All Posts in Office Politics

|In: Career Management|Last Updated:

Dear Bob …

Have you ever written about PIPs (Performance Improvement Plans – official HR hand slapping)?

I am faced with one now for the first time in my almost 35 years of IT. It basically sets me up to fail — strict requirements to be completed in 30 days over vacation and holidays.

What I’m curious to know is whether there are any statistics out there showing what percentage of those put on these types of plans ever really succeed, and how many result in employees leaving on their own steam. The view from here is that these are mainly used as a management tool to remove a team member without actually firing them. Or am I just being paranoid?

Thanks,

– PIPped off

 

Dear Ticked off …

I don’t think I’ve ever written about this subject, although there was a time in my career when I was responsible for instituting the process (I headed up HR for a client for a year).

Answers to the questions you asked first: I don’t know what kinds of statistics exist for this sort of thing. I’m pretty sure, though, that any statistics that are available won’t mean very much. The reason: The only useful statistics would come from comparing the performance of pairs of similar employees, led by similar managers, with one in each pair given a PIP and the other left unaware of his/her performance deficiencies.

I know enough about business “research” to be confident no studies like this have been conducted. Among the reasons for my confidence: The unlikelihood that a researcher could ever persuade a company to engage in research like this, especially as the use of performance improvement plans for non-performing employees is widely considered “best practice” among HR professionals.

So from the perspective of whether or not these things are useful, I doubt there’s any reliable evidence either way.

But really, that doesn’t matter. Here’s what does: You’ve been handed one. Your decision is what to do about it.

The best advice I have is to take it seriously, whether or not it deserves to be taken seriously.

Take it seriously because your employer is taking it seriously. Do what it asks you to do, do it by the numbers, and document that you’ve done it. Even if your plan is to leave because of it, this is a key step in leaving under your own steam.

And while you’re doing so, figure out which of the concerns expressed in the plan would be worth your time and attention to address, whether or not you deserve to have been put on the plan.

Here’s what I expect your biggest challenge will be: In a very real sense you’re dealing with the proverbial stages of grief right now. In your case, your sense of loss is your 35-year unbroken string of positive performance, which is now being called into question.

30 days is just about enough time for you to progress from denial to anger — a singularly unhelpful phase in your current situation. To succeed you’ll have to put all of that in a box and find something in all of this that really is an opportunity to improve.

And you’ll have to find a way to do it that doesn’t impinge on either your self-respect or your intellectual integrity, because from your description of the situation it appears you don’t agree with your manager’s assessment that resulted in this situation.

It isn’t merely hard to say, “You’re right — my performance in this area really has been awful,” when you think you’ve been doing well at it. It feels cowardly, like failing to stand up to a schoolyard bully.

And yet, as you’ve already discovered, arguing about it isn’t going to get you anywhere. Your manager has made up his/her mind, HR agrees, and that’s a fact you have to deal with, not a problem you can solve.

A professional marriage counselor once told me the advice she gave clients that most found both helpful and most difficult to follow was to hear the message while ignoring the tone of voice with which it’s delivered: Just because someone is screaming doesn’t mean their message is wrong.

There are parallels to your situation. So with that, a suggestion: Whether or not you think your performance in an area is deficient, you can still find ways to improve at it. Focus on that, not on the assessment that led to it.

Good luck. It’s a rotten thing to have to go through. But finding another job while unemployed because you failed at it is a whole lot worse.

– Bob

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|In: Industry Commentary|Last Updated:

I was talking politics with an acquaintance. Explaining his positions on the issues he told me he’s a social liberal but fiscal conservative.

Not uncommon these days. But it occurred to me that while accurate, his self-description had nothing to do with liberal or conservative political philosophy, just liberal and conservative affinities.

What’s this have to do with the world of business?

There is a connection, and we’ll get to it. But with the impending election the poor quality of political discourse in this country is once again on my mind, and this sort of self-indulgent piece is the price you occasionally pay for getting KJR for free.

Let’s get to it.

“Social liberal” should mean you base your positions on social issues on liberal political philosophy. What it does mean is, you hold positions commonly associated with the Democratic party.

Likewise fiscal conservatism, which means holding positions about financial policy commonly associated with the GOP.

The two major political parties and commentariat have convinced most of us that liberalism and conservatism are opposing political philosophies — poles on a spectrum. This is bunk.

Liberalism is more or less an extension of John Rawls’ principle that a fair society is one you’d design if you didn’t know where you’d be born into it.

Conservatism is, more or less, adherence to the principle that the government is the solution only to problems that can’t be decently solved without its intervention.

Do those strike you as opposites — poles on a continuum? To me they’re entirely compatible and complementary. Neither excludes the other. If recognized as complementary principles, different people would still reach different conclusions when applying them, but with a lot less acrimony.

Because our political dialog is really all about affinity — choosing which side you’re on — a Republican candidate for office would be rejected for agreeing that you can’t fix potholes and bridges without spending tax dollars to do it. Meanwhile, Democratic candidates have to at least pretend that anything less than perfect fairness is entirely unacceptable.

And, both parties subject us to a form of political advertising best described as “here’s why the other candidate is awful.”

Imagine applying this art form to selling cars. General Motors’ ads would grimly describe the Toyotas that accelerated uncontrollably. Toyota would retaliate with Thunder Road ads — photos of the skeleton frames of burned out Chevrolets — excoriating GM for being so greedy it wouldn’t install safe ignition switches.

Affinity-driven political philosophy drives polarization. Affinity means understanding what makes you a member of the club. You have to learn and follow its rules.

What’s this have to do with the world of business?

As promised, there is a connection, and not a particularly subtle one, either (and thanks for indulging me): When it’s election-year politics we call it polarization. When it’s politics in business we call it organizational silos.

But while the root causes of political polarization and organizational siloes are different, their sustaining strategies and tactics are quite similar, and if you don’t think so, try defending the bureaucrats in HR to your colleagues in a badly siloed company.

It just isn’t done, and if you’re on the other side of the fence try defending the propeller heads in IT who are always chasing the latest shiny ball; the bean counters in accounting who understand the price of everything and the value of nothing; the pointy-haired bosses who, walking into the Clue Store with a plutonium American Express card would leave empty handed …

Get the picture?

Recently I’ve seen quite a bit of commentary regarding what psychologists call confirmation bias — the tendency to accept without question any and all inputs that support a position you’ve already taken while ignoring or nit-picking to death anything calling it into question. The gist of these articles is that we might as well give up on forming rational opinions, because we can’t. Confirmation bias will always prevent it, and we won’t even know that’s what’s going on in our heads.

I’m less convinced of the hopelessness of it all, largely because, over time, we’ve accumulated pretty good evidence that science works (like, the device you’re reading this on depends on it).

How do scientists … good scientists, at least … avoid confirmation bias? The good ones avoid it by not wanting to prove they’re right. They aren’t even motivated by the need to be right.

What they want is to understand how something works. Confirmation bias doesn’t ever enter the picture.

Try it. Start with HR — the discipline, not the department. You might be surprised, not just at what you learn, but at how much there is to learn.

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