Last week I was on a rare vacation with my family. We went to Big Bend National Park.
The picture above is a me standing on the Rio Grande looking at Mexico. That canyon was beautiful, with pretty rock formations all around. I saw little caves high up on the cliff and wondered; how many people throughout history might have climbed in there? 🤔
It was also fun to have another country be right there. 🇲🇽
We did some horse riding. The boys did a shooting gallery. We did a fair bit of walking. It’s a little bit of a food desert; eggs, OJ, bacon, and butter was $35 at the nearby general store.
Horse ride at sunset.
Word to the wise; if you find yourself driving through West Texas - get gas! I never ran out, but we got close. 😬
There can be over 100 miles between gas stations (and cell service)! When you find gas, the pumps might be out of order, or there’s a line of 10 cars in front of you.
If you had time off for Thanksgiving last week, what did you do? Tell me about it at heykev@kevinnoble.xyz.
Kevin
A Quote
“
The effective executive therefore first makes sure that the job is well designed. And if experience tells him otherwise, he does not hunt for genius to do the impossible. He redesigns the job. He knows that the test of organization is not genius. It is its capacity to make common people achieve uncommon performance.
— Peter F. Drucker in "The Effective Executive"
Three Things
1 - 🔪 Card Assassins - This is a really fun and engaging card game. You don’t play while sitting down, you play while living your life. Everyone playing is an assassin, and they have a “target” of someone else in the group. You “assassinate” your target by getting them to say any one of three words (listed on the other card you receive). It’s things like “volcano,” “BBQ,” and “shave.” If they say it, you yell out, “assassinated!” and now you get their target, and the game continues until there’s one person standing. Games can last hours or days. Over Thanksgiving we played with the extended family multiple times, ages 5 to grandparents 👴👵.
2 - 🫘 Counter Culture Coffee - I’ve had a coffee subscription to Counter Culture for years. If you’re looking for a variety of very good coffees delivered to your door, this is the place.
3 - 🧩 Wentworth Puzzles - These are awesome, high quality, puzzles from a company in the UK. They’re made out of wood, not the more standard cardboard that we’re all used to, which contributes to their longevity. They have worldwide delivery at reasonable rates. I’ve got one on my Christmas list!
Deep Dive into Performance Management
There comes a time in every manager’s life when they’re faced with an employee who isn’t quite pulling their weight.
The manager has aspirations and goals for the group, not to mention their own performance to worry about, but this under-performing employee is holding them all back.
It’s been going on for a while. Their teammates are getting frustrated.
What should the manager do?
This is just one scenario - albeit a very common one - where performance management is needed.
What is performance management?
Performance management is just what is sounds like; it’s managing the performance of your employees.
“Essentially performance management is the series of activities that ensures that managers provide employees with clarity about what is expected of them, as well as regular feedback about whether or not they are adequately meeting those expectations.”
While it’s typically used in reference to low performance, it technically also includes performance exceeding expectations.
I think of it like keeping performance in a channel over time.
Keep performance in the purple channel.
If performance goes below the channel, there’s an issue. Typically the Employee Relations (ER) team (if your company has one) will get involved.
If performance goes above the channel, you’ve got an over-performer on your hands. Typically that’s great! You just need to continue to find challenges for them (and budget 🤑). This is typically when you’ll spend more time with Human Resources (HR).
The channel is typically expected to tilt upwards over time. Employees should naturally become more effective as they gain experience with your company.
Why do we do it?
While there are several manager archetypes (e.g. player-coach vs. facilitator), there’s an argument to be made that the whole point of being a manager is performance management.
You’re in charge of one-to-many employees, and a leader is judged on the collective performance / outcomes of the team reporting to them.
An under-performing team reflects poorly on a manager, so a manager has to get good at this to be successful.
Helping people succeed is also very fulfilling! And earning a brand as someone who develops employees will attract more strong people. Attracting strong people makes many things easier as a leader.
Lastly, developing strong people creates a strong team. Being a member of a strong team is more fun and more impactful than not, as anyone who’s been part of one can tell you.
The guy in the middle isn't holding his weight.
“In my experience, one of the most important questions business leaders must regularly ask is ‘Are we limited by the team we have not being the team we should have?’”
What else should leaders keep in mind about performance management?
It’s not fun
Performance management is a critical skill, but to be honest, dealing with under-performance is not fun.
It’s downright stressful for all involved!
On the employee side, keep empathy in mind without letting it distract you from doing the right thing for yourself and the rest of the team. This is someone’s livelihood you’re managing and that’s a big deal.
Most people want to do well, so finding themselves in an under-performance situation is going to feel stressful. You may be talking about their performance, but they’ll be busy thinking about the risk to their mortgage.
The signs on the bosses wall that say "stress" sure aren't helping.
Be mindful of that as you engage in the process.
As a leader, it’s also stressful. You’ll potentially be dealing with new people from the HR/ER functions. You’ll have to ensure you’re minimizing legal risk, which affects what you say and how you say it.
You’ll be busy documenting performance feedback after every conversation and after most other interactions.
You’ll be managing the emotions of the person and the emotions of the team.
It’s a lot to do on top of your day job.
Given all the stress, it’s best to avoid finding yourself in this situation. You can do that by improving your hiring (finding stronger people) and your onboarding.
Performance Management During Onboarding
Finding yourself in a performance management situation during onboarding is a lower effort endeavor.
An issue during onboarding can be classified as a mis-hire. For a mis-hire the documentation and duration requirements are significantly lower.
It’s also much better for the employee to find out there’s an issue during onboarding. If there’s misalignment and they need to exit, better to do that quickly than have a long drawn-out process.
I’ve managed out people during the first four weeks on the job. They quickly got back into their job search and found something better.
They don’t even show the company on their LinkedIn profile. That’s great! There’s nothing for them to have to explain to future employers; it’s like it never happened.
I’ve seen people where the issue was identified early, but it wasn’t resolved. They ultimately get sucked into a lengthly performance management process and are let go nine months later.
Now their job search is cold. They’ve got to put the company on their resume and explain why they were there less than a year. Not great.
“I have yet to meet a leader with a perfect record of judging people. When you make a mistake, you have to be intellectually honest with yourself and cut your losses. Give the person a chance, but don’t drag your feet because you dread the conversation. Waiting too long to remove a non-performer has ended the careers of many senior leaders.”
A great way to stay ahead of this is through quarterly calibrations. I’ll save all the details for a future deep dive, but here’s a quick primer.
A quarterly calibration is where you align ratings and context across all of the people in your entire organization.
It would take too long to review this many people every quarter!
You do this to stay on top of performance. If you don’t have a calibration process, you run the risk of under-performance going unaddressed for too long which is bad for everyone.
Run these calibration sessions quarterly. More frequently and it’s too big a burden for too little benefit. Less frequently and you’ll only get one cycle in before the end of year ratings are submitted (if you have an annual review process); you may not have enough time to address an issue that arises.
If you’re a leader of leaders, get all of your direct reports in a room for a couple hours. Your leaders come prepared with the ratings for their teams (however many levels they have).
As it relates to performance management, look for people who are going out of the channel. On the over-performance side, you want to know how to challenge them. You also want to prepare for promotions.
On the under-performance side, you want to know that their manager can clearly articulate the issue and what their plan is. How are they helping this person develop and improve performance?
You also want to check for repeated quarters where someone is under-performing. We’ll get into it when I talk about speed later, but multiple quarters of under-performance is too long.
Alright, so you’ve identified an issue
The work begins once you’ve identified an issue.
In general it’s a good idea to notify and start working with your ER team if you have one. In general there’s little downside risk here. Most leaders wish they’d engaged ER earlier, not later.
I don’t advocate for the use of Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs) if your company policy permits it. I’ll share why in the section below.
What you need to do is start documenting performance gaps and expectations. This is to ensure you’re being fair and clear. Your employee can’t address what they don’t understand or what you never tell them.
The documentation can be really lightweight. Send a Slack message or email after a 1-1 where you discussed this live (don’t send this kind of written feedback first - that’s too triggering). Share with the written version that you’re doing this to help ensure clarity. Let them know they should reference your message as needed.
You also need to provide resources for the person. Are there articles or books they can read? Training sessions to attend? Mentors to talk to? Whatever you can think of, be sure to share it. You want this person to be successful, so give them access to whatever resources will help.
I was just in a holiday mood, so the idea of providing resources made me think of Santa.
You do NOT do the work for them. You provide clarity on expectations. You share resources. Employees have to do the work. Do not rescue them as that only delays resolution of the issue. You’re a coach and a challenger, so stay on that side of the equation.
One thing to watch out for in this process is where the person has a great attitude about all of this, but isn’t improving. This is difficult because you want this person to succeed.
They’re accepting the feedback you’re giving them, which can lull the manager into thinking things are going well because they feel like they’re going well. Pay attention to the improvement and outcomes as that’s what matters.
Have you ever had someone who took feedback well but didn’t do anything about it?
“Everyone deserves our best shot as leaders to help them succeed. But they don’t deserve repeated chances—especially at the expense of others on the team. Nobody likes making these hard decisions, but they must be made, and the sooner the better. Good leaders are direct and decisive in these matters.”
Your job is to stay the course during this process. Document expectations and your assessments clearly. Provide resources. Don’t do the work for them.
If things work out, great! Aren’t you glad you did the work? They’re now performing in the role because you did a better job explaining your expectations and they put in the work. Win win.
If things don’t work out, it’s time to move towards an exit. The person will be more successful in a different role, and possibly in a different company.
People usually find somewhere better after an exit.
Why I don’t like PIPs
I don’t like PIPs because the formality of it is almost a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If you’re really formal with a PIP and ER/HR and all the documentation, you’re triggering a fight or flight response in your employee. This has been demonstrated to shut down learning and openness, which are exactly the things you want to be heightened in this moment.
If you get the tone and communication right in performance management, it’ll feel a lot more similar to coaching, and who doesn’t love coaching?! You’re more likely to get a great outcome in a coaching scenario than by using a PIP.
“PIPs are of course expensive. If you put someone on a four-month PIP, that’s four months you have to pay an underperformer and countless hours spent by the line manager and HR enforcing and documenting the process. Instead of pouring that capital into a prolonged PIP, give it to the employee in a nice, big, up-front severance package, tell him you’re sorry it didn’t work out, and wish him well in his next adventure.”
I’m big on personal responsibility, so I can’t help but encourage you to also look inward if you have someone under-performing. There are three concepts to think through:
Good People Operating in a Bad System Produce Bad Outcomes - Take a look at your organizational system. The metrics, the rituals, the culture, the processes, etc. Is there something about the design that makes it harder for good people to do good work? What can you change about the system? (link to past newsletter)
How Am I Creating the Conditions I Say I Don’t Like? - This is my favorite personal responsibility question! Ask yourself and really answer it. What are you doing that contributes to this outcome? Are you giving enough appreciation? Are you not being clear in your expectations early enough? Address what you find. (link to past newsletter)
Your Organization Looks Like You - You may not like this, but whatever issue you identify in your under-performing employee might be an issue with you, too. Leaders have organizations that look like them, so this person may be a mirror if you’re willing to look closely. Can you learn from this experience to improve something about yourself? (link to past newsletter)
Speed
This process should be quick. It’s better for everyone involved to identify and resolve things with haste. Don’t drag your feet.
One of the biggest issues leaders can have is in trusting their intuition. Often you feel like something is off before you can put it to words. This is intuition at work. Pay attention to it, don’t brush it off.
Eventually you must be able to put it into words because you’ll need to communicate expectations clearly, but don’t let your inability to articulate it now prevent you from getting started.
Your intuition is a clue to pay attention.
“In performance management, timing is everything. Ideally, it takes no more than three months to reach a resolution for any given performance issue. In many cases, issues can be resolved in one month, depending on the employee’s seniority and the context. You don’t want to let issues linger, but you also want to give the person a fair chance to improve.”
Performance management is a core critical skill for all leaders. It’s how you build a great team!
It’s not always fun, but it can be extremely rewarding to help people develop. It takes skill and nuance, but hopefully after today’s deep dive you learned something that’ll help you going forward 😁
Call to Action
Pay attention to your intuition. Do you have a performance issue you need to address? Get started this week by putting into words the issue you’re experiencing. What’s your observation? What’s your hypothesis?
Get ready to have a conversation with your employee to start the process.
Good luck!
Performance management is critical, nuanced, and super hard. If you have any nuance you’d like to work through, send me an email at heykev@kevinnoble.xyz and let me know how I can help.
