If you had 100 people in a company and had to reduce the number to 50, how would you choose, who would stay and who would go?
There are three simple options.
1. Examine performance and see how people have been performing to date and keep the high performers.
2. Do examinations and tests to see how emotionally engaged people are in the company direction, activities and culture add this to step 1. and choose the higher performing, most engaged.
3. None of the above....
I would choose 3. Let me explain why...
Past performance is highly affected by leadership, circumstance, situation, product and relationships within the organisation itself. Hence a crappy boss, or a collegue who antagonises us might be the cause of the performance issue. I'd be reluctant to take perfomance alone as a determinant of the future possibilities.
Engagement is prone to all sorts of tricks. People who learn the mastery of fake it till you make it look engaged, act engaged, are engaged, but aren't engaged. It's so easy to manipulate systems where friendships, emotional likes and dislikes can make engagement a really false measure of a person's intent.
I'd base the choice on Potential.
First I'd list 20 core skills I'd need in individuals 3 years from now if we hit and reach our ambition targets. Then I'd work out who is most likely to learn those the fastest, and who is most likely to resist them the most. Then I'd just take the potential in people, and invest in it.
Sadly, of the 2-300 business turnaround projects I've been involved with, most of them did involve letting go significant numbers of people. And sometimes the most loyal, wise, most stable and engaged people were not kept. When there's time for change, it's time to invest in human potential, not current results, engagement or any other such psychological exam....
I guess I'd say I'd invest in inspiration before desperation.
