Managing: When To Let Go
by Miki SaxonIntelligent, talented, aggressive, competent managers usually manage others as they, themselves, want to be managed, i.e., open communication, well-defined goals and the authority necessary to carry out their tasks.
Reduce any of these traits and management style almost always moves towards less communication and more structure—if not outright micromanagement.
Ten percent of employees do well anywhere, because they’re creative, aggressive, and intelligent; 80% reflect the style and skill of their management—they do well when they have good management and badly with bad management. Three percent of people are vicious, nasty, subversive and determined to wreck havoc no matter what kind of management they have.
What about the other seven percent? They are the people who, for various reasons such as illness, personality defect, personal situation, etc., have just lost the ability to function. These are the saddest problems for management.
Knowing what, and how much, effort to extend to rehabilitate a formerly capable employee who has turned into a liability is a manager’s greatest test.
Management wisdom says that once the management overhead necessary to rehabilitate a failing employee is greater than the potential gain of keeping him, then he should go.
But it’s rarely that simple—
- for legal reasons a manager may be forced to spend far more effort to rehabilitate a failing employees than he’s worth;
- talented managers are often reluctant to give up, believing that they will find some way to turn the person around;
- political connections can force a manager to expend valuable resources on a lost cause;
- etc.
No matter the reason, the cost of the effort, and its frequent failure, is not born just by the manager. Employees watch these situations with increasing frustration, lower morale and increased resume activity, while the company pays a high price through lost productivity, slipped schedules, and higher turnover.
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