Lost Cause: Managing Poor Perfomers¶

Your Poor Performer Isn’t Improving¶

You’ve Tried Everything¶

You’re Fed Up¶

Your Soul Has Been Sucked Dry¶

Don’t Worry, I’m Here For You.¶

Problems abound with poor performance. We know that, but most management books on the subject deal with what I call transient poor performance – This book is about the chronic poor performer. I make the distinction. They are the type that sucks your soul dry and causes undue eye strain from your constant eye rolling.

They continually eat up time, effort, and money just to reach the bare minimum, if at all. Yet, conventional wisdom says forget what we know to be true and manage them to acceptable performance levels.

The unfortunate truth about the matter is when you make a distinction, you notice a few things, like:

The prevailing logic says everyone can meet their manager’s expectation.
There is an emphasis on external forces as the culprit.
A manager can manage someone out of poor performance.
An employee’s motivation is the responsibility of the manager.
Morale, team dynamics, and on-going costs surrounding a poor performer are not taken into account in the decision-making process.
PIP’s are performance theatre.
All poor performers are considered the same, and as such, they use the same processes.

But, you must walk the walk and dance the dance. If you don’t, you’ll be considered a poor manager and not up to task and more than likely scrutinized far more than maybe you should.

You already have to tools to deal with poor performers. Lost Cause: Managing Poor Performers shows you what they are … and how to wield them with confidence.

Who Is This Book For?¶

The book is for the manager struggling with an employee deemed a poor performer. As stated earlier, we aren’t talking about a transient poor performer, someone who is capable but faltering currently. We are talking about the chronic poor performer, the person you wish wasn’t on your team because by every objective measure, and some subjective ones too is not, and will never be up to task.