Designed to fail

From time to time your clients will hire, at significant expense, a new senior manager.

It is not unusual for them to become unhappy with the new hire’s performance quite quickly.  They'll talk to you about it and when you ask them to explain you will find that their view is, in effect, based on what they see and hear and how they feel about what the new hire is spending their time doing.  It is not unusual for nothing more scientific than this to be used at the end of the probation period to make a decision that has serious consequences for both parties.

Here are some suggestions if you are faced with this:

Ask your client how they have agreed with the new employee what success looks like.  How is it to be measured?  Is this written down as objectives and regulalry reviewed?

Ask your client if the employee can control all of these outcomes.  Do they control all the resources required?  Are reporting lines clear?  Is their an agreed job description?

Ask your client if the process that the employee must follow to achieve the desired results is written down and proven.  If not, has doing this been identified as an early objective for the new role before they start measuring performamce?

Your client will start to see that it is not sensible (or fair) to fire someone for not achieving a target they don’t know about by relying upon someone they don’t manage to follow processes that exist only in your client’s head.

The good news for you as a coach is that lots of growing businesses have this problem.  The even better news is that there is a solution.  You can find out about it here.

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