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From the KJR mailbag regarding last week’s column on performance improvement plans (PIPs):

Hi Bob …

The only time I received a PIP, it was clearly to start building a documentation trail (your point about the recipient building his own trail cannot be over-emphasized) that would lead to my termination, ostensibly for cause.

My prior performance reviews had also been excellent. I continued to perform to the best of my abilities while conducting what little job search I could due to the enormous demands that the job placed on my time.

In due course, I was pulled into the resign-or-be-fired meeting and given 15 minutes to collect my personal effects and leave. The company subsequently fought my unemployment claim all the way to a judicial hearing (I won). Of course, the CEO said it was not personal. Of course, I did not (and do not to this day) believe her.

The story ends well. It prompted my move from Long Beach, CA to [current location], converting a long-distance relationship to one that ended in a fulfilling marriage. My journey led me to [employer name], where I have found meaningful work that has brought fulfillment.

Bob says: First, thanks for sharing your story. Second … of course it’s personal. Criticism might not be personal for the critic, but it’s always personal for the criticized, by definition. Beyond that, many managers don’t differentiate between “your performance is substandard” and “I don’t like you.”

Often, they’re yellers.

Third, you give me too much credit. You’re right that “my point about the recipient building an independent document trail cannot be overemphasized,” except for one thing: I neglected to say it. On behalf of everyone reading this, thanks for filling the gap.

* * *

Bob …

My experience is that PIPs are rigged against the employee. Their manager has already decided to fire them, but has to jump through legal hoops and have some “justification” so the company can’t be sued.

The best thing is for the guy to do the minimum, devoting his time to the job search.

Maybe also see a lawyer and send a registered letter to the company noting how the PIP is impossible and rigged for failure, to negotiate a better severance.

Bob says:

Depends on the company, and the manager. Some PIPs are sincere and legitimate. You’re right often enough to taint the whole process, but not so often that it’s a safe generality. Also, as most companies are “at will employers,” the lawsuit threat is overblown. They can and often do terminate employees with no stated cause at all.

Still, most of your advice is sound, except that employees on PIPs do need to be open minded about the possibility that they really do need to make some changes.

* * *

Bob …

Having been on all sides of this:

  • Good managers will tell you they’re unhappy long before you get a PIP. Bad ones may not.
  • If you’re reporting to a new manager, read your past appraisals to see if there is anything to suggest your previous managers had the same concerns but didn’t want to go to the trouble of going through the process. Your new manager might just be the first one willing to do so.
  • One way to know if the PIP is real and not window dressing or the result of a hidden agenda: What you need to do will be totally within your control and you will have what you need when you need it.
  • If you have a bad manager, hitting the PIP’s goals would save your job, but you may not get the support you need when you need it to hit them.
  • If you have a manager with an agenda, it won’t matter how hard you work, and factors beyond your control — factors that aren’t obvious to anyone in HR — may conspire to keep you from reaching the PIP’s goals. Example: needing the support of other people for whom you and your goals are a low priority at best.
  • Might you have annoyed a higher-level manager, whether directly or indirectly? You might be dealing with “delegated discipline,” at which point you have a manager with an agenda.
  • Ask HR what rights you have. Then ask someone who’s been around a while the same question. If HR seems to be leaving things out, you probably have a boss with an agenda and HR is backing them.

Bob says …

This is excellent advice. Thanks!

Someone once said we’re all smarter than any of us are. Thanks to all who, by writing, helped demonstrate the point.

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|In: Business Ethics|Last Updated:

How can a commentator not write about Charlie Hebdo?

My first impulse was to publish caricatures of Mohammed, Moses, Jesus (of Nazareth, not the Mariners’ Jesus Montero), Buddha, and perhaps Ganesh, Zeus and Odin so polytheists wouldn’t feel left out. That would show ’em!

I’m less sure what exactly it would show ’em. Probably, it would have shown how easily I’m manipulated. That’s all anyone shows when they react predictably to a provocation.

In any event, I doubt it would show ’em anything at all. It would just be posturing. Because while I do have a few members of the clergy as subscribers (!) to the best of my knowledge leaders and adherents of radical Islam don’t read KJR. Why would they? The last thing they have in mind is keeping anything running.

I say “radical Islam,” not to avoid offending anyone. I say it because most Muslems condemn both the attack and the mentality behind it.

A letter-writer to the local newspaper asked why the Imams have been silent instead of roundly condemning the attack. If you’re wondering too, a little bit of Googling reveals that the Imams haven’t been silent. Other than those who preach radical Islam, many have been quite vocal and roundly condemning. Strangely, the American press appears to have, shall we say, under-reported this aspect of the story.

And if you’re among those who figure this sort of violence to be intrinsic to Islam because the Quran says something or other that seems to encourage it, consider this:

At other times in history, Islam was the world’s bastion of religious tolerance while Christianity was busily instituting the Inquisition. Neither of their religious texts have changed at all. Something that hasn’t changed is unlikely to be the cause of an effect that has changed — an unoriginal but important point to consider in this debate.

Another letter-writer pointed out that the First Amendment protects the newspaper’s right to use the n-word in print, asserting that newspapers don’t do so, not because they can’t, but because doing so would offend lots of people, and not only those to whom the n-word refers.

I sure hope that isn’t the reason. Not publishing (or saying in public) something because it might offend someone is a poor decision for quite a few reasons, the most important of which is how easily many people manage to become offended. Not saying something because someone might take offense is just another way of taking a vow of silence.

The difference between trying to avoid offending anyone and deciding to not be offensive isn’t a fine distinction. It’s the difference between cowardice and class.

A newspaper using the n-word as a routine adjective would be entirely lacking in class. The proper response would be to read a different newspaper. Publishing it as part of an exact quote is a different matter: Not doing so would be a failure to accurately depict the individual being quoted.

Blazing Saddles is worth mentioning in this context. When Mel Brooks first released the movie there were plenty of people who condemned it for its promiscuous use of the n-word in its dialog, just as there are still plenty of Americans who would prefer to ban Huckleberry Finn from school library shelves because children might read the name “Nigger Jim” and think that makes the n-word okay.

Personal opinion: Sanitizing either work would insult its audience while greatly reducing its very clear anti-racism message. That neither Mark Twain nor Mel Brooks received death threats probably needs no mention here. In any event they didn’t, and shouldn’t have.

Does this have anything at all to do with business leadership, IT leadership, or any other dimension of management in all its forms?

I think so, and it has to do with how we respond to public criticism.

The perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo massacre were punishing people who, they thought, had ridiculed and criticized their prophet.

Meanwhile, here in the U.S.A., it’s routine for managers to terminate employees who, on their own private time and publishing venues, criticize or ridicule their employers in public.

Sure, there are differences: Murder is illegal, firing an employee is not. Murder is unconscionable, termination is, depending on the employee’s circumstances, somewhere between inconvenient and devastating.

What isn’t different: Criticism is an opportunity to learn, as the same managers point out to employees when providing it in performance reviews.

For business leaders, reading and learning might not just be a better response to public criticism.

It might reduce it.

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