A Personal Take on the Dirty Little Secrets Behind Performance Improvement Plans

I LOVE IT WHEN an editor somewhere writes a snappy headline that makes me really want to read the story.

I’ve written a few of those myself, and I know how hard they are to compose, but oh how wonderful they read when you pen one that really clicks.

I found one like that in this week’s Fast Company, and I bet it clicks with a lot of you like it clicked for me. It simply said — “You’re a Dead Person Walking:” How one person dealt with being put on a Performance Improvement Plan.

And yes, it’s not perfect, but the phrase “Dead Person Walking” perfectly captures why PIP’s are so terribly challenging and hard to execute — for both the person managing the performance improvement plan as well as the employee going through it.

That’s because PIP’s are usually about building a case to terminate an employee, or, giving them one last opportunity to keep their job.

Fast Company makes this point in their article and they describe it like this:

“Performance improvement plans, or PIPs, tend to be seen as a death knell for the employees who get them. Rather than a sincere approach to helping team members succeed, they can often signal a slow farewell from the company — a three-month countdown to getting let go. As Owen Manley, a former sales account executive put on a PIP more than a decade ago, puts it, ‘PIPs go one of two ways. Three months into them, I’d guess [employees] either leave by their own choice, or they’re let go.’ “

What’s it like to actually go through a PIP?

WHAT PULLED ME INTO this story — besides the catchy headline — was that it was a first-person account of what it was like to go through a performance improvement plan. Owen Manley’s recollection of his PIP experience is a sobering one and not unlike what I have seen on several occasions.

It’s well worth a read, and that’s true for both managers and employees alike.

I touched on my experience with performance improvement plans back in 2012 when I wrote a blog post for TLNT titled The Dirty Little Secret of Performance Improvement Plans. What I said then is what I still believe now:

“Here’s what performance improvement plans are really about: providing cover and documentation (if needed) to help get rid of an employee that someone in management … wants to move out. They’re a CYA exercise, a way for management to claim they did all they could to help the employee in question, while at the same time sending a message to the person that their next step is probably out the door.

I’ve rarely seen an employee come back and be successful after being put on a performance improvement plan, although the one time I saw it happen, it was an unexpected and rewarding event that I still consider one of my greatest managerial accomplishments, ever. … 

I’ll die happy if I never have to deal with a performance improvement plan again. They’re bad news all around …”

“A lazy way of leading people”

THE HIGHLY PERSONAL Fast Company account of Owen Manley’s PIP has a happy ending — he keeps his job and then exits on his own terms — and he closes with this:

“I think PIPs are an awful reflection on the company, not just because I lived through it. After that, I’d have colleagues who were put on PIPs. It’s such a demoralizing effect, not just on the individual, but on their immediate colleagues. It’s a lazy way of leading people.

Everyone’s going to struggle at some point in their career. Companies need to figure out a way to manage them through that dip in performance. If the employee’s struggling, the company needs to take ownership of that and ask what’s going on: How can we empower you? Where are we lacking? What’s going on in your life?”

Those are good questions. I wish more managers would dig into them to see if there is a better way to improve performance without having to go to the terribly demoralizing and hated PIP.

We might find that the hated performance improvement plan has outlived its usefulness.

 

Other trends and insights 

And your latest dose of AI news … 

• Can we please stop talking about replacing employees with AI? (From VentureBeat.com)
• The world is not quite ready for “digital workers” (From TheGuardian.com)
• Investors Pour $27.1 Billion Into AI Start-Ups, Defying a Downturn (From NYTimes.com)
• Should AI be considered and employee? This company thinks so (From FastCompany.com)
• 77% of workers say AI tools have decreased their productivity  (From Benefitsnews.com)

ALSO: BBC.com used to have a lot of workplace-related stories, but a recent change seems to have moved away from much of that. But this recent story is something a great many employees have been clamoring for — Can we make work meetings more bearable?

ALSO-ALSO: Fast Company is on a bit of a roll this week, and A Field Guide to annoying co-workers digs into “how to spot the annoying ones you’ll likely encounter — and what to do with them.”

Management insight of the week

Ashley Goodall, a former HR leader and author of The Problem With Change, tells Chief Executive‘s sister publication StrategicCHRO360, the answer to getting good work done is to make support habitual. Make it a ritual:

“We all rely on rituals in our daily lives, from the mundane, like a cup of coffee in the morning, to the life-defining, like weddings, graduations and mourning practices. “By giving us, through their repetitions, a series of anchor points out into the future, [rituals] inoculate us just a little against uncertainty in that future,” says Goodall. But what exactly do they look like in the workplace?

You likely already have rituals in place at work (like that weekly team meeting on your calendar), and while there’s nothing revolutionary about a routine meeting, the power lies in its reliability, not in any sort of gimmick.

Goodall speaks from deep experience, having been an HR leader at such mammoth operations as Cisco and Deloitte. Here’s how he made the most out of workplace rituals:

• Consistency is key. A leader on Goodall’s team at Cisco developed a specific, weekly cadence to meet with her team. “Rather than talking about how people on the team felt or how to build trust or what insights they had about one another, in the hope that that would lead to more effective work, she instead designed a ritual to help people support one another and collaborate more effectively,” says Goodall.
• Conversation, not presentation. “Earlier versions [of the weekly meeting] were more produced and had agendas and guest speakers and project updates and much more slideware. They worked, but not nearly as well as the simple form we’ve finally arrived at. With all the meeting paraphernalia stripped away, what the team heard was leaders talking about what was going on in real words.”
• Keep it human. “If someone had nothing much to say, they said nothing much. And I learned, as we went along, that the updates I gave that were most appreciated were those where I felt I was right on the edge of saying too much,” says Goodall.

The beauty of the ritual is really its ‘cunning manipulation,’ as Goodall calls it. The things they give us—increased certainty, community, safety and more—are often not addressed directly in the ritual itself but instead emerge over time from its repetition and are strangely more robust as a result.” Read the full excerpt.

—Emma Vorfeld in the Chief Executive CEO Briefing newsletter

Loyal Readers: I’ve been compiling this weekly wrap-up for over 20 years — from Workforce.com to TLNT.com to Fuel50 and here at The Skeptical Guy. I’d appreciate knowing what you think, so email comments to me at  johnhollon@yahoo.com.