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Twenty six! Twenty six employees came… and went. They didn’t quit. I let them go. Most quietly, some not so quietly, but they left.
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It took some time as I hired, fired, gleaned, and screened until eventually I assembled a crew that could think, plan, and work without constant direction from me.
Now, I am not so naïve as to expect that employees can or should be entirely self-directing; neither can they nor should they function in complete independence. Depending on the competence and confidence of an associate in any particular position, the degree of your engagement as a leader/manager will vary. The farther the employee down the scale, the more participation will be required from you.
Employees and associates, depending on their experience, education, confidence, and competence, will rank somewhere on the following scale:
Trusted associate |
Reliable assistant |
Hired hand |
Forced labor |
Lower-level employees typically require more intervention and interaction with their manager. This consumes time and attention; if too many associates demand it, the overall productivity of the group will suffer.
Why did I hire and fire 26 people? Because none of those 26 would ever rise to the point where I could confidently let them work with the independence that permits me to do what I have to do as owner and manager. I was limited in the work I could accomplish because the people I hired could not shoulder their responsibilities without significant input from me.
I am providing consulting services for a business, and I’ve been looking for ways to make its operations more efficient and therefore more profitable. Yesterday I had to fire the manager. He wasn’t able to perform at the level of productivity the job required. Too many facets of the job fell beyond his grasp. For instance, I had instructed him to complete a simple task that would prevent internal theft of a product. The task would take less than 10 minutes to complete at the end of the day. Nine days later, the task hadn’t been done, and the theft continued.
The higher the level of responsibility, the greater the demand on the manager. He must be able to see the whole picture, assess what needs to be done, and help employees to work smart. The manager I dismissed failed to understand the scope of the current project or the action required to complete the work.
All this is predicated on your ability to understand and define the demands of the job. What’s more, the following six questions will reveal if you are sanctioning incompetence.
1. Have you settled in your thinking and behavior that the demands and criteria you must establish are strictly business?
You should possess with some reasonable clarity what will be the successful outcome of an employee’s engagement with your company. It might be easily measured by profit margins. It might be counted by widgets made in a measured amount of time. It might be in the capacity to determine what needs to be done and make sure it is done. A friend once recommended that I hire a friend of his because the man was having a hard time adjusting to adult life and needed a father figure to help him along. My response? My business is not a therapy center and I am not a therapist. Therapy is costly, too costly for me (or you) to absorb just to “help people along.” You are in business; your organization exists to pursue and eventually realize the stated objectives, not provide work therapy for troubled individuals.
2. How well do you or your clients solve the problems that customers bring?
All businesses are problem-solving entities. We exist to resolve issues. We fix problems brought to us by our clients. This is easy to monitor in repair or service companies. It is less obvious in other industries but true nonetheless. In my millwork business, I educate all my employees on being problem-solving people. When a customer needs something made or installed to satisfy functional or aesthetic problems—usually both—it is up to us to do it. Your employees will encounter numerous issues to resolve (e.g., understanding the concept, engineering a workable design, devising a logical and safe sequence to produce the resolution, finding and sourcing the materials and components necessary to make it happen.) You don’t need and shouldn’t tolerate excuses. You need results. That’s what you’re paying them for.
3. Do your employees solve more problems than they create?
If an employee or an associate is creating more issues than he solves, the indications that they are in the wrong position grow more pointed.
4. Do you underwrite and support work that falls short of the standard?
You can excuse incompetence, but you must never sanction it. Never, and I mean never, rob from strength to pay for weakness. One of my more successful failures was a brief venture in a partnership. It was a door and window manufacturing company. My part of the deal was to be the front man. I did the marketing, met with clients, and sold products.
Our very first job was for several window frames and doors, all made of hardwood. I turned the order over to my business partner, whose job it was to oversee the manufacture of the products. In due time the components were delivered to the client, who then called me the next day. He was not happy. I visited the job site and discovered why. Honestly, any high-school wood-shop class could have turned out better product. I brought back one of the defective windows, set it up on the bench, and gathered the crew.
“This is what we are turning out,” I showed them the window.
They looked it over and, incredibly, said, “What’s wrong with it?”
I then showed them, item by item, the flaws, and there were many.
My business partner then countered, “Well, we can’t do any better.”
“Then, we can’t be in this business,” I replied. Soon thereafter I sold my shares because it became clear that the manufacturing would not get any better. It wasn’t long before the company was out of business.
Be frank, be honest, be frankly honest, be brutal in your assessments of performance. Some people are excruciatingly nice, but they may not be up to the job. The decisions to be made are strictly business. We are surrounded by incompetence because we sanction it. Margins of error can broaden into highways of incompetence if we let them. If a situation requires you to check an associate’s work, to continually monitor her performance, to track her down and demand accountability, there is a problem and it won’t go away by itself. You might be able to fix it with training, but if that fails, it’s time to make the hard business decision.
5. Do your employees or associates mistake forbearance for indifference?
You may be patient, tolerant of error, slow to react, willing to invest time and effort to bring someone along. However, make sure all your associates know that your forbearance does not signal indifference. If you continually ignore poor performance, missed goals, and failed attempts, if you set a standard but do not enforce it, your associates and employees will lose respect for you and exploit what they assess to be weakness. I fired the manager yesterday because I am serious about the standards required by this business, and I intend to make certain they are in place.
6. Do you play fair?
Demand the same principled level of performance of everyone. Never let one get away with neglecting what is required of another. This fosters the concept that a good-ol’-boy system is in place, and truthfully, if you do favor one over another, a good-ol’-boy system is indeed in place.
What principles and practices of building competence have you tried? How well did they work for you?
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Comments
Question # 7
How often do I stand in front of a mirror and ask myself "Am I consistently competent?" How often do we meet with allegedly competent employees - at all organizational levels ... - who don't even know how to ignite their engine on? It's not the number of questions that will ever make the difference, it's the quality of people, instead. I completely agree: incompetence has to be sanctioned, top-down first, in any and all organization. And cost of non-quality teaching, too. Thank you.
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