In the following video, renown business leader, Jack Welch discusses how to manage performance, promote or fire people.
Pearls from the video
- “First, you have to have a mission and a purpose. Where are you going? People have to have a purpose. A mission and purpose are critical.
- Next, you have to have “How are we going to get there?” That’s a set of behaviors (also called values). These behaviors, they can be speed, growing people, sharing ideas etc.
- Pick 5 or six behaviors that you need to drive that.
- Evaluate people on two things: Behaviors (values) and numbers (results). On one axis, evaluate them on behaviors. On another axis, evaluate them on numbers (productivity). Some people think evaluating people based on numbers is not good because they think it will kill teamwork. Jack Welch differs! If teamwork is one of the behaviors, then a person cannot advance or be promoted based on numbers alone. It’s both behaviors (values) and numbers (productivity), not one or the other. He thinks having teamwork as a behavior solves that problem. People promoted have to have both the behaviors (values) and the numbers!
- The team with the best players win.
- You have to position the talent well.
- There are four types of managers:
- 1st is the manager who has both the numbers and the behaviors — Promote them.
- 2nd is the manager who doesn’t have the performance (numbers) and the behaviors (doesn’t behave the way you want) — that one Mr. Welch says is easy, fire him/her. He adds, “Fire people with dignity”.
- 3rd is the manager who has the behaviors (or values) you want but is struggling with having the numbers (performance). This person wants to do it, buys into the system. Give him a second and third chance if possible.
- 4th is the “jerk who delivers the numbers without the behaviors.” He does it on everybody’s back. This is the one who crumbles you. Mr. Welch says, these people “ruin all the beautiful CCO’s communications about what we believe, who we are, etc.” That employee is a killer. If you promote that person, you ruin your company. Jack Welch says, “A promotion is worth a thousand speeches”. “You give a promotion to the right people that people see as role models and doing the right thing, that single promotion is worth a thousand speeches. But if you promote a jerk, you can write and communicate with every technology in the world and nobody will listen to you.”
- “I’m an animal about human resources. I believe firmly that whether it is a baseball game or a football game or a business game, the team with the best players wins. I just believe that to my toes.” “We hire great business leading HR directors because it is part of our MO in our company.”
- “We have a chart that we use all the time for growth initiatives. We list the initiatives down the left column, and across the top, we have the qualities of the people in those divisions and where they rank in the organization. Are they in the top 20, middle 70, or bottom 10.” You have to analytically place the right kind and right number of talent behind your initiatives. You have to work the talent.”