Mary Carty

In this insightful piece Amol Sarva gives some astute management pointers when evaluating your employees’ contributions. I really like Sarva’s thinking, particulary this piece of advice for managers:

“You need to fire people to protect your good people, undo your hiring mistakes, and move the direction of your business.”

“If you are a manager of other people at any level, you should be following this action plan:

Fs – Fire people who are not contributing anything at all instantly –> this is an easy one for most
Cs – Make a move on your “requires lots of oversight to deliver” people –> this is the hardest one
Bs – Coach your good but not great folks to be more innovative as they continue to deliver what is asked of them with little oversight –> also pretty easy, often you pair one of these with an A
As – Admire your A players who make plays and write new playbooks –> also easy

This is summarized well by Nivi of Venture Hacks from the more detailed and excellent post by Eric Paley. Read them to understand the “write the playbook” thing better.

In general, it’s hard to fire people at all but if you are going to be a CEO or manager of any type, you are probably aware it has to happen sometimes and the Fs are a slam dunk case. And As help you get through the day. You do need to give though to harnessing Bs (rather than naively thinking your company is going to be all As), and most important is to deal with Cs.”

If you are not a manager in your organisation, Sarva provides a test to evaluate where you rank in your company. How your organisation solves your users’ problems and engages with your customers is up to you. The question is, are you adding value to your organisation or are you holding your company back? Is it time to call it quits and go to a place you can add real and lasting value?

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Image thanks to ilike