Ron Ruins a Good Employee

In the free, on-line course, Spirit Lake Leadership project, we talk about ruining good employees. Recently, Erich told me about a book he had read, The Management Bible, by Bob Nelson and Peter Economy.

In this book, they spend several chapters discussing what managers actually do. This includes measuring performance and taking corrective action when employees don't measure up. Sounds like kind of boring stuff, right? Yes, I thought so, too, until I was reminded of Ron, the Tribal Manager. Let me tell you Ron's story.

Ron's a good guy. If you met him, you'd probably like him. He's intelligent, laughs a lot, gets along with almost everyone. When the new manager's job came up, he was picked over several other qualified applicants in part because of his "people skills".

The employees Ron was hired to manage include:

• Susie Sainte, who is the most ethical, competent, hardest working person on the reservation. .
• Joe the Tribal Worker, who never comes to work on Monday or Friday, and sometimes not on Wednesday, either. Maybe he has a drinking problem or maybe he just doesn't like working. Joe is a very bright guy, capable of doing his job, but he would rather spend his time on the phone scheming to get his brother elected to tribal council and going to lunch with people who might help him get a better job.
• You can read more about Susie & Joe here on the Tribal Leaders Council forum.
• Jessica is a clerk who was hired ten months ago.
• Carol was hired as the business manager, based on the recommendation of her old boss. She says she has an accounting degree. Whether she really has a degree is uncertain, what is sure is that she is the worst accountant in the history of accounting. She can barely use a computer and her budgets are almost never anywhere near correct. Carol comes to work on time every day and rarely misses a day of work.
• Rick was hired as an accountant six weeks ago, in part because the Tribal Council was tired of continually getting wrong information. The previous manager stated the problem was they did not have enough people on staff. Rick just graduated from college. During school, he had worked part-time at a couple of successful businesses.

Rick knew something was wrong the very first week when he pointed out to Carol that the two sides of a balance sheet had to match, that is balance, and she was surprised. She asked, "Are you sure?"

Ron should be monitoring the performance of all of his employees, comparing their performance to a criterion and taking corrective action. He knows that Joe only works 20 hours or so each week, but Ron doesn't want to get in a fight with the tribal council as he is just getting into his job. Besides, he reasons, Joe has been working there for years and only coming in three days a week. The work gets done, Joe is a smart guy. Ron lacks the courage to stand up to Joe and his powerful friends.

Carol's performance is terrible. Ron thinks, "How can I fire her? She comes to work every day, when Joe only comes three days a week. She takes notes at all the meetings. She always volunteers when there is a job or a committee, like the building clean-up committee. Her work is not that bad."

Here we see a failure of the traditional value of honesty. Her work is that bad. She was hired as a business manager, not a secretary or a janitor. While she is on these committees, and making mistakes in her own work, the program has had to hire a second person, Rick, to do the work Carol should be doing.

Ron asks himself, "What's the harm in leaving things the way they are?" One harm is that he is paying two people to do the job of one person, the business manager. Again, we see a failure of honesty.  In part, these failures in honesty were made more likely by his failure to have the courage to fire Joe, which makes it harder to fire the person who does come to work every day but just fails to perform.

Jessica has noticed that both Joe and Carol get paid about the same, but Joe comes into work only three days a week. Jessica doesn't know anything about accounting. Since Carol has the title of Business Manager and Ron seems satisfied with her performance, Jessica assumes everything is fine. From her point of view, whether you work three days a week or five days a week, you get paid the same. Lately, she has started leaving at three o'clock so that she can go to the pool with her kids after school.

Ron does not say anything to her. After all, she is still working 10 hours a week more than Joe and, unlike Carol, she knows her job and makes very few mistakes.

Susie Sainte is disgusted with the whole situation. She works 40 hours a week, does a very good job and this year, she gets a 3% raise, as did all tribal employees. Ron doesn't really see what Susie's problem is. She got a raise and he has been as nice to her as possible, as he always is to everyone. Yet, she still does not seem very friendly to him. Last week, in a meeting, when a question on the budget came up, Ron mentioned he would ask Carol. Susie laughed and said, "Good luck! Why don't you just flip a coin?" When he told her she wasn't being a team player, Susie laughed in his face.

Ron was re-thinking the good evaluation he was planning to give Susie this year, but it turns out it didn't matter because she just turned in her notice. She is leaving in two weeks to work for another program?

So... how do you think this will affect our new employee, Rick? What do you think Rick is making of all of this? What would you do if you were Rick?

Tune in next time to find .... the rest of the story.

P.S. Sad, unrelated note, Paul Harvey who was famous for those "rest of the story" stories on the radio died last month at age 90.