Living with Bad Hires

When you have been at the helm of IT for global companies and US government agencies the pedigree speaks highly of your reputation as a technologist and getting things done. Been there done that and that too in culturally diverse situations; that kind of reputation is easy to get choice of openings to pick from and that is what he did ! He decided in favor of a mid-sized company already a leader in using technology to help them with his global experience and expertise. He was welcomed with awe and open arms.

His start was what fairy tales are made of; review the landscape, suggest changes, enhance the team with technology skills to deliver the dream of surpassing global industry leaders. Everyone bought into the story and budgets rolled for him to make magic. The company strutted the catch and he reveled in the glory of being the architect of IT led transformational change. Expectation levels were high and discussions around the solutions and technology ended up being displays of professional superiority honed by practice.

He was a role model for workaholics arriving at workplace when most people are getting off their beds and would leave in time to reach home before the date changed. His ability to get into the detail was legendary at times bordering on micro-management. From programmers to network admin, everyone had experienced his need to get involved and he did ask all the right questions. There were stories about his backseat driving with his chauffer including status reports on fuel used and time between air pressure checks.

Business leaders approached hesitantly for help because they had received highly technical discourses on why the chosen solution was best for the enterprise. Not knowing better they nodded and waited for results. The chasm between business and IT began to grow and the murmurs became louder challenging the CIO. He cracked the whip on his team and realized that they were working hard; his agreement to timelines was difficult to honor. When you can’t explain, confuse; and that’s what he did buying some more time.

The team toiled the best they could attempting to balance between their boss’ need to know everything and restrictions on communicating with business users who wanted to know what is happening. The CIOs new hires had no past experience of organization culture, the older ones who knew better were feeling stifled. He continued to revel in technical prowess until whisper of voices became a din too loud for anyone to ignore. Confronted with challenged deliverables, the CIO realized the situation was getting out of hand.

Under severe pressure and resultant stress, few initiatives were completed though by then the business had no faith in the credibility of the global hero. All talk and no substance, no connect with people, limited understanding of industry dynamics and company realities, a substandard team, and finally no leadership were the barbs thrown at the CIO. He had been given a free hand to build a team based on his articulation of requirements. He was responsible for who he hired, he was accountable for what his team delivered.

Retaliating he blamed differences in culture, the immaturity of the company and people to change with evolving technology trends, their unwillingness to adapt to the new world. It was evident that there was no fit by any yardstick almost like putting a square peg in a round hole; the CEO acknowledged the fact and decided to take action and end the misery for everyone. The decision was a relief to everyone and the CIO soon made his exit after almost 4 years of attempting to fit into the role without adapting to the organization.

The sentiment within the enterprise around IT slipped underwater. Good investments suddenly appeared to be white elephants with no future. Old timers stuck their neck out and promised to recoup the losses and put back on track the technology agenda. The problem was not just that the CIO was an alien to the company; the effect of the CIOs bad hires which he refused to acknowledge and the CEO giving him too much rope that killed IT credibility and set back the company on their IT leadership in the market.

If you have a bad hire, correct it immediately before you fall into the crevice of under performance.

Annual Appraisals and Feedback

He came out of the room fully drained from the marathon discussion with his team member; the appraisal had lasted more than five hours. His team was watching from the sides of their eyes trying to guess who won. It was not the first time an appraisal had taken that long with the appraisee. The demeanour suggested that the CIO had not been able to prevail and had to concede some ground. The victor emerged later beaming that he had the ratings he wanted in his appraisal.

For many this time of the year – December – brings appraisal time when the annual game begins with everyone attempting to be on their best behaviours; keep smiling, look good, don’t upset the boss, don’t make mistakes, say all the nice things, tolerate quirkiness that makes all bosses a pain. This time of the year (some companies have different year ends and some countries like India have financial year end in March) brings butterflies even to the strongest stomach, irrespective of how well or badly they may have done.

Every company has an annual appraisal cycle, some do it more often with a mid-term check, and few have also adopted a quarterly discussion. Appraisals review performance against set objectives in most cases and others review consistent productivity and quality (e.g. production workers or financial back office or for that matter within IT the helpdesk and system/database administrators). Mistakes are frowned upon and may bring the score down. It matters since in almost all cases the increments are linked to appraisals.

On top of this exercise that forces managers to have a courageous conversation with their team, many companies use bell curve to force fit performance within a function, location or the entire company. The resultant pushbacks, disagreements, and angst have been accepted with a hypothesis that bell curves take away sub-optimal talent raising the performance bar. Statistically bell curves have had no impact on corporate performance, profitability or relative growth in the industry. Recent announcement by one of the tech bellwether companies discarding the bell curve had many celebrating.

The CIO who had aspirations to grow into a HR role was discussing how to manage the employee in question who always managed to stay one up on him. Listening to the story, I found myself at the edge of the seat with multiple questions and answers. I could visualise the situations and his helplessness which arose due to his inherent nature and behaviour. He was a good person and had done well over his 25 odd years of work life. He always drove decisions by consensus and avoided conflict or confrontation.

Managing recalcitrant behaviour does require a firm demeanour; his ability to remain on top of the situation failed him many times when he was required to be assertive, take a stand or give bad news. People took advantage of this and he a backseat most of the time. The appraisal discussion was no different with the employee using all instances to his advantage where he had raised the issue with the CIO and not received feedback. The CIO was reluctant and did not know how to give candid feedback.

Annual appraisals are not the only opportunity to give feedback to a person in the team. It should be continuous tactically and periodically planned discussion to review progress, consider challenges, explore opportunities for improvement, and overall development. Restricting this to once in a year takes away the context and relevance or focuses only on the recent past. Performance review and appraisal is an art and a science which is easily mastered, giving factual especially negative feedback is an act of courage for many.

Many years later I happened to meet the “difficult” employee; I found him knowledgeable with an inherent need to talk and discuss throwing challenges to the other side as if to test the other persons’ expertise. I enjoyed the conversation as he gradually backed off and focused on the discussion at hand. I could see why he would be a difficult person to manage if not held with a firm reign. He received the suggestions and worked upon them. Today he has matured and manages a team having himself survived multiple managers in the same company.

How to overcome a recalcitrant staff member or Wally like behavior ?

CIOs often come across situations where they realize that certain individual(s) in their team are unable to deliver even basic results. Typically, such individuals may have survived multiple bosses, or been in the company for a very long time like Wally (from the famous Dilbert series). All efforts to bring about change may have yielded microscopic results. Let me use a couple of examples to illustrate such cases.

You go into a management meeting along with some of your team members; the expectation is to gain consensus on the way forward on a difficult project. All is going well, till silence falls with uncomfortable stares. Or the meeting is halted because one of your team members blundered and lost all gained ground.

Another case is a review meeting with the CEO on what IT is doing. You get started, and then get hit on the head—one of your staff members has not kept promise despite reminders and follow-ups. It was something that you did not focus on, considering the task’s facile nature (which any idiot would find difficult to go wrong on). But then, you are now at the receiving end.

In both cases, you may feel like strangling the person. But, that’s not the corporate way of dealing with frustration!

So the first response seems to indicate that you “fire” the person. That’s an easy solution, but should be the last resort. Instead, here are some other alternatives that you could review:

1. Assign a coach to the person with daily/weekly feedback without holding anything back.
2. Give the truth as it is, along with advice for improvement.
3. It could be professional arrogance (“I am better than others”) that translates into negative attitude. Introduce him to others who are better and show him the reality.
4. Put him on a PIP (Performance Improvement Plan). Make it clear why he is on PIP—that it’s not because of work, but attitude.
5. Assign him away from the “critical” nature of the work, which works at times to demonstrate that he is not irreplaceable. It may moderate his behavior.
6. It could also be a genuine case of incompetence. Try training.

If all these steps don’t work, then the choice is obvious. But that’s also a difficult act to execute!

It’s important to take action sooner than later, as you may risk polluting the contributors and good staff. Delay will encourage the person to continue his (mis)contributions to the department. I have observed procrastination becoming the nemesis of many CIOs, so all I can say is, ACT NOW !