Where corporate parasites come from - 3

Well, the third part about corporate parasites from my technical blog.

Today I would like to talk about another systematic reason for the emergence of corporate parasites. And paradoxically, it is "new, effective management methods." No, not all, but one particular, invented by the icon of corporate management, the man who brought General Electric back to life by Jack Welch. And it is called "bell curve" - ​​"bell curve".

So what is it? A bell curve is a normal normal distribution. Well, or if you do not know what a normal distribution is, remember the boa who swallowed an elephant from Saint-Exupery. In the case of Jack Welch, all people are ranked by their success. Most are in the middle, this is where the curve goes up. Very few give outstanding results. From the series, twenty percent of people drink eighty percent of beer. These must be loved, cherished and cherished. And someone is at the bottom end. Well, these go "to the pot", we must get rid of them.

Actually, the idea is not new, evolution has been doing it for millions of years. Let's say a pack of monkeys graze. The weakest eats jaguar. The fittest monopolize females. And so hundreds of thousands of years. In the end, engineers and Jackie Velcie appeared. And evolution is not alone in using this method. Let's say a shepherd herding a flock of sheep. The most unsightly go to the kebab. The best rams are used to continue the herd. Centuries passed and a lot of wool and lamb around. It was these biological methods of selection that Jack Welch applied to General Electric with results that aroused admiration among investors and corporate management. He has a lot of biological analogies. Say, are you familiar with the concept of "alpha male"? This is the leader of the pack, the coolest, the one who has all the females. According to Jack’s theory, you need to hire only these “alphas” exclusively, then everything will be the way to go. However, we were distracted, back in the curve of the bell.
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The idea of ​​its execution is simple. Every year there is an annual review of all employees. For each rabonika - this number, for example, from one to five, as in school. Then they are all distributed along the curve of the bell (usually within groups). Say, almost all are troechniki, one gets a four, and a pair of okhlomonov from the back of the desk - in a “pair”. Those who hit the top (right, with fives and fours) are given big bonuses, and those who are at the bottom (left, “losers”) are fired. And so many years in a row. The idea of ​​Welch, so you can get a flock of magnificent sheep, sorry, workers. It seems to be all logical, right?

Well, I will immediately explain where the hole is. In evolution, one must really run away from a jaguar or invent a wheel. That is, the criterion of fitness is real and “without fools”. The annual review also assumes that everything is measured without fools, but it is measured by the bosses ... Have you already noticed a slight contradiction? Echidism aside, the real performance of a person, his contribution to the team’s work, and what they write to him in the annual review is, as they say in Odessa, “two big differences.”

That is, the criterion of the real contribution to the team’s work is replaced by the criterion of the ability to persuade the boss to write a good review. Guess who survives in such an evolutionary environment? And then - better. At some point, corporate parasites become heads in this team. The next riddle: who will go to kebabs for the next review?

However, continuing biological comparisons, if you fry meat well and wash your hands before eating, then where will the parasites come from first? After all, at least one is needed, “for rasplod”. That is, imagine that you are a manager in the style of DeMarco, such a manager with whom we all would like to work. You made a team in which there are no parasites. Where do they come from to get an edge over others? It turns out here that the bell curve helps.

Here you have such a good team, and it comes time review. That is, it is time for someone to barbecue. And you all need! What to do? Answer: hire someone who can then without any harm to the cause let on the barbecue. And the idiot wants to live too. And you are just a good manager, you are not a god, you can also be seduced, you can be pleased, at last, simply deceive.

So much harm comes from "effective new management."