In times of financial distress, consider your talent
Over on David Patt's Association Executive Management blog, a recent post caught my attention: Positions not People. It's a short post, but to give the short overview anyway, he says in times of financial distress, you should rank the products and services in terms of importance to your organization and keep the people doing the most important work and lay off those doing less important work even if they may be strong employees.
It's rare that I have a completely opposite view from my association blogging brethren and sistern--usually differences are based on nuance, intensity level, or even just semantics. But I'm about 180 degrees from David on this one. Yes, use financial distress to your advantage by refocusing your organization on what really matters--but when it comes time to decide who is going to do the work that really matters, absolutely make those decisions based on the people rather than the work they are currently doing.
I think there are four kinds of employees:
1. Average or worse. Get rid of them, financial distress or not. They're not helping you. My opinion, as I've written before, is that associations do not use the hiring and firing tool to their advantage near enough. No one is striving for average; why would you tolerate average employees?
2. Good and have reached their potential. Strongly consider getting rid of them, financial distress or not. Certainly if you're laying off people, lay off these people right after the average people. In a few isolated cases, perhaps the staff person is good and has a specialized skill that would be very hard to teach or replace. Well, you have to keep that person for now, but I'd also be rethinking why I have a need for such a specialized skill and trying to develop systems, strategies, etc., to decrease my dependence on it. You know, the whole hit-by-a-bus theory and all.
3. Good and motivated to be exceptional. Keep these people.
4. Exceptional. Keep these people and, financial distress or not, push them into new areas and to try new things so they stay excited, stimulated, and motivated to continue their exceptional work for you.
Let's say you have to lay people off and you're following my advice to keep your best talent. Now let's say that some of the category 2 or 1 people are doing jobs that you've deemed essential. I say lay them off anyway. Skills can be taught. Attitude, enthusiasm, and motivation cannot be taught and in my opinion more than make up for the experience lost. The idea is take the staff in categories 3 and 4 from less essential functions and put them in more essential functions. Obviously you do this with an eye toward putting them in positions to be successful. My experience is that when you tell people with the right attitude, enthusiasm, and motivation that you need them in a certain area, that they see it as both a challenge and a vindication of the work they've previously done. It won't always work, but nothing ever does.
The way I read David's post is that he is saying don't let talent cloud your judgment about what is important to the organization. Amen. But I also think he is advocating being cavalier with that talent, maybe because of an equality ethic where all staff should be treated equally. Personally, I just think talent is too rare and I don't think the notion of equal treatment serves an organization well in this instance.
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Comments
I'm with you, Scott. Talent is VERY hard to find. And in 99 out of 100 cases, if you have really talented people working in less-important roles, you can easily move them to more important roles. And they'll probably be happy about it!
Posted by: Wes Trochlil | August 17, 2011 1:10 PM
I'm advocating being practical, not cavalier.
I understand your desire to maintain a quality staff, Scott, but all employees are not interchangeable. Some have specialized skills that cannot be transferred to the programs and services the association has chosen to continue.
While large associations may have the ability to place prized employees in positions for which they are really not suited, small associations usually don't.
So, if you are in the unfortunate position of having to lay off people, reshuffling the existing staff may not be the best choice.
There are plenty of exceptional professionals outside the association who possess the skill sets for the positions you choose to retain. They could add a lot of value to your organization.
Posted by: David M. Patt, CAE | August 17, 2011 5:27 PM
There are many types of employees, categories of staff and the key in this economy is the talent pool is much more populated. David, you go ahead and lay off those talented people doing less important work in this economy, but please give them my business card and have them call me before they leave their old office. And thanks for making it easier for me.
Posted by: Larry Bedell | August 18, 2011 9:40 AM
I agree. Exceptional people can learn new skills. Let's face it--association management (like any other field--well, other than rocket science) is not rocket science. Say you have an exceptional person in one position and an average or worse person in another, and the exceptional person's job is being eliminated. Chances are the exceptional person, if given the chance, could learn the average person's position and perform better.
I think this is especially true for small staff associations, where there is no room for poor performers.
Posted by: Maggie McGary | August 18, 2011 10:39 AM
I think this point-counterpoint is awesome. No question that we need to protect what's essential and cut what isn't. We have to look at things realistically - it's very likely that you have folks whose performance ranges along a continuum from awesome to ho-hum. However, I also think it's important to be documenting the daylights out of the performance of the ho-hum folks, so you don't have to wait for a layoff to make a change.
It's great to look at needing to downsize as a chance to re-calibrate and refine what you're doing, but for heaven's sake, don't wait that long! I think David's right in a different way - it's contrarian, but I've seen the (bad) results of creating a job description to match someone's strengths (and offload what they aren't good at) that is convoluted and illogical to the point that it's crippling for the rest of the organization. For example, the "computer nut" who ends up in charge of IT but has no actual training or strategic IT vision and ends up sandbagging a mission-critical operation. No one else could "do" IT stuff while she was around and doing "good enough" --but OH! I wish I had those years back while we waited for the gumption on her part --or ours-- to make a change.
Posted by: Betsy Boyd-Flynn | August 19, 2011 2:59 PM
Would you hire that "computer nut" as Director of Marketing? Or the magazine editor as IT Director?
No, you don't dump the good folks and keep the bad ones. Hopefully, all your folks are good, so the decision is which good ones to lay off?
You should hire good folks for the positions you need to fill who have the skills you need for those positions.
And yes, Larry, if I have to lay off talented employees, I'd be happy to send them to you. Maybe you'll have a place for them (and mabye you won't).
Posted by: David M. Patt, CAE | August 24, 2011 6:13 PM
Thanks for the awesome dialogue on this important subject. I'll just add that, especially for small-staff associations, finding and retaining people with the drive and versatility to do multiple things and to switch gears as the strategic priorities change is invaluable to overall success. Too many people entrenched in too many specific areas--regardless of how talented they are and how critical those areas are--can create an unmanageable inflexibility that limits your overall potential.
Posted by: Eric Lanke | August 31, 2011 10:28 AM