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Two questions from the field
Do you have a process for terminating employees?
First of all, I don't transfer a problem unless the problem is that the person is conscientious but simply is in the wrong skill position for his/her expertise. A great attitude can make up for some lack of skill but potentially not enough to be successful in a certain job. If the person has the right attitude and wants to do a good job but isn't going to be successful in the position he is in, I will help him find the right opportunity, either inside the company or outside it. It's an obligation I believe we have for our IT organization and our company, and especially for the employee in question.
I can recall two people that have worked for me who accidentally found themselves in technical positions but should have been selling something. Neither person was performing at an acceptable level and they really didn't like their job all that much if you got right down to it. It was painful for them at the time but I forced them to move out of the technical role they were in. One left the company and another found an intern sales position in the company at less pay. Both are making much more money today than they would ever have made in their technical role and are much happier. They probably disliked me at the time but now tell me how much they appreciate the effort and understand why I forced the issue.
The bottom line is that I owe it to everyone to build a strong team capable of providing excellent results.
In terminating an employee, I go through the following steps. What I find is that when you follow these steps it rarely ends up with an actual termination. Most of the time the employee corrects their behavior as needed or they leave on their own. Either way, by the time I get to the second notice, I'm planning for whatever backup resource I will need.
Step 1 - Notify the employee of the problem. Be specific and coach on what is required for improvement and what it takes to be successful.
Step 2 - Provide a formal improvement plan that includes:
A. The problems that exist with specific examples.
B. The specific behavior changes that are required to be successful.
C. Coach on how to achieve the desired results and offer specific assistance that will help.
D. A specific timeframe that you will review the situation again and that this review will include:
1. Either removal of the improvement plan or termination of employment, or
2. Extension of the improvement plan period
E. Ask the employee if they understand the severity of the issue and that performance improvement is required to
continue to be employed by the company.
F. I have both of us sign the Improvement Plan document.
Step 3 - Review the improvement plan at the end of the monitoring period and congratulate the employee for successfully turning around his/her performance or terminate the employee.
If I think the situation might escalate to Step 2 or Step 3, I document each of the employee coaching sessions leading up to Step 1 and beyond and put it in the file. I'll notify Human Resources if I think an issue might escalate.
Like I say, if we get to step 2, we rarely get to point of an actual termination, especially if you are being direct with the employee. If you try to "soft sell" the idea, the employee may not understand the severity of the issue so I make sure they understand. That said, I had one situation where we went through all three steps and the employee still did not understand the severity of the situation, even when I had the HR Director sit in with me in both Step 2 and Step 3. The only reason I invited the HR Director was that the employee was that based upon our experience with him I did not believe he would "get it".
Ninety percent of these situations actually turn out much better and it's a very gratifying thing to see someone turn their behavior around and start contributing positively to the team or doing something else that they can be successful in and have true passion about.
What do you do if you get into the new year and an unexpected project gets assigned that
exceeds your operating budget?
This is a good question and an issue that comes up quite a lot. Let's break it down a bit.
First, when you submit a budget, it's important to list the business assumptions you are basing the budget upon. This includes any special project initiatives that you think you will be working on in the coming "operational year". It's normally impossible to know everything you will be working on so in most cases you should build in a few "buffers" to cover the surprises that you are inevitably going to run into in the coming year. I've never managed an IT operation when there were no surprise projects to pop up and had to be taken care of.
Quantifying your assumptions and building in a certain amount of buffer for the extra things that will come up is your best safeguard.
Second, if you have done a good job in quantifying your assumptions and have buffer, you may be able to absorb the new project and still make your plan. If it will cause you to exceed the plan (spend more than the budget), you need to manage senior management's expectations in that such a project was not planned for and it will require several things, one of which is redeploying resources to focus on the unplanned project. As soon as you can, you should quantify the incremental cost of the project and the extent it will cause you to exceed your budget and lay it out for management to see both the resource impact and the budget impact.
The new project issue may be something the company would prefer not to do but has no choice (like a regulatory issue that has come up). Helping senior management understand the cost and resource implications helps them manage to the company's overall budget and positions you in a light of "business manager" and not just the "technical manager". In doing this you are also trying to ensure they understand that the original project plans you were going to accomplish are affected by this new project requirement.
In my IT Management Models book there is a model called the 5-pound sack. In this model, it explains that your IT organization has a certain amount of capacity. How the capacity is used can be changed and you can even find a few ways to use more capacity than you actually have for small amounts of time, but not for long extended time without paying the consequences of declining staff morale and turnover. If the company requires you to take on a large unplanned project and your commitments are already a "fully loaded 5-pound bag", something has to give. Managing resource availability is very similar to managing budget dollars. The key is that you have to manage other people's expectations as to what is realistic and enlist their help in determining the best way to use the resources when "key projects" compete for limited resources (either staff, equipment, or budget dollars).
Finally, let's assume you have no buffer in your plan. Your efforts still must be focused to managing senior management's expectations and that there will be a trade-off of resources and budget dollars to focus on the new project. In IT, we don't really care where we are focusing our teams as long as senior management considers it to be in the best interest of the company and provides best value for their IT investment. As a CIO, I will certainly help direct where these resources can be best utilized but ultimately my mission is to serve the company's needs so I answer to my customer - senior management of the company and department heads who manage the resources that utilize the technologies of the company.
If I'm caught off guard (something that rarely happens when you do a good job of quantifying your business assumptions that make up your budget and you have strategically inserted a few key buffers that will offset many such surprises), I will quantify the new project as quickly as possible in terms of resource needs, existing project implications, and cost. Before I have the information, I start setting the appropriate people's expectations that I believe there are budget implications and impacts to current project plans.
When I have the knowledge of the specific impacts, I will sit down with the appropriate people (in my CIO role that would normally be the CFO, COO, and possibly the CEO and any key department heads that have a vested interest in any decisions we might make in the meeting). In this meeting I will lay out the implications, offer suggestions for possible alternatives we have in managing the issue to minimize budget impact or planned project impact, etc. We will arrive at a decision as to what we need to do or will take the issue offline to gather more detail so we can make a decision on what to do that's best for our company in meeting overall objectives.
Feel free to send us an email message if you have comments or questions of your own that you would like us to provide insight on.
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