Using Key Performance Indicators for Evil Purposes
…wrongly applying the 80/20 rule
I work on being open minded. By design I try to listen to opinions of others I might disagree with.
BUT even I have a breaking point.
One area that interests me is company human resources. In my experience in several industries that department does not function to make the company better in any way. They help with hiring and firing processes. And in between they do very little.
This morning on my run I heard a guest on EOF podcast, Jayson Waller, who stated something that I immediately had to turn off the podcast. This is very rare.
Jayson said that he applies the 80/20 rule to his employees and considers that 20% of his best people to do 80% of the work. Next 60% do the other 20%. Lastly, we directs his managers to fire the last 20% each month.
He is strictly looking at KPIs and what the person recently as the only thing valid and gets rid of the person.
To me this is EVIL!!!
This idea of disposing people just because they are not in your 80% seems cruel to me. I have seen people who were labeled as the bottom 20% do exceptional work but for politics got caught up in a downward cycle. The same person under a different boss was in the top 20%.
This idea of constantly trimming your bottom 20% was very popular with GE and others. As you can tell from the downward spiral that GE has been on for the last several years, it was not the bottom 20% that put them there but the perceived 1% at the top.
We have to treat people as people. They are not a commodity we just get rid of and then expect a new person just to step in. That strategy might work in the short run but it fails miserably in the long run because it lacks loyalty. This lack of loyalty from the company becomes lack of loyalty from the employee and even worse disengagement.
GE and some other companies started this idea of getting rid of the bottom 10–20%. It is interesting that the problems that GE has had in the last several years were not because of the ”bottom 20%” but by the top 1%. Top 1% of leadership.
Simply treat people like you want to be treated. It is a very simple rule that starts with you not them. You treat well first and then you get treated well. Companies need to start that cycle in order to get the loyalty and trust back.
