Just Win-Win, Baby
Dealing with a poor performer usually means that you have to bring the situation to a head, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Given the chance, most people want to do right by their employers, even as they're looking out for their own interests. While at energy provider Aquila, Paper promoted a systems analyst to a senior analyst position. The new role turned out to be too much for the woman, who worked countless hours to keep up yet still turned in sub-par work. Paper told the employee she wanted to drop her back to the systems analyst position so that she could again excel. Her salary would remain at her current level, and no one would know she was demoted.
The woman's pride was hurt at first, but when she realised that this move would be good for her, she was relieved and embraced the opportunity. She's still working for Aquila and thriving as a systems analyst. "If they've got the right values but the skill isn't there," says Paper, "then put them in a place where they can bring value to the organisation."
SIDEBAR: Lifestyles of the Unskilled and Annoying
How CIOs deal with three types of poor performers
THE BAD ATTITUDE This employee could be a brilliant technician or project manager, but the chip on his shoulder renders him impossible to work with. When Kris Paper, senior vice president and CIO for Primedia Business Magazines & Media, joined the company in 2002 and was in the process of assessing the skills of her staff, one long-time employee unabashedly proclaimed that he had no IT skills and had "somehow landed in IT". The worker insinuated that he deserved a job in IT by virtue of his long tenure with the company. Paper did not waste time in eliminating his position. "If they don't have the right value system, they're not worth the investment. I can train the skill, but I can't train the values," she says.
THE SLACKER Characteristics of the stereotypical slacker include rumpled clothes, bed-head and - more to the point for an employer - tardiness, slipshod work, and a tendency to procrastinate and do only the bare minimum. Bill Haser, CIO of Tenneco Automotive, describes a careless systems analyst who failed to follow development processes or document changes he made to systems. Haser says that while 80 per cent of the time the man's changes worked, 20 per cent of the time they "ended up screwing something up". When Haser and this employee's manager confronted him about his feckless work, they learned that he didn't think the procedures were important because he didn't understand them. He thought they created needless work. Haser and the manager explained to the worker the importance of the IT organisation's development processes and showed him that if he toed the line, he'd save five times as much time and effort in ongoing support. The systems analyst agreed to follow the company's development process to a T - and saved his job.
THE INCOMPETENT Sometimes, poor performance isn't a choice. Sheleen Quish, global CIO and vice president of corporate marketing for US Can, describes a tech support employee who was personable and possessed with a Little Engine That Could attitude ("I think I can, I think I can"), but who overestimated his skills. Because of his positive attitude, Quish and his immediate supervisor accepted that he was a slow learner and chose to be patient with him - until the day he accidentally caused all hell to break loose at the company.
Without authorisation or the knowledge of anyone else, the tech support worker came into the office one weekend and installed antivirus software on all employees' desktops, including the CEO's. But he did such a lax job that he wound up compromising people's PCs. As soon as employees arrived at work the following Monday, they began flooding the IT help desk with angry calls. Quish's entire department spent all morning trying to figure out what had gone wrong. Eventually, the inept worker stepped forward and told Quish what he had done. She asked him several times to explain why. He had no explanation. She told him to take the rest of the day off and to come in the next day with an answer to her question. He arrived late and still had no answer for what he had done. Quish showed him the door.
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