Poor Employee Performance: What Exactly is Broken?

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I am a fan of the Sunday New York Times Business Section feature called Corner Office. In fact, I'm enough of a fan that I often forward the short interview-based articles to my own staff, to emphasize particular points about leadership, workplace culture, interviewing job candidates, and just general business sense.

I admit that I often end up with a stack of these things on the corner of my desk. Occasionally I plow through them and drop most into the recycle bin. As I was doing so recently, the article from in December 2014 featuring Robert Reid of Intacct caught my eye once more.

There is one specific paragraph in that article that really struck me. It reads:

"Almost everyone goes to work to do a good job. And if they’re not doing a good job, most organizations step back and say, “I’m not sure they’re going to make it here.” We think the opposite — that we’ve done something to let them down. We either haven’t taken them through the right process, or trained them appropriately. If somebody is not doing something the way you expect or you have a different viewpoint, you need to seek to understand what’s going on and help them."

This perspective is a quite a shift, both in terms of how to view poor employee performance and how to address it.

I'm working to fold this thinking into my management and leadership style - to reframe the issue from "you are not performing, you are bad and you won't get better, go away please" to "this isn't working and we both know it, so let's figure it out together and take the right steps. If we need to make some difficult decisions, then so be it".

I've also been thinking about Carol Dweck's work over the years regarding the concept of the Growth Mindset. There was an interesting article in the Harvard Business Review November 2014 issue, "How Companies Can Profit from a Growth Mindset", in which she explored the concept and then talked about applying them not only to individuals but also to organizations. In terms of individuals:

Perhaps not surprisingly, as Dweck and colleagues turned their attention to organizations, they found that there was strong consensus about the mindset in each company. While they have not yet measured the impact of mindset on business success (e.g., financial returns), they did find that " ... at a minimum, growth-mindset firms have happier employees and a more innovative, risk-taking culture".

How do we apply these findings and Reid's thoughts on employee performance? 

I'd like to explore this question in four parts: leadership, staffing, success and failure.

Leadership: How organizations view leadership & management, depending on mindset

Leaders:	Fixed Mindset	Growth Mindset
Are responsible for	The organization and its systems	People
Need to	Make assignments	Define Purpose
Seek	Compliant subordinates	Followers (a voluntary choice)
Each day	Monitor performance	Share & inspire
Motivate by	Carrot or stick	Enabling & empowering
View staff as	Needing to be controlled (except Stars, who are privileged)	Needing to be trusted and unleashed
Risks	Are to be avoided or minimized	Are a natural part of the process

Staffing: How organizations approach hiring and evaluating employees

	Fixed Mindset	Growth Mindset
Skills	Long list of required skills. Past experience & credentials are most important.	Necessary skills are simply prerequisites, and the list is relatively short
Interviewing	Like a quiz - lots of questions, most have right/wrong answers	Open-ended and conversational, using active listening and curiosity
Interviewers	Supervisor and HR representative	A varied team, including future colleagues
Evaluating job candidates	Checking off the boxes - does this person have the right pedigree?	Seeking aptitude and potential fit with workplace culture, based on consensus across the interview team
Deciding whom to hire	Usually seek outside talent. Hire the most-qualified from pool of  applicants	Often look to promote from within. Seeking someone with potential and a passion for learning
On-boarding	Rules, policies, signatures	Vision, mission, meeting people
Training	Usually not needed, employee was hired with skills in place already	Actively encouraged and supported
Performance reviews	Focus on completion of assignments and adherence to policies	Focus on collaboration, learning, growing and innovation
Staff tend to	Avoid risk, pursue fewer innovative projects, keep secrets, cut corners	Make suggestions, explore new ideas, take calculated risks
Retention	Expected, because skills and talents have been assigned to the right job	Accomplished by providing a great workplace. It's understood & accepted that some will “learn & leave”

Success: What success looks like according to mindset

	Fixed Mindset	Growth Mindset
Management view of themselves	We are skilled at picking the right projects & making sure they get done	We are rewarded when staff succeed; we are becoming better mentors
Management view of staff	We got the right person for the job - that employee  is a star	Capable, dedicated and hard-working - just what we need here
Staff view of management	They are smart and gave me a project well-suited for my talents	I felt empowered to own this project and see it through
Staff view of self	I am smart and talented	I worked really hard on this, and the effort paid off
Conclusions by management	Keep assigning the important projects to our stars	Supporting and empowering our staff leads to results
Conclusions by staff	As long as I succeed, I’m special	This organization believes in me

Failure: What failure or poor performance looks like according to mindset

	Fixed Mindset	Growth Mindset
Management view of themselves	We told them what to do, clearly they did not step up; we need to stay the course	We are partly responsible; we did not set the right vision or provide the necessary resources for success
Management view of staff	We got the wrong person for the job, not smart enough	They needed more from us. How could we have helped them more?
Staff view of management	They gave me an impossible assignment, they set me up to fail	They seem eager to help me, maybe it’s going to be all right
Staff view of self	I can’t do this, I don’t know how, I'm probably not qualified for this job - I wonder if they are going to fire me	I really struggled with this one. But I know what I need to learn in order to succeed next time
Conclusions by management	We need to terminate that person and find someone with more talent	We need to be more helpful; let’s get together and sort this out
Conclusions by staff	I will not be successful here, time to look for another job	Even if things don’t always go well, they’ve got my back here

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All of this makes me wonder: can this explain square pegs in round holes? Why is it that some people just never seem to make it in your organization? Using this framework might help illuminate the root causes. For example: if you run a growth mindset organization, and you tell staff that you embrace iteration and failure - but you have staff who are fixed mindset - expect problems. Fixed mindset staff see failure as a personal defeat and proof that they are unworthy. Your enthusiasm for experimentation will sound to them like a trap that will lead to getting fired. Mismatch!

In addition, I think it's important to note that no workplace will be effective simply by hiring an army of sycophants. It's not about mutual admiration; it's about alignment - not only on strategy (where are we going and why?) but it's also about mindset. When both are clicking, I would wager that success is coming.

I'm also a believer in dissension and differences of opinion. I will never forget the lessons of the classic Hans Christian Andersen fairly tale The Emporer's New Clothes.  It's vitally important that you have people on your team who can call BS when they see BS. Furthermore, I believe in the idea of dynamic tension as a driver. In a functional workplace, there is room and encouragement of strong debate - civil and respectful, of course, but strong.

But in a poorly-functioning workplace, conflict and mismatch don't work. I know that it's true that sometimes poor performers need to shape up or ship out. These are hard conversations to have. It's the responsibility of a leader to step up and have them, on adult terms. The fact is that it is not personal, although boy does it feel that way!

There may be a way to turn such discussion into a win-win, if you search hard enough. And I think that's what Robert Reid was getting at.

Poor performers aren't happy, ever, no matter what they may say. There are some basic choices:
Make it better here or find it better elsewhere. If you:

• Know the workplace culture
• Know the employee
• Measure the match between the two
• Talk honestly and openly about what's happening
• Explore solutions, together
• Make decisions on how to move forward, together

Then it's possible to make it a positive outcome for both sides

Good luck in your leadership role, and in facing poor employee performance with courage, compassion, generosity and optimism.

DAMs in the Nonprofit Sector: From Striving to Thriving

This post was originally published on LinkedIn Pulse

Nonprofit organizations compete in the same world and vie for the same customers as any other consumer-oriented business. To be successful, we must be able to engage people in such a way that they will choose to spend their precious leisure time (and dollars) on experiences of culture, the arts and/or social meaning - as opposed to the other options. That's a tall task, especially in a world that offers so many popular alternatives.



The path to success within that competitive landscape is driven in large part by digital content. In order to attract and engage 21st century audiences and contributors, nonprofit organizations have become digital publishing operations, providing access to meaningful content on a scale that was never anticipated. This evolution has been a real challenge for the charities, museums, libraries and archives that serve the public. And like most forms of evolution, it was a test of survival.

Striving

I would argue that over the past decade most nonprofits have become quite adept at producing digital content (such as the high resolution digital photography done in fine art museums, see above). We survived!
That being said, the sector has been playing catch-up when it comes to organizing, cataloging and sharing that content - the core capacities of digital asset management (DAM). Not only is there a large and rapidly-growing body of 'digital stuff' being produced, there is also the cold reality of appropriate budget constraints that limit the sector's ability to invest in technology infrastructure and resources. So our sector continues to strive.
The big question: How can the nonprofit sector move beyond it's current position to one of great success; that is, from striving to thriving?

DAM Matters

Others have written about making the case for DAM, and have even published online questionnaires to help organizations understand their specific needs. After all, " ... a digital file is only a digital asset when it can be easily found and used. Otherwise it’s just another collection of stored bits and bytes."
From my perspective, all organizations need DAM because it's valuable:

• Significant time and money is spent producing digital media, organizations should maximize the return on that investment.
• DAM enables efficient publishing processes, which are flexible and support omni-channel strategies.
• DAM provides a resource across an organization, 24/7, preventing bottlenecks to accessing digital assets (by the way, those bottlenecks are usually people, and those people are generally not so happy about the situation).
• DAM enables brand consistency across all distribution channels.
• In some cases, DAM enhances an organization's capacity to manage intellectual property rights and to ensure security of digital assets.

The nonprofit sector (and I'm concentrating primarily on cultural heritage organizations here) must meet additional mandates, which are mission-driven:

1. Mandate to make Accessible Nonprofit organizations are often supported by public funding and direct donations from citizens. We have a responsibility to share our collections and our knowledge with the public. After all, a museum is really only a warehouse until it opens its doors and invites the public inside to experience its collection. Sharing digital assets - sometimes thought of as digital surrogates - enables an organization to share it's archive widely with the broadest possible audience.
2. Mandate to Preserve Museums, libraries and archives share a responsibility of stewardship. The public trusts our organizations to take care of our collections, in order to preserve them for the future. In fact, ideally that preservation would last forever - no small task. Not to mention, increasingly the "objects" in the collections are themselves born-digital.

I have written previously about the importance of DAM in our sector, and won't re-hash those points here. In summary, we've simply got to keep working hard in order to move from striving to thriving.

Vision: Thriving

What is the aspirational vision for DAM practice within the nonprofit and cultural heritage sector? Here's my list, which I'm sure is incomplete (please add your thoughts in the comments):

• As much effort and commitment is put into digital asset management practices and workflows as has been put into production.
• Re-purposing of existing digital assets is taking place regularly and seen as a humdrum, business-as-usual practice.
• Digital assets are shared openly, including via linked open data, all of which is driven by automated processes.
• Standards, for asset production and for asset cataloging-archiving-sharing, are consistently-applied and readily understood across sectors.
• Nonprofits are able to roll with the shifting sands of publishing workflows - COPE: Create Once Publish Enthusiastically

We can get there, and we'll get there faster by working together.

 

Gather - Collaborate - Share - Learn

In May 2016, I will be presenting together with several esteemed colleagues - including Julie Shean and Marianne Nouwen - at the Henry Stewart DAMNY Conference. Our session will use an interactive case study format to bring multiple perspectives to the topic at hand. Panelists from both larger and smaller organizations, representing different types of nonprofits, will share their stories. Along the way, we will explore commonalities and unique needs, and we’ll address some of the challenges faced by the nonprofit sector, such as: How do we implement and ensure the adoption of effective DAM tools and practices? How do we deal with complex metadata models? How can we control costs while still achieving our aspirations? By leveraging the power of collaboration, attendees and presenters will learn from each other, gain practical knowledge, expand professional networks, and set the stage for success. I hope you will join us, and add your perspective and energy to the ongoing dialog.

Insider tip: use this discount code when registering to get a great deal on the conference fees:  ARTSMIA100