Managing to Change the World

by Alison Green

  Where possible, explain why the performance needs to be high.

  In terms of timeliness, it is hard to set an absolute rule, and the best guideline is that when you are in doubt, you should ask. In general, though, I would assume that you would handle most issues in your area that are not bigger projects—for example, printing documents, reaching out to others around meeting requests, replying to e-mails and voice mails—within one business day of receiving them, with many happening on the same business day. If for some reason you are not able to get to items that you normally would within this time frame, at a minimum I assume you will let the relevant person know that you are still on top of the item.

  Be as specific as possible about the level of performance you’re looking for and how you’ll know if it’s being reached.

  2. Quality/Accuracy

  I need to be able to trust that when you do take something on, it will get done in the manner we have agreed to, and where that is not possible, you will brainstorm potential solutions and, as appropriate, communicate your options or recommendations back to us. Again, my expectation is that within a two-week span, there might be one instance of inaccuracy or one slip-up regarding quality, but not more.

  3. Volume

  Performing at a high level in this role means handling the large volume of items that come your way on an ongoing basis. I will continue to put things on your plate, and my expectation is that over the next two weeks, we will reach a steady state where there is no significant backlog of items that you are handling.

  Consequences

  As we discussed, we need to ensure that you quickly reach a high level of performance. That means that this improvement plan will be in effect for the next two weeks (starting today, Monday, October 20). We will check in at the end of next week to review your performance against this plan. If you do not fulfill the requirements of this plan, then I would need to dismiss you, with one week of severance pay.

  Reiterate the consequences and be clear about the terms (severance pay) so there is no confusion about what’s at stake or how it will happen.

  My hope is that you will fulfill the requirements of this plan. If you do, you will no longer be on an official improvement plan. You will, however, need to maintain that high level of performance over time.

  I’ve tried to be direct in laying out my expectations going forward and the consequences of this plan. What this memo does not do justice to, however, is how much I enjoy working with you on a personal level and how much I appreciate your commitment to this organization and all the hard work that you have put in up to this point.

  You should not hesitate to be kind; just be sure it doesn’t blunt the substance of your message.

  Again, please let me know if you have any questions about what is laid out in this plan.

  Anita

  TOOL 9.4

  SAMPLE FIRING SCRIPT

  In this sample, an administrative assistant has already been placed on a formal improvement plan and has not shown the necessary improvements. He was warned in his formal improvement plan letter that if he did not improve, he would be dismissed.

  As I told you yesterday, I wanted to use our meeting today to reflect on your progress against the improvement plan. We talked two weeks ago about the fact that if you couldn’t meet the expectations of the job, I would have to let you go. We’re now at that point, so unfortunately today will be your last day.

  Refer back to the earlier agreement that you would need to replace him if sufficient improvements weren’t made.

  I know you’ve tried hard, particularly in terms of leaving a positive impression in your interactions with others. When I asked the rest of the team (as we had discussed that I would), I received a number of positive comments about your improvement.

  Be clear from the start about what is happening.

  Acknowledge any improvement that has been made . . .

  But on the other two dimensions we’d spoken about—handling the daily flow of work from me and having no dropped balls—your performance isn’t where we need it. I know you’ve been trying, but there have been at least three items that I asked you to handle more than two days ago that are still not complete: scheduling the meeting with Melissa, printing background materials for my meeting next Thursday, and completing my expense report. Unfortunately, we’re now at the point where we need to move forward with someone else in the role.

  . . . but be clear that it hasn’t been sufficient and specify in what areas it has fallen short.

  You can use today to clean out your desk, say good-bye to people, and finish any other items. I would really appreciate it if you would go through your e-mails and send me an update on where each item stands: whether you haven’t gotten to it yet, if it’s partly or fully done, and anything else I should know. This afternoon you should talk to Erica in human resources about exit procedures. She’ll give you a list of other things that you need to take care of by the end of the day, like returning keys.

  Be clear about the logistics.

  Assuming all of that happens before the end of the day, then we’ll be in good shape and we’ll be able to give you two weeks of severance pay.

  I know that this has been a challenging experience for you and that particularly over these past two weeks, you have been trying hard. On a personal level, I’ve enjoyed our interactions, and I really do wish you the best of luck.

  Offer an opportunity for the employee to ask questions related to logistics, but not to argue the decision itself.

  Do you have any questions about the exit procedures or what you need to do?

  TOOL 9.5

  SAMPLE COACHING-OUT SCRIPT

  In this sample, the staff member, a director of technology, has been a reasonably loyal, well-intentioned employee whose skills no longer make sense for the position. The ideal outcome is for the staff member to agree to begin looking for a better-fit job in another organization, but the manager wants to give the staff member the choice of going down the progressive discipline process path. Therefore, the core of the manager’s message is:

  The demands of the role have changed, and you may not be a good fit for it anymore.

  You can choose to pursue the progressive discipline process route, but I think the alternative route makes the most sense.

  As I mentioned to you yesterday, I’d like to talk about how I see the director of technology role evolving. This is a tough conversation, because the bottom line is that I’ve started to have concerns about your fit for the role. I wanted to talk today about why that is and how we might move forward.

  Be clear from the start as to why you’re having the meeting so the employee understands the context for the conversation that follows.

  Let me start by saying that I know how much work you’ve put into this job over the past two years and that on a number of occasions you’ve gone above and beyond. For instance, last year when the servers shut down, you cancelled your weekend plans at the last minute to get them running again quickly. You’ve been great at paying attention to every last detail, fixing problems as they come up, and watching the bottom line. When we were starting up, you were great at working with vendors and driving a hard bargain to get us good deals on what we needed. Your attention to detail, that ability to look at someone’s computer and diagnose what’s wrong and fix it quickly, and your understanding of finances are real strengths.

  Acknowledge your staff member’s strengths and contributions to the organization.

  As our organization has grown, though, what we need in our director of technology role has changed. We used to be a small, single-site shop, and now we have multiple locations. Also, as we’ve added new programs, our database development needs have increased tremendously. We have a huge demand for new applications from the database, and those are things we have to do if we’re going to maximize our impact as an organization.

  As we entered this new stage, I realized we needed our director of technology to do a different set of things th
an we needed earlier in our evolution. When I realized that, I started to question whether you’re the right person for the changed role, and whether in the long run, this is the job that is going to make the best use of your skills.

  Tell the story of how and why the role has evolved.

  What we need in the director of technology role now is someone whose strengths are things like big picture conceptualization, communicating with the program staff about their needs, and project management. Take, for instance, the other day when the online advocacy team was meeting about their strategic plan. We need someone who can sit in that meeting, understand fully what the team is trying to accomplish, translate that into a set of technological solutions that they don’t even know to ask for, and then explain their options to them in terms that they can understand so that they can make an informed choice. Once we’ve decided on an approach, we need someone who can handle all the complexities of managing the development process with our staff members, account for the inevitable setbacks, and deliver a product on time that works and meets everyone’s needs.

  Explain the new bar that you now need.

  Candidly, I don’t think those are your strengths. For instance, when we tried to develop the new database of our subscribers, there were quite a few issues, including the team’s misunderstanding about what you were going to deliver and delays in completing the final product. I realize that there were problems on both ends of that process, but I need someone who even when the other team isn’t performing perfectly will communicate the issues, help the other team understand what they need to do, and manage them to the deadlines they need to meet. I think that’s a high bar, but it’s also critical that we meet it.

  Be clear in your assessment of the person’s weaknesses as well as strengths. This is the first step in steering her toward the mutually beneficial process.

  So where does this leave us? I think we have two options. As you know, we have a formal process in place for staff members who aren’t meeting expectations, and if you want, we can head down that road. This meeting would be the first step in that: it would be the informal performance warning, and we would talk concretely about how we would know over the next three weeks that your performance had improved. After that, if your performance didn’t improve, there would be a written performance warning and improvement process, which would last another four weeks.

  At the end of all that, if your performance didn’t meet expectations, we would have to let you go and look for someone else. If your performance did meet expectations, then we would move ahead with you in this role as long as your performance stayed at the level we need. I want to be clear that this is a real option. If you choose to go this route, I promise that I’ll work with you to set clear expectations and give you the reasonable help I can in developing your skills, given the constraints on my time. I would give you a fair chance to meet what I see as the new bar for performance.

  Note that you’re willing to follow progressive discipline steps.

  Be straightforward and clear about how you see the situation in order to steer the staff member toward the best possible outcome.

  All that said, from what I know of you and your strengths, I’m not convinced it would work. At the end of that process, we’d be giving you the standard two weeks of severance, and we’d be left with a vacancy in the tech role. I want to put forth another option for you to consider. If you agree that the role as I’ve described it isn’t what you ideally want or think you’re best at, then we could set up an arrangement that might work better for both of us. I think it would take me three months to hire a new head of technology from the time I started looking, and I’d rather not have the role vacant. I also know that you’d need time to conduct a job search, and I’d want to give you time to do that.

  Offer a win-win path that would work for you both.

  So what I’d propose is this: we could agree now that you’ll leave the role at the end of April. In the meantime, you’ll continue ensuring our basic tech needs are met, but we won’t expect you to take on any new projects, which will allow you to focus on a job search. We’d continue to pay you your current salary through the end of April. If you found a job sooner, then you could leave before that, but we’d stop paying you. All of this would be contingent on your continuing to perform as you have been, which means having a good attitude at work, keeping our basic infrastructure running, and so on. You’d also have to sign an agreement that our lawyers insist on. Knowing what I know about you and how you’ve operated, my sense is that this would work out.

  Preemptively address the preconditions of the offer.

  I know I’ve just thrown a lot at you, but I wanted to put it all on the table. We can talk more about this now, or I can give you some time to think about it and then we can talk in the next day or two about which way you’d like to go. I do feel urgency around figuring this out, so I’d like to meet no later than Thursday to hear your decision. Do you want to talk now, or would you rather wait?

  Give a clear deadline for deciding.

  PART 3

  MANAGING YOURSELF

  As we’ve tried to make clear, management is how you get things done through other people. In order to do that effectively—to do everything we’ve explored in the previous chapters—you need to be personally effective yourself. If you’re like many of our clients, you have a long history of being effective, though as a solo practitioner. What you may need to learn is how to manage yourself now that you’re in a new role and the practices that might have worked for you before may no longer suffice.

  The chapters in Part Three are all about what it means to manage yourself as a manager:

  How to exercise authority without being a wimp or a tyrant (Chapter Ten)

  How to figure out where your time should be focused, with specific tips for staying organized and managing your time (Chapter Eleven)

  The importance of your relationship with your own manager and how to work with her in a way that will maximize your results (Chapter Twelve)

  A look at the personal qualities exhibited by the best managers we’ve seen (Conclusion)

  CHAPTER 10

  EXERCISING AUTHORITY WITHOUT BEING A WIMP OR A TYRANT

  Many new managers worry about something that sounds simple but can actually be the source of a lot of anxiety: how to act now that you have authority over others. You may feel especially awkward if you’re managing people who are older, wiser, or more experienced than you.

  Getting your style of authority right isn’t going to make you a great manager all on its own, but getting it wrong can be ruinous. If you’re too passive and shy away from using your authority, you’ll end up a wimp. On the other end of the spectrum, if you use your authority too aggressively, you risk becoming a tyrant. Both wimps and tyrants drive away good employees and struggle to produce results.

  The best managers we’ve seen aren’t wimps or tyrants but are simply normal, assertive people. That might sound simple in theory, but in practice, it can be difficult to get the balance right—and even to recognize you have a problem in this area. In this chapter, we describe wimpy and tyrannical behaviors so that you can decide for yourself whether you fall on one side or the other. Then we describe how assertive management looks when it’s done right.

  WIMPS

  Wimpiness in managers is typically rooted in a desire to be nice. We’re big fans of being nice, but managers who are wimps allow that desire to be nice to trump their fundamental obligations as managers—obligations like holding the bar high and expecting people to adhere to them, warning them when they’re falling short, and taking action when warnings don’t work. Wimpiness can be fatal to the success of an organization because problems go unresolved and difficult decisions go unmade, which means the organization can’t make nearly as much progress as it could if those obstacles were removed.

  Ironically, while many wimpy managers are just trying to be liked, over time the opposite happens: as problems go unresolved and diffic
ult decisions go unmade, staff members grow frustrated and complain, and the best among them leave.

  Signs that you might be a wimp include:

  Avoidance. Wimps avoid conflict and tough conversations like the plague. Most frequently, this plays out in managers’ not addressing performance problems or firing underperformers. But it surfaces in other ways as well. For instance, a conflict-averse manager may hesitate to insist on necessary course corrections midway through a project because she thinks doing so will upset her team.

  Indirectness. Wimpy managers often present requirements as mere suggestions. The result is that staffers end up confused about expectations, and managers get frustrated when staff don’t act on those “suggestions.” For example, an unassertive manager who wants to look at a letter before it’s sent out might say, “Feel free to show me that letter before you send it out,” leaving the staff member with the mistaken impression that the manager has no preference about looking at the letter.

  Masking indecision as consensus building. Because many nonprofits are working to achieve a more egalitarian, inclusive society, some managers feel that decisions should be made by majority rule or consensus, an approach that confuses everyone about whether they are just being consulted or actually making the decisions. While there are certainly times when building consensus is important for an organization, too frequently we see organizations in which difficult decisions don’t get made and no one takes responsibility for moving work forward. Use your staff’s input to inform your decisions, but remember that when it comes to making tough calls that will lead to good results, that’s your job!