Every company, whether
big or small, has to deal with non-performers. Taking hard decisions is
difficult, more so for a Start-up because the teams are small and close-knit
like a family. You meet them everyday, sit on adjacent work stations and share
the highs and lows, trials and tribulations with each other. Very similar to
how when we come back home, you share the highlights of the day with your
family.
It is thus painful to
see when out of the high performing pack, a few are on a continuous down slide
on their performance - this after one has given them feedback and tried to
motivate them. The only thing that one can do is offer really sound advice and
point out his or her improvement areas. It is then up to the individual to
accept or not accept the feedback or advice and work on it. One can never
impose his/ her opinions or decisions on anybody, as they say you can take the
horse to the water but cannot force him to drink.
They might listen to
you for some time because of authority, but if they themselves don’t realize it,
the change will not be permanent and they will be back to doing their own thing
very soon. Very quickly, you will realize that for some, your advice or
feedback would be just a lecture or a monologue, which they have no option but to
hear. But there are times when some of them take that advice in the real spirit
and transform into performers. Any leader's sole aim is never to make a team
which only works for the benefit of the goal for which they are striving. They
want to transform and build lives. They want to make an impact in the society by
building a great team, building business, changing lives in and around. There
is no greater pleasure in life when you feel that you have made a performer out
of a non-performer. As they say, great leaders make ordinary people do extra
ordinary things.
Having said that there
are times when you have take harsh decisions. Not taking them at the right time
will most likely harm your company and can be very fatal, even bring down your
company. When I am encountered with such a situation, I have tried to take the
decisions based on some basic values which cannot be compromised at any cost. These
are the five core values which have been my bible in good and bad times:
Integrity
This is, no doubt, the
first and most important value. There should be zero tolerance for integrity.
Tolerating such behaviour will be disastrous for any company. I say this
because it is difficult to change the attitude of such individuals as it is so
wired in them that no matter how many times they will apologize or regret their
action, sooner or later if given a chance, they will repeat it at some point of
time. As an entrepreneur, if there is an integrity issue with anyone in the
company, however important or critical that person is for the business, he/ she
should be shown the door that day itself. Please edit your employee contracts
which will allow you to separate such employees instantaneously.
Whiners
In any team, there
will be a set of people who will continuously complain – about work, hygiene,
environment, clients etc. The complaining may never be public, but they will be
on a look out to find like-minded individuals and spend most of their time
during lunch, at coffee breaks, outside office or in parties whining and being
cynical about the company. The one common denominator is that 9 times out of
10, they will be all non-performers. Such an attitude is so ingrained in some
people that they would have displayed the whining attitude in their last job and
will do it in their next job as well. Such people are always part of the
problem and never the solution. They are like weeds which spread and try to
reach out to all the branches that they can, suck the energy and eventually
destroy them. It is only the tallest branches to which they don’t dare to reach.
These weeds have to be uprooted with utmost urgency. If there is a war and you
ask your army to pick up swords and fight. The performers will pick the swords
and straightway dive into fighting. There will be some who wont even pick up
the swords, anyways they decide not to become part of the war and they will
leave. I still respect such people. But there are some who will pick up the
sword and stand at the boundary and whine. The person who is fighting, they
will try and infiltrate and corrupt their mind. They have an uncanny habit of
trying to expand their group. Their sense of achievement is driven by how many
people they have managed to convert, than thinking constructively on winning
the war.
A company is much
better off and a happier place to work at without whiners. .
Commitment
Standing by a commitment
is an attitude. In startups you require people who stand by their commitment.
If one says that they are going to deliver something on a particular date with
agreed requirements there are no two ways about it. It has to be delivered. At times, especially in software, the delivery
date may just be wrongly estimated, or one may get stuck in some difficult
problem - whatever the reason is, the
best solution is to be upfront, honest and pro-actively inform so that a
corrective action can be taken. In a service company the client has to be
notified in advance and in a product company, the same should be done with
investors, customers or the other stake holders
Discipline
Discipline doesn’t
only mean coming in to work and going home at the defined office timings.
Discipline means that you exercise self-restraint and self-control in order to
complete the task assigned to you. Let me illustrate the impact of indiscipline
by sharing what happened in my company. While I was working in a corporate and
now at my own venture, I have always believed in flexible timings and working
from home, if so be the need. Flexibile timings or working from home means that
people are assigned tasks or pick up tasks themselves and commit to a delivery
date, and are then not monitored on when and where they are working from.
However, not all tasks can be completed in isoldation, there are dependencies
and one needs to discuss, brainstorm, monitor, share status and plan together
with others. Thus an overlap becomes critical. At our company, we decided that this
overlap period would be between 11 am and 5 pm when everyone would be needed to
be present in the office together. For the balance time, the team could work whenever
and wherever they wanted to. Again, ofcourse, if there is a customer meeting or
delivery, the team would have to be in office even if it is early in the
morning. Once this communication was shared, in just a few weeks time, it was
observed that the non-performers started misusing this guideline – They came to
work between 12-1pm and left between 4-5pm. In between, they had a leisurely lunch
for an hour, followed by a post lunch walk for more than half an hour. Another
hour was spent on the phone, facebook, chat, checking personal mails etc.
Effectively, this group was putting in only 2-3 hours of real work! Productivity dropped to abysmal levels and
deadlines were missed. The performers ofcourse
continued to work either at office or home for 10-12 hours a day, sometimes
even more. The products that have been launched would never have seen the light
of the day, had it not been for the relentless effort by the performers. They
never calculated the no. of hours at work, how many holidays were pending and I
never asked them when they go on vacation, infact sometimes I had to force them
to take vacations.
As in the movie Spiderman
aptly says, Great power brings great responsibility. If flexible working hours
are offered and exercised by employees, then it also means that employees have
to be responsible. When I did not see this responsibility coming, we were
forced to take corrective action and define mandatory working hours. The non-performers
still default and are not disciplined.
Yes, it is tricky to
decide when to enforce the discipline and when we should let the chaos and
freedom prevail. It is even more difficult to set rules because of some bad apples
as the good ones always suffer because of them. There are no easy answers. You
just have to find a balance where you don’t impose rules for those who don’t
require to be given rules, and correct those who abuse facilities, rules and
responsibility. Coming and leaving at a particular time everyday and just
sitting in the office is not discipline, but delivering what has been mutually
accepted, being there when the company or customer needs you and acting responsibly
is discipline. Contributing as much as possible to the success of the company
is discipline.
A piece of advice - Hire
people who are self-motivated, self- disciplined, low maintenance and need
minimum policing.
Team Spirit
Impossible goals are
achieved when you have a great and tight team. In an orchestra playing symphony,
even if one of the group goes off tune, it
impacts the outcome. Together they create magic!
Having said that, you
might sometimes encounter some people who prefer working as individual
contributors. Assign them work which
they can perform alone, spend special time with them so that they feel part of
the team. Maybe they just like working alone. But the ones who neither perform
well and are not team players dont deserve to be part of the team.
Misalignement of
vision - Both ways
When you a see a boat
with multiple rowers all rowing in unison, if even one rower is not in sync or
is rowing slowly or too fast or in a different direction, they will collide and
the boat will tumble. Similarly in a company, all team members need to work in
tandem for that one common goal and vision. Any mismatch would only just
collapse the team.
There is another great
story which I always share with my team and when other companies invite me to
talk about motivation.
Everyday while walking
back to home, one man always sees three people breaking stones with a big heavy
hammers.
For some reason all
three, seemed to be different and his curiosity one day gets over him and
encouraged him to ask the first one "Why are you breaking stones" The
1st stone breaker replied 'Stone
breaking is what earns me my living. This is the only thing I know. If I dont
break stones how will I feed my family. The money which I earn provides me
shelter and other basic needs.“ The man then asks the same question to the 2nd
stone breaker. He replies ,“I do this to exercise. I have got a day job and it
is my hobby to build my body and keep it fit. Stone breaking is the most
effective way of exercise. The man then moves to the 3rd stone breaker and asks
him the same question. The stone breaker replies “I am building a temple”.
All three stone
breakers were breaking stones to make stone bricks for a temple which was
getting constructed. But one of them was aligned with the vision of building a
temple. He knew the big picture and believed that he was participating in
creating something larger than life. He was proud of his job since his
participation in this whole act might be few bricks but he saw himself as
building a temple.
Believe me, however
idealistic you may find this story to be, you will see similar feelings in
performers.
If there is mis-alignment
in the vision of the company and the employee, the relationship is surely going
to break sometime..sooner one realizes, the better it is. If one postpones the
decision, it is only to buy time.
All the above points have
helped me gauge who can be and should be part of the start-up vision. In bigger
companies there are atleast 30% of the people which don’t perform at all, but
they have the capacity to cushion that. For start-ups, even one of such
employees in this category, can be detrimental to the success of the organization.
Take your call, make a
plan for those who can improve and give them a fair chance. But the ones who
have defaulted on integrity or are habitual whiners, do not blink an eyelid for
them. Act before it is too late.