performance manglement! how to ruin an employee
DESCRIPTION
** "It's not you, it's Me. No, wait... it IS you." ** Like climate change, the environment that an organization is for an employee can stealthily wear a good employee down, quite a long way towards being Out or Off. It's not that hard to figure out how it happens, so why let it?TRANSCRIPT
Performance Manglement!How to Destroy a Perfectly Good Employee
Without Really Trying
© 2014 Malcolm Ryder / archestra research
Five Easy Pieces
Performance is a measure of an actual achievement compared to an expected achievement.
Aside from hostility, the strongest force working against an employee’s performance is contradiction between the employee’s mindset and the employee’s actual experience.
The more contradiction is experienced, the less likely the employee will "perform well”.
Contradiction can surface in five general issues by which the employee assesses their place in the company.
GoalsMissionsPublicity
PrizesAdviceWages
RolesTeamsProjects
EvaluationsSupervision
WorkloadPermissionsTasks
Support
Opportunity
Attention
Purpose
Worth
© 2014 Malcolm Ryder / archestra research
The Double-edged Standard
You would think that with 14 different ways to reinforce the things employees need, companies could get pretty confident that they can get the “resourcefulness” they need from an employee.
But the same 14 things are chances for the organization to screw up, and that’s a lot of chances.
Doing a bad job on any of them has an after-effect that will widen the gap between the employee’s actual versus desired expectations, mobility and credibility in the sustained environment given to them for work.
1. Goals2. Missions3. Publicity
4. Prizes5. Advice6. Wages
7. Roles8. Teams9. Projects
10. Evaluations11. Supervision
12. Workload13. Permissions14. Tasks
Employee Self-Help
Starting with the initial hire of the employee, organizational expectations, organizational mobility and organizational credibility are in a predictable relationship over time.
Mobility helps to resolve insecure or diminishing expectations by giving the employee, if necessary, a chance to “farm” the environment…
Credibility makes the employee’s targets attractive and viable, which provides incentive for exercising mobility.
If employees can help themselves succeed against organizational challenges, they need this linkage of relationships to allow them to avoid, resolve or prevent contradictions.
But when organizations make mistakes that undermine the expectations, mobility or credibility, they can trigger or exacerbate other mistakes that breed further contradiction and push an employee towards a rogue or indifferent mentality.
EXPECTATIONS especially regarding the company’s demonstration of endorsement for the employee’s self-identity
CREDIBILITY especially regarding whether the employee feels the company functions beyond lip-service
MOBILITY especially regarding the chance for the employee to reposition, rearrange, or reinvent chances to produce work with self-satisfaction
GoalsMissionsPublicity
PrizesAdviceWages
RolesTeamsProjects
EvaluationsSupervision
WorkloadPermissionsTasks
Support
Opportunity
Attention
Purpose
Worth
Things That Can Backfire
What the Backfires Undermine
What the Employee Needs the Company To Demonstrate
© 2014 Malcolm Ryder / archestra research
How the Worst Case Scenario gets “Worst”
Damages like these can result from any blend of immediate or cumulative (remembered) observations (perceptions) by the employee. Negative development is non-linear and organic, possibly with low detectable presence.
© 2
01
4 M
alcolm
Ryd
er / arch
estra
rese
arch
What can go wrong1. Goals2. Missions3. Publicity
4. Prizes5. Advice6. Wages
7. Roles8. Teams9. Projects
10. Evaluations11. Supervision
12. Workload13. Permissions14. Tasks
irrelevantspeculativeinsincere
unfairuninformedcapped
under-scopedunfamiliarweak
pro formadisproportionate
excessiveinadequatemismatched
Employee encouragement
Examples of mistakes
Negative development is non-linear and organic, probably cumulative and possibly with low detectable total presence. Contradictions of actuals vs. expected are destructive.
© 2014 Malcolm Ryder / archestra research
