They’re really sick of having to carry the load for everybody else.”
Man. Do not get me started.…
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C’mon, Hugh. Get started.
Slackers suck. In small companies, they can’t hide. But in large or growing companies, they are all over the place… just like weeds.
My day job is for a mortgage lender in Southern California. 4 years ago, I helped a coffeehouse server I know who was drinking on the job and generally miserable get a job for the company I work for. This originally made her drinking worse, but she bottomed out and is now clean and sober, no thanks to her job as a loan funder.
I turned her on to your cartoons, Hugh, and she has since become a convert. She’s a high performer and your post sums up her attitude about corporate life pretty accurately. Now she’s spreading the cartoons on the backs on business cards gospel too. One cubicle at a time.
I’m printing this.
I’m cutting this out.
I’m hanging this in my CUBE!
Speaking of changes, Mr. Hugh Sir if I may ask, any particular reason why you turned the headers shocking neon red?
Hugh, as a previous “high performer” in a large corporation I ad >50 employees in four countries and as many US States. I did have bosses that valued me, and appreciated me (and paid me well).
But this article is dead on. I was a programmer who also tested our software because we didn’t have a QA group. I made a proposal to Management and they said sure, “Build it”.
Once we had that under way I was asked what I would do to improve our customer’s perception of us. I made suggestions — and took over a global customer support team for a WiFi company — back when there was real money in WiFi chip-sets.
Oh — and I ran a remote development site with 70 people, I managed locating new offices, designed the floor plan, did the contracts, managed the move, and basically kept the lights on. Without exaggeration I worked 90 – 120 hours a week — I had customer calls with Asia well into the late night talk shows. See, none of my “old jobs” ever went away — I did all of these things at the same time.
Yes, my bosses loved me — they didn’t abuse me — it was my own nature to a) try to do things to help and b) try something new, just to see if I could do it, and c) I didn’t want to turn over any of “my babies” to anyone else.
So while I *totally* agree with this article, it’s also true that “high performers” bring a lot of the stress and workload on by their very natures — what makes them a high performer is exactly what drives them, and it’s not always evil management “taking advantage” of employees.
Oh — and as for the slackers — that was easy in the semiconductor business. It is so cyclical that layoffs happen ever 12 – 18 months, if not more often. Layoffs are an excellent time for manager’s (with guts) to take care of the slackers. I know — I did it a dozen times.
So now I am working the rather sedentary life of a single work-at-home parent of two teenagers, doing a small amount of consulting, and reading about 400 blogs a day, and writing in three.
Guess what? No matter how many hours I am billing for — I still work about 90 hours a week.
It’s in the “high performer” Gene Pool. I am almost certain another specific trait to this group it “The Impostor Syndrome Gene” — but that’s another topic completely
Love the cartoon, but it could just as easily be captioned, “If he is so stupid, why am I working for him?“
Rob
Years ago — okay, many years ago — one of the teachers in our shop class explained the marking scheme. One of the kids then commented that he wasn’t going to hand in any assignments or do any class work, but he would focus instead on the final exam and two tests. His reasoning? He only needed 51% to pass the course, and ten years from now, no-one would care what his marks were.
Stop blaming the slackers. The trouble isn’t that we’re lazy, or that we’re sucking the life out of your department. The trouble is that you’ve got a system, and it sucks.
And don’t dare promote the high performers… they’re so good at what they’re doing now, why lose the productivity?
Very good! I like your pictures.
I do not tolerate slackers and so had to find a way to retain my headcount and get them the re-training support they required from within their team. So I developed my inteam mentoring plan whereby slackers are mentored by the mid to high performers.
It works incredibly well but there is always the exception who is replaced in time. I also award improved slackers with the recognition they deserve from the great work they now do. In turn, they will mentor someone too. This is the payoff for tolerance and a show of faith.
The problem with corporate culture is that high performance is not remarkable. Although I note Ive recently got a CBE.
You guys crack me up. Put this one in the “Who ever said life is fair?” file.
Robert, if you’re having the mid– to high-performers evaluate the slackers, aren’t you just giving your mids and highs more reponsibilities that they don’t need?
Hello,
i think one of the idiot boss there. we donot waste our talent him
http://www.gameza.info/
It is written, “Little wonder that “high performers hate slackers…“
And I say… “Oh yeah!”
I especially enjoy my company’s denial that there’s a problem with the continued hemhorragic loss of its best employees. It’s one thing to not care about problems, but it’s quite another when you deny there’s a problem in the first place despite ample evidence.
We had a department-wide meeting a few weeks ago, after an anonymous survey was sent out to everyone. The top two concerns raised were (1) the pay sucks, and (2) we keep losing people at a devastating rate. Rather than actually address the issues constructively, the meeting was used to “educate” us on why there wasn’t a problem in the first place.
How do you even begin to address such entrenched idiocy?
Even if the product or service is excellent, and you really enjoy your job, having to pull the weight of others is extremely draining and unfair. Whats worse is when people who have more “distinguished” titles then you, half ass everything. We call this “play time.” I’m sure you know what im talking about. The managers who sits in front of their computer so their chair stays warm or their AIM chat doesnt go idle for proof that they have been there all day, when really they have been doing nothing besides some pointless delegating. What’s worse about working with unproductive people, is that you can’t be resentful to these people, because they will just do less. This leads to bringing these problems upon your friends, house mates, boyfriends, girlfriends, or spouses. You lose more then just the project or assignment when working with unproductive people. Doesnt matter the product, service, or the cash; working with unproductive people just isnt worth it.
Thank you for posting this!
I once worked with an incredibly creative team. Our leader was creative and hard-working, inspired really. We all worked hard and made beautiful things.
The people hired who turned out to be slackers were let go sooner than later — we had work to do! Our boss was so clear about not letting that bad energy pollute the culture she had so carefully created. I agree that her type is all too rare.
Years later, I sill keep in touch with most of these people even though we haven’t worked together for awhile. We’re all still hard-working and creative, still passionate about our work and making our successful ways in the world. We love our work, and we love our lives. It’s a pleasure to now have them as friends.
Life is too short to waste time.
A (great) boss that I once had called this the Racehorse & Nag Syndrome. Flog the racehorses to run ever-faster to help you win, and leave the nags out to pasture. He asked me to tell him if the flogging ever got out of hand and to tell him to stop. Wonderful guy to work for.
Interestingly enough, I just wrote a similar entry:
http://www.douglaskarr.com/2006/11/17/prof-dev-gaps/
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