Why Your Performance Improvement Plans Aren't Improving Performance
Srinivas Rao
I help organizations and individuals increase productivity by expressing their creativity
Performance improvement plans in academic and professional work typically make people average at something they do poorly. They don't help people become extraordinary at something they do well.
It's been more than a decade since the economist Tyler Cowen wrote his book Average is Over. Yet performance improvement plans optimize for average performance.?Optimizing for average is optimizing for obscurity, not extraordinary achievement.?
Say we rate someone's performance level for two skills on a scale from 0 to 100 percent,
Assume your goal is a 10% percent improvement.
Helping someone improve skill 1, a teacher, manager, or company can help someone go from good to great performance. By focusing on skill 2, that same person goes from poor to average performance.
If you manage people, before you put someone on a performance improvement plan (aka wrongful termination lawsuit avoidance plan), consider whether that plan is optimizing for average or extraordinary performance. If it's the former, it's usually due to a mismatch between talent and environment.
If you're going to use a performance improvement plan, you're better off creating one that makes people extraordinary at what they do well, not average at something they do poorly.