Recently, my old friend (the one who motivated me to write about mentoring) called me once again. She was being mobbed at her current employer, and basically had to do all the work!
The situation at her current employer(called Urp Burp from now on, because ACME is so boring) is simple – there is a huge team of badly paid, demotivated, I dare to say “cheap” people struggling to do as little work as possible and still get their measly salaries. And then there is my friend and her boss, the two “heroes” that do all the work. Depressing, isn’t it.
Urp Burp’s financial resources are limited, as the company has a very low sales volume. It is profitable, but it isn’t exactly a venture that one calls a licence for printing cash in Austria. The human resources manager slowly but surely added people to the companies budget as soon as it was possible – thus, when the company had 1200$ net steadily, a person was hired for that!
In Austria, 1200$ is not an amount that gets you a good, well-motivated employee – you can’t live well with just 1200$; and a person who isn’t live well usually isn’t motivated! So, the company accumulated incapable employees over time; and these developed a group dynamics of working little, leaving early and ganging up.
When asked about why only dolts work at Urp Burp’s, the human resources manager acknowledged the fact (Full ACK (quot)), but said that the financial situation of the company permitted no different procedure.
But in fact, Urp Burp could proceed differently. Fire all current underperformers after offering them a raise in exchange for excellent performance, and use the cash budget that is freed up to hire new staff wisely. Instead of hiring two incapable secretaries, hire one excellent one. Instead of having two incapable telephonists, hire an excellent one.
Excellent and well motivated staff can easily perform two times the work that an unmotivated employee gets done in a timeframe – and by working so effectively, it creates an “aura” of working and motivation. So, instead of duelling about who gets out of the company first, they fight about who gets the most new customers for Urp…
By the way, the method outlined here works very well. Joel Spolsky of FogCREEK has a policy of hiring the best only – and gets along very well this way
Overall, big teams make the company look fat and powerful – its difficult to boast with a two man show at a party. However, having a big team of dolts rarely is a good idea – Murphy already said that incompetences sum up better than competences….
What do you think?
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