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What is your approach to firing an employee? MICHAEL: Do it fast — the faster the better. If someone is consistently underperforming, you might think you are doing them a favor by waiting. You aren’t. You’re actually making matters worse.
Pick the right people. If you do, it makes everything else so much easier. And once you’ve picked them, trust them.
If you expect the best of people, they’ll give you the best.
Don’t overpromote people. Pay them well for what they do, and make it rewarding, in every way, for them to keep doing what they are doing.
whether software designer or delivery truck driver, accountant or hotel housekeeper, the most valuable aspects of jobs are now, as Thomas Stewart describes in Intellectual Capital, “the most essentially human tasks: sensing, judging, creating, and building relationships.”
If we start to get further afield so that the financial statements … are measuring less and less of what is truly valuable in a company, then we start to lower the relevance of that scorecard. What we need are ways to measure the intangibles, R&D, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction.
If you have a turnover problem, look first to your managers.
Today’s agile companies can no longer afford to employ armies of managers to shuffle papers, sign approvals and monitor performance. They need self-reliant, self-motivated, self-directed work teams.
The manager role is to reach inside each employee and release his unique talents into performance.
The core activities of a manager and a leader are simply different. It is entirely possible for a person to be a brilliant manager and a terrible leader. But it is just as possible for a person to excel as a leader and fail as a manager.
In the minds of great managers, every role performed at excellence deserves respect. Every role has its own nobility.
“Why do so many managers try to control their people?” If defining outcomes rather than methods is so elegant and so efficient, why don’t more managers do just that? When faced with the challenge of turning talent into performance, why do so many managers choose, instead, to dictate how work should be done? Every manager has his own reasons, but in the end, it is probably because the allure of control is just too tempting.
“Vibrant companies must put together five-year plans. But they must be willing to change these five-year plans every single year. It’s the only way to stay alive.”
You succeed by finding ways to capitalize on who you are, not by trying to fix who you aren’t. If you are blunt in one or two important areas, try to find a partner whose peaks match your valleys. Balanced by this partner, you are then free to hone your talents to a sharper point.
Great managers dislike the complexity of most company-sponsored performance appraisal schemes.
Some managers simply should not be managers. Their misbehavior is not a function of misunderstandings or misdirected good intentions. It is a function of lack of talent (or sometime neurosis). Lacking the appropriate four-lane highways in their minds, they will forever make poor decisions. They will forever mistrust, overshadow, abandon, intrude and stifle. They have to. It’s in their nature. Neither you nor this book nor weeks of sensitivity training will give them the strengths, the self-esteem and the security they need to be a great manager.
Conventional wisdom is barricaded behind a wall of selection, training, compensation and performance management systems. The only way to dislodge it completely is to replace these systems. And only the company can replace these systems.
Keep the focus on outcomes: The role of the company is to identify the desired end. The role of the individual is to find the best means possible to achieve that end. Therefore, strong companies become experts in the destination and give the individual the thrill of the journey.
Everywhere, employees are demanding more of their work. With the breakdown of other sources of community, employees are looking more and more to their workplace to provide them with a sense of meaning and identity. They want to be recognized as individuals. They want a chance to express themselves and to gain meaningful prestige for that expression.
Engaged Employees Drive Customer Loyalty
the link between engaged employees and customer loyalty, there are often very direct links between an increase in the number of engaged employees and profit, either indirectly through an increase in productivity or directly through major decreases in employee turnover.
