Unorthodox concepts in HR : Part 10 – Exporting your problems

In this post, we will continue our exploration of Unorthodox concepts in Human Resources/People Management. We are exploring concepts that are unlikely to be found in ‘respectable’ text books (and also not taught in ‘premier’ business schools) but are very much real in the paradoxical world of people management (See ‘The attrition principle’,  'In the valley of attrition' , 'Sublimation of vision statements' , 'Computer-controlled Manager Empowerment', ‘Training the Victim’ ,‘Two plus Two personality profiling’, 'Herophobia', 'Type N and Type O organizations' and ‘The plus one problem’ for the previous posts in this series).

'Exporting the problems' is one of the most common ‘crimes’ in the domain of Talent Management. This refers to attempts by people managers to move the 'low-performing' and/or 'difficult to manage' members in their team to other teams in the organization. Since no people manager would want to accept a low performer into his/her team, this ‘crime’ often involves some degree of ‘deception’. This could include tactics like not giving an accurate picture of the performance of the employee (e.g. if the performance ratings are yet to be assigned) or even artificially inflating the performance rating of a poor-performing employee so that he/she comes into the ‘good performance’ category for the next one year.

An effective way to prevent this ‘crime’ (apart from calibrating performance ratings to ensure accuracy and/or having the process of the new manager thoroughly evaluating the employee before accepting the transfer) is to stipulate that unless the performance of an employee is good, he/she won’t be eligible for any role changes. This would encourage the managers to focus on helping the employee to improve his/her performance before recommending any transfer to other teams, and if the performance improvement efforts fail, to initiate the exit process for that employee. An exception to this rule can be made in the case of employees who were very good performers in their previous roles in the organization. In those cases, the current low-performance is likely to be a ‘person-role’ fit issue and they can be moved to roles similar to their previous role if possible.

An extreme form of ‘exporting the problems’ involves recommending an employee for a promotion with the condition that he/she should be moved to other teams. The rationale given by the manager could include things like the next level jobs in the current team being too complex, the concerns existing team members would have if their peer becomes their manager etc. Here also, the solution could be to specify that unless the manager is willing to move the employee into a next level role within the his/her team (if and when such an opportunity comes up) the manager can’t recommend a promotion for that employee.
   

There is another interesting (but very unfortunate) possible fallout these attempts by managers to 'export their problems'. Over a period of time, managers in the organization lose trust in the recommendations of other managers when it comes to talent moves. This makes it difficult for managers to export low-performers. Since many of the managers might not want to let go of their best performers (some sort of ‘talent hugging’ behavior) and since they can’t export the low performers any more, they tend to recommend the average performers in their team as an when new opportunities come up. This can create a situation where the best talent loses out on career opportunities and the average talent gets those opportunities. This can lead to the average talent progressing faster from career development point of view (as compared to the best talent), and this in turn can lead to the exit of the best talent from the organization. So, mediocrity triumphs!  

An effective talent management system that ensures accurate visibility of the performance of employees to the key stakeholders beyond the immediate manager is the first step in preventing the kind of problems mentioned above. Of course, clearly articulating the talent philosophy, building people manager capability and having the right performance measures for people managers would be of immense help. Ideally, the talent moves should be based on detailed talent management calibration discussions (involving the other key stakeholders also, in addition to the manager) that matches the employee aspirations, strengths, performance and potential with the emerging requirements of the organization (and also provides structured feedback to the employees)! 

It is a bit funny to hear people managers speaking about their willingness (or lack of it) to 'release' talent from their team. The term 'release' is more appropriate in situations like  releasing someone from a prison or from a lunatic asylum. Yes, managers need to get the work done and they need good quality talent to accomplish that. So the people management system should ensure timely availability of high quality talent (leveraging strategic workforce planning and outcomes of talent management calibration discussions) to replace the high-performers who are moving to other teams. However, speaking about 'releasing talent' might be an indication that people managers have 'inappropriate mental models' about talent and talent mobility! 

Any comments/ideas?