I recently took on a new PM role for a new organisation and have found myself faced with a situation I genuinely am having a problem dealing with.
I have been given the management responsibility who has openly stated their desire to be made redundant from the organisation, and who consistently misses deadlines, fails to adhere to well documented and understood processes and fails to produce work that is of the required standard (fit for purpose).
I have spoken to my manager about this situation and the advice was to maintain a log of the performance problems, then present to the individual for discussion. In the meantime I am having to perform the work that this individual should be doing, and more frequently am simply doing the tasks myself rather than delegate as I should because it is a quicker way to get to the right result. This person has had more than adequate training, and additional mentoring, coaching and support and yet still fails to rise to the responsibility of their role.
How is it best to manage a poor performer when the prospect of career, professional or skills development is not a motivating factor. Is my only option really to manage this person through a Saving Changes...
If you ask me, the first thing you're doing wrong is doing the person's work for them. You're covering up their mistakes, etc and allowing them to continue with such a bad attitude. i.e...the problems won't be visible to management when/if you have to deal with it in a harsher way.
I think you need to evaluate first, is there any recovering. Try to determine what's driving the poor performance, and see if you can correct it before taking harsher steps.
If the answer is Saving Changes...
Anonymous
This is a common problem. I have dealt with similar situations earlier. There are three stages to deal with this: Stage 1: discuss with the person on why the perf. is not improving & provide all help you can. Stage 2: give the person adequate opportunities & support to improve. stage 3: sack him if u still see no improvement! There is no way you can keep doing his work. Saving Changes...
This is a tough one. Above all: don't do the job for the person, it is as good as saying, you win! Maybe you could think of two separate approaches.
(Option 1) Developmental. Not really sure if this is appropriate given the circumstances you have described, but there is always a chance the individual can be motivated to play the game. To develop the person, things you need to know are: (a) what is causing the behaviour and can you do anything about this; (b) what motivates the person, and do you have the resources to harness this motivation.
(Option 2) Cut to the chase. Frankly I think we tend to play the good guy too often. We are project managers not social workers. If the person wants redundancy,make it clear that the redundancy option is at risk. Take the gloves off and get tough. But let your company know what the plans are so you don't find yourself without corporate support. Highly likely one of the corporate players will take the moral high ground and tell you to go back to social worker. Get tough again and politely give that person the responsibility for faith and salvation and go back to being a project manager.
David Hudson, Brisbane Australia Saving Changes...
