Catalytic Connections

There is a very simple secret to climbing the corporate ladder that has been utilized successfully for years.  In fact, I would guess that a majority of those who today hold senior executive positions followed this reliable route on their trajectory to the top.  And once they gain admission to this exclusive club, they make career-defining decisions about those who yearn to join them in favor of aspiring newcomers that follow the same path.

While there may be situationally savvy strategies for upward ascension unique to a given organization, one vertical trail has produced successful results repeatedly and universally.  The “Proven Path to Promotion” (let’s call it P3, for short) goes something like this:

Successfully perform the job duties of the position to which you aspire long enough and your organization will eventually adjust your title and pay accordingly.

Here’s a concrete example.  The COO of a Washington-based consulting company followed P3 in his quest to become president.  Over a period of four years, he assumed greater and greater responsibility for running the business as the iconic founder grew gradually more comfortable with a newly created position as Chairman.  When the decision was finally made to confer the hard earned title, the announcement was such a formality that the newly crowned CEO had to be reminded to throw a party.

This practice happens all the time, and yet people often seem to miss it.  They adopt a more equity-based strategy that might be summarized as follows: “I’ll start doing the work of the senior position when you begin paying me for performing that level of work.”

While that may sound fair, that strategy appears to yield less consistent results, perhaps for two reasons.  First, there is uncertainty as to fit.  Put simply, your boss can’t fully envision you functioning effectively in the higher level job.  Second, you haven’t “earned” it.  If the decision making executive followed the Proven Path to Promotion herself, she’s especially likely to feel this way.

P3 addresses both concerns.  Uncertainty as to fit becomes irrational when an aspiring promotion seeker is already effectively performing key job functions.  Even if the decision maker has had poor experiences with past internal promotions or lacks creative imagination, it’s hard to argue that a given job is a stretch when it’s already being successfully performed.

P3 also clears the merit hurdle with room to spare.  While one could contend that you earn a promotion by performing a feeder job at a superlative level, is that really enough?  The Proven Path to Promotion taps into a much richer vein: Guilt.  Over time a boss will feel uncomfortable with the fact that the organization is getting more than they pay for.  If you say, “That’s never going to happen!  My boss will bleed me dry, if I let him,” then another logical emotion may come to your rescue: Threat of Loss.  When replacing your new higher level contribution far exceeds the cost of giving you a raise, the path of least resistance is for even the most frugal employer to pay up.

One final concern should be addressed for those who wish to pursue P3: “Won’t my boss feel threatened, if I start doing parts of her job?”  The sober answer is “possibly,” so don’t be naive.  Proceed cautiously and with eyes open.  However, if your boss has upward ascension desires of her own, one of her biggest challenges is to find and train a future replacement.  Without a viable internal successor, promoting her can create two problems:  a rookie in the bigger job, and challenge with succeeding someone that has become “irreplaceable” in her current position.  She needs you, or someone like you, ready to take her place when she moves up.

If you’re working in a small business, taking away responsibility from the top boss is even less of a threat.  Most small business leaders are endless idea generators.  In other words, when you take work away from an entrepreneur, he just makes more.

So, how do you make the Proven Path to Promotion work for you?  Consider taking some of the actions below:

1) Clarify Your Target. What specific position do you aspire to?  An answer of “I don’t know” may be your honest initial response, but it makes it extremely difficult to navigate.  If you don’t know where you want to go, it’s almost impossible to help you get there.

2) Make One Up. If the position you want doesn’t currently exist at your company, imagineer a business case that would justify it.  Establish a logical argument that demonstrates that the desired position has sufficient financial and strategic value with a return on investment that more than merits its creation.  Interestingly, the same strategy works whether the ultimate decision maker is an entrepreneur or a corporate politician.

3) Strengthen Your Why. Explain on paper the top four reasons your desired position will enhance your life. The stronger your Why, the easier it will be to motivate yourself to do the extra work for a long enough period for the P3 strategy to take effect.

4) Declare Your Intentions. Let your boss (and through her the “Big Boss” – ultimate decision maker) know that you are interested in being developed for promotion and more than willing to do what it takes to earn it.  Ask her to “raise the bar” in her coaching of you such that you are being challenged at a higher level than your more contented peers.  Being told you’re the best the organization has in your current position may be flattering, but it’s unlikely to help you get promoted.

5) Create a Personal Action Plan. Make a list of the top four job duties and skill sets the Big Boss will be looking at when making a replacement decision on your boss or his peers.  Volunteer for assignments that will allow you to develop and later demonstrate your ability to contribute substantively in these areas.

6) Ask for More. If your target job is held by your boss, ask questions like this.  “How can I help you today?” or “What can I take off your plate?” Slight variation that I love being asked: “Why don’t you let me take a first crack at drafting that?”

7) Execute! Get to work and make it so.

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Jack Welch, former General Electric CEO and Fortune magazine’s “Manager of the Century”, pioneered many benchmark-worthy world class business practices.  According to W. Edwards Deming, a person many believe to be the founder of the Quality Movement, however, Welch’s much ballyhooed performance evaluation system was not one of them.  And when it comes to the sensitive subject of using a system like this for “trimming out the deadwood” (shedding the organization of ineffective workers), their positions couldn’t be more polarized.

The GE system, as championed by Jack, requires managers to not only rate employees against job standards, but also to compare each competitively with peers using a forced ranking distribution.  20% are permitted A’s (like in school, the top grade), 70% have to settle for B’s, and 10% must be labeled as C’s.  Those receiving the bottom grade are forced to leave the company.

Corporations who practice this so-called “rank-and-yank” appraisal process do so believing that annual high-grading helps trim out the deadwood.  It also clearly identifies stars and keeps everyone else on their toes.  Dr. Welch felt it an essential ingredient in the recipe for a world class organization, even though he conceded that it was emotionally difficult.

Dr. Deming’s point of view was completely the opposite.  One of his famous Fourteen Points of Organizational Transformation was “Don’t do performance evaluations!”  He felt the ritual “robbed the worker of pride of workmanship” and “attributed too much to individual performance” when most work output is determined by systems and processes mandated and controlled by management.  If that was too subtle, he listed performance evaluations as one of the Seven Deadly Diseases that American organizations were spreading around the world.   To those puzzled about what to do instead, he replied “If your system does more harm than good, just stop doing it.  That alone will be an improvement!”

When a frustrated rank-and-yank practitioner challenged Dr. Deming on the need to trim out the deadwood, he typically responded with a question.  “Were they alive when you hired them?  Or did you kill them?”

I’ve pondered the genius of this Socratic query for more than twenty years now.  Below are at least four bits of “profound knowledge” that I think Dr. Deming was trying to convey.

First, his question more than subtly suggests that management should assume primary responsibility for creation of a systemic problem.  Where did we screw up?  Did we hire poorly?  Describe the job improperly?  Pick the wrong person for the job?  Or… Did we give failed workers more to do than they could perform effectively?  Train them poorly?  Assign them to an ineffective supervisor?  Fail to respond to their cries for help?  Whatever the answer, an empowering follow-up question is “What kind of systemic changes are we going to make to prevent this problem from recurring?”

Second, and equally important, please notice that Dr. Deming never advised us to avoid trimming out the deadwood.  Whatever caused the problem, if key position holders are truly dead, I believe he would strongly encourage us to make a change.  Transfer, demote, or terminate.  Do whatever it takes to resolve the situation.  When we’re done, however, we must fix the root cause so that we don’t have to do this again.

Here’s a third extension of Dr. Deming’s logic.  How, Dr. Welch, did you determine your deadwood to be an even 10%?  What if we have 19.5% deadwood in a particularly poorly functioning division?  Should we keep the ineffective 9.5% for another year?  What if the true ratio of deadwood is only 3%?   Do you really want us to fire the additional 7% simply out of principle?

Fourth and finally, how, Jack, can you argue that Six Sigma is the ultimate goal of any process (defect rates measured at .002 per million transactions) but simultaneously endorse a process that has a built in error rate of 10% in human capital?  Could anyone but a global juggernaut like GE afford to be so extravagant?

I worked in HR for a Fortune 500 company that practiced something very similar to the GE system.  We ranked employees against each other to force managers to get tough.  We only included 5% in our bottom category and stopped short of requiring that recipients be immediately fired.  Our strategy was to shame them into quitting whenever possible.  (Arguably an even less effective and more inhumane practice.)

In the end, we created a situation where 90% of our employees felt like losers and the other 10% were paranoid. The only intelligent way to play the game and remain a top performer year over year was to watch your back and fend off your “competitors” (publicly referred to as “teammates”).  When we asked our people to work together in harmony in support of our customers, but paid and promoted them for superior individual performance, guess which one they made the priority?

Bottom line in this epic ideological battle on the best strategy for trimming out deadwood, I think the Socratic systems mechanic beats the chainsaw wielding celebrity CEO in every conceivable way.

So, what should you do to trim out the deadwood?

1. Do your very best to prevent deadwood from ever occurring. Focus on perfecting work processes.  Hire, promote, train and develop talent appropriate for making your systems world class.
2. Cut whatever percent of deadwood you encounter. Don’t impose artificial quotas for failure.  If the true answer is 50%, so be it.  Do whatever it takes to remove all nonperformers.  Just be sure to get to the root of the problem and change your work practices to prevent more from taking their place.
3. Coach employees instead of judging and critiquing them. Focus on them individually by examining their contributions compared to job requirements, your standards of excellence and their career expectations.
4. Don’t rank employees against each other as a part of an annual performance review cycle. It is the single most destructive personnel practice with respect to both teamwork and morale.
5. It’s more than okay to rank candidates for promotion. Be sure to restrict rank lists, however, to those in the actual candidate pool.   Candidates for promotion must first express an interest in being promoted.  They’ve got to be silly enough to want increased responsibility and good enough to earn it.
6. When necessary, rank candidates for layoff. Limit rank list to candidates representing skill sets or occupying positions that are subject to consolidation or elimination.  If a shift in market demand has left you with too many accountants but you have a deficit in sales personnel, exclude salesmen from the exercise.

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