Friday, August 23, 2013

Ignoring Poor Performance


Determining the lowest acceptable level of performance in an organization can be fascinating. I've seen places where what would produce termination in one department won't even be reprimanded in another. In most instances, the failure to apply the higher standard is the mistake and in each, you can bet that people notice.

It is especially interesting how long people can coast on the basis of personality. If the person "looks the part" and is reasonably pleasant, oodles of incompetence will be excused or explained away. This is heightened if there is fear of firing; the apprehension that getting rid of the person could be an embarrassment or require some serious effort. Ratchet that up even more if there is the sense that upper management won't back the termination.

Oddly enough, the longer the period of incompetence, the more difficult it is to stir up corrective action because those who should take action know they were remiss in not taking it sooner and they don't want their inactivity examined. Their strategy is to ignore the poor performance and pretend it doesn't matter.

Unfortunately, poor performance always does matter and failing to address it is highly unethical.

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