Doug Cartland's Four-Minute Leadership Advisory
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by Doug Cartland
Doug Cartland, Inc.
08/19/2014

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The last couple of weeks we've discussed the imbalance of allowing certain employees to operate at lower standards and frustrating excellent employees by the by.

 

A long-time reader of this Advisory is Dr. Emeric Solymossy, who was a leader in the real world of business for many years and is now a professor at Western Illinois University, teaching business management.

 

I'm of the opinion that human beings have been largely the same throughout history. What motivated human beings thousands of years ago is basically the same as what motivates us today. One generation berating another generation for its shortcomings has always seemed silly to me because of the sameness.  

 

Still, there are ebbs and flows...and trends. In his response to my last two Advisories, Dr. Solymossy identifies a trend and makes a profound argument for it:  

 

Was a great one-two article combination...

 

Pareto was an optimist?  It's not 80/20 - every population is "normally" distributed, which means that 16% of the employees will be excellent (and 16% toxic), while 64% are "average." 

 

Unfortunately, the standards for being "average" have declined consistently for the past 50 years. This is partially cultural, partially economic (material excess leads to laziness), and partially a change in ethical values.  When we came to this country, it was the land of opportunity. Hard work was expected, there was a personal responsibility and achievement was a high value. Being frugal was tantamount to being wise. 

 

Now, rather than hard work and achievement being values, it seems that getting out of work, or having another pay your way (the entitlement society) have become the operant values. As the social support system becomes more generous, the material return on work becomes less appealing to most, especially if they are only working for the money.

 

As a leader, an interesting question to pose to your audience is, given that in any organization, 16% will be excellent, 16% toxic, and 64% average, which segment of the population does that particular leader's style and "tools" favor? Can the business afford to "ignore" the toxic and the under-producers? 

 

Brilliant.

 

To finish off this topic (for now), another reader, Robb, told me what he does with the 16% toxic:

 

The lazy, the bad and unaccountable employee would not like me as their Boss, I would try to find out what their problem is and try to help them first.

 

Then document, document and document. I would be all over them until they wanted [to] quit. I would praise the good employees in front of them.

 

 I would follow them everywhere, push them for more, make them more accountable for their work, and call their home if they called in sick regularly to see if they were there.

 

I would start a chain of bad reviews; let the HR department know the problem we as a team are dealing with to know the limits of discipline at our disposal.

 

We had an employee described in your article, when we went thru a reduction in force the documentation was money (vital), guess who was first to get laid off[?]

 

Think about it folks.

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Sincerely,  

Doug

 

Doug Cartland, President
Doug Cartland, Inc.

 

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