Discussion: View Thread

Dear List,

I have been having a difficult time accepting the concept of
firing a team member, for several reasons. I work in
Manufacturing Management and not in the world of Academia, so this
might be why I am lost on this particular thread.

I can't help but read threads among different teaching groups and
try and figure out what those students are going to be like
working at our facility, after graduation. What I picture are a
group of managers that cannot work together and with the least
amount of provocation, want to fire everyone else. The ideal team
will eventually be one person. What is this teaching our
students?

I fear that teams that focus on performance will drive my industry
back to the 60's when General Motors simply looked at bottom line
performance figures and promoted those General Managers who
performed well and fired the ones who didn't make the same grade.
This saved them from having to focus on the real cause of the
problems - them. This allowed them to shirk the responsibility of
planning and to just reap the benefits of the results -usually
brought about through strong arming and manipulation...cliquing
and buddy-buddy systems.

I see this as seeping into manufacturing where higher output
operators are rewarded and lower performers are canned, leading to
the neat trick of throwing indirect labor at poor processes and
holding people accountable for things that they have little
control over. "Whattya mean you didn't understand your goal? It
was to solve World Hunger - and you didn't do it on time!!!"

I see this as recreating territorialism where it made sense to
hide data, lie about results, cover issues and manipulate data to
make the report LOOK better, out of fear of retaliation or
punishment. The ideal reward systems was successfully avoiding
scrutiny, not succeding at accomplishing objectives.

I see Quality dropping, Cost soaring and teamwork going out the
window.

In other words, what I am going to have to tell your students who
want to fire a fellow team member when they come to work at our
facility - is that they can't.

I am going to have to tell them that they need to go back to that
team and rethink the goal and put enough value into that goal that
everyone wants something out of it.

I am going to tell them that they have to break that goal down
into steps that are easy to attain with clearly defined
responsibility and cross-functional support.

I am going to have to tell them that they need to evaluate each
others strengths and weaknesses and design a process where
everyones strengths are utilized for the good and whole of the
team. THey are going to have to learn that some of the best
concept people are the worse organizers, that great organizers
often make lousy follow-uppers and that wonderful worker-bee's
often don't want to improve upon - and great improvers often don't
follow standards...NOW WHAT?

I am going to have to tell them that they need to take each team
members needs, perspective and issues into consideration and
understand them to the point that they can repeat them in their
own words, and take a share of ownership and accountability for
those issues.

I am going to have to tell them that everything is a process
within a system...and that the best designed process does not work
if it is not integrated into a support system with cross
functional responsibility and checks and balances...by the time
they realize that a team member is lagging behind...is too late
and poor designing on their part.

They are going to blame me for everything going wrong and want to
fire me. I am going to have to take them through training on
Process, Content and Relationship Balancing. I am going to have
to work with them on how to think like a leader instead of a
manager. I am going to have to get them to focus on cooperation
instead of isolation. When they cannot resort to namecalling and
blaming for things going wrong, I will have to suppliment their
training, with better team skills.

Why do I have to do this? I don't understand.

You are the world of academia...you are creating our future
leaders and directors of business. If I cannot simply increase
our turnover when things don't go right, why should you teach your
leaders that they can?

I thought a part of teaching was to present difficult situations,
so people can learn how to address them? If team members have the
option of snuffing losers - how do they ever learn how to develop
other team members? - how do they learn role modeling? - support?
- to focus on problems and not people? - the gentle art of
persuasion? - the advantages to building good will and
cooperation? -applicable subtle manipulation.

I think that if I were a teacher, I'd plant poor performers on
each team, so that the team members can learn how to deal with it.
Why not - thats whats in the real world?

Sometimes the worse performers and laggers on the team are your
boss, or the CEO, or the VP -what now? Mutiny?

So you say they shouldn't have to deal with poor performers
because they are getting a grade??? -like that is real. Wait
until they have to deal with laggers who are Customers who don't
supply quotes on time, or blueprints, or purchase orders. Wait
until they have suppliers who default on payments. What then?
Suppose that supplier is DuPont and owns the rights to your
formulae.

What kind of grade will they get from their company?

No one here is going to go back and look into their academic
record and say, "Oh, your project completely fell through and you
made enemies of everyone from the CEO to the Customer - BUT I see
you had a really high GPA at Blabla University - so you are
forgiven.

Give the lower grade student who was able to build a team out of a
bunch of losers -like the Mighty Ducks, the fifth regiment,
WalMart....and let the higher grade students go work for our
competitors with the high turnover rate and the cost associated.

Help me to understand this concept. Perhaps I am taking it out of
porportion...but I don't get it. Where are they learning to
manage the impossible? - deal with the inevitable - make the best
out of a bad situation.

I fear I will have a group of managers on a team who have the same
excuse every time something goes wrong - how they were victims of
someone else. How they did their job, but someone else dropped
the ball and that was the reason the project didn't pan out, oh,
and sorry that I didn't tell you until now (due date)!




Thanks,
Rick Corcoran
Employee Empowerment / Kaizen Mgr.
corcoranre@excelinc.com

On 15 Dec 97 at 15:25, RICHARD CORCORAN wrote:

> Dear List,
>
> I have been having a difficult time accepting the concept of
> firing a team member, for several reasons. I work in
> Manufacturing Management and not in the world of Academia, so this
> might be why I am lost on this particular thread.

I'm not sure that you are lost..perhaps you are seeing things
clearly! I do think that there is a difference between those in the
workplace all the time, and those that profess. It isn't one being
right and the other wrong.

My sense is that some academics are somewhat out of touch with real
workplaces...and lacking the necessity of dealing with the day to day
problems, some operate on what they THINK workplaces should be like,
not what they are REALLY like. The same could be said for those in
the other sectors when thinking about universities.

I suspect that it may indeed be fruitless to try to mirror a real
workplace in a university setting. Interacting in a team at
university is NOT the same as team membership in a workplace, as you
point out, so why do some pretend to make it so.

That's one reason why I am uncomfortable with evaluating university
students on their team-ness-ness in what amounts to an artificial
situation...whether that evaluation is generated by other team
members or by the faculty member.

If this needs to be done, then I think it should take place in
courses designed specifically for that purpose, not for example in a
course like Total Quality Management In Manufacturing.

> You are the world of academia...you are creating our future
> leaders and directors of business. If I cannot simply increase
> our turnover when things don't go right, why should you teach your
> leaders that they can?

Tom Peters had some early comments on "professional managers" and
MBA's....wish I had them handy...I think since those that he might
have earned one himself.

...looking forward to the responses ;you receive.



Robert Bacal, Bacal & Associates, rbacal@escape.ca
Join us at our Resource Centre at
http://www.escape.ca/~rbacal
Author of "Why Doesn't Performance Management Work?"
Phone: (204) 888-9290

Rich

Thanks for your intriguing response re firing; it's something to think
about! However, you can rest assured that the number of group members
who have ever been fired in most of our classes is practically zero. We
do work hard to assure that groups figure out viable processes to
address the issues of laggards, slacker behavior, norm violations, etc.
This is exactly what they will have to do in industry. We do work hard
to study the "storming" phase of the group life cycle and allow students
to come to grips with it. The only student who ever received an F in my
classes of the past 20 years as a result of being fired would have been
fired from where you work, too. He was from abroad and just could not
adapt to a team culture as well as the U.S. culture. He was giving gifts
to his fellow group members in exchange for not doing his work and
feeling insulted when they refused his gifts. Finally, he got an F as
much for plagiarism of other students' personal logs as for inability to
function in a group. Students from throughout the MBA double cohort of
48 refused to be in a group if he was going to be a member. Fortunately,
he flunked out of school before the next semester could start. For all
the others who ever had trouble, that trouble and dealing with it
constituted one of the best learning experiences of their MBA as well as
that of their group members. Finally, I would say to you that academia
is just the place where we should face teaming and dysfunctional teaming
in a laboratory setting so that problems such as those that have begun
to loom huge in your imagination won't occur in industry. But
certainly, you are right. Firing is not as viable an option in industry
for lack of teamwork as it might hypothetically be in academia. If that
lack of teamwork is bad enough, though, it is, is it not??

Best,

Bill

RICHARD CORCORAN wrote:

> Dear List,
>
> I have been having a difficult time accepting the concept of
> firing a team member, for several reasons. I work in
> Manufacturing Management and not in the world of Academia, so this
> might be why I am lost on this particular thread.
>
> I can't help but read threads among different teaching groups and
> try and figure out what those students are going to be like
> working at our facility, after graduation. What I picture are a
> group of managers that cannot work together and with the least
> amount of provocation, want to fire everyone else. The ideal team
> will eventually be one person. What is this teaching our
> students?
>
> I fear that teams that focus on performance will drive my industry
> back to the 60's when General Motors simply looked at bottom line
> performance figures and promoted those General Managers who
> performed well and fired the ones who didn't make the same grade.
> This saved them from having to focus on the real cause of the
> problems - them. This allowed them to shirk the responsibility of
> planning and to just reap the benefits of the results -usually
> brought about through strong arming and manipulation...cliquing
> and buddy-buddy systems.
>
> I see this as seeping into manufacturing where higher output
> operators are rewarded and lower performers are canned, leading to
> the neat trick of throwing indirect labor at poor processes and
> holding people accountable for things that they have little
> control over. "Whattya mean you didn't understand your goal? It
> was to solve World Hunger - and you didn't do it on time!!!"
>
> I see this as recreating territorialism where it made sense to
> hide data, lie about results, cover issues and manipulate data to
> make the report LOOK better, out of fear of retaliation or
> punishment. The ideal reward systems was successfully avoiding
> scrutiny, not succeding at accomplishing objectives.
>
> I see Quality dropping, Cost soaring and teamwork going out the
> window.
>
> In other words, what I am going to have to tell your students who
> want to fire a fellow team member when they come to work at our
> facility - is that they can't.
>
> I am going to have to tell them that they need to go back to that
> team and rethink the goal and put enough value into that goal that
> everyone wants something out of it.
>
> I am going to tell them that they have to break that goal down
> into steps that are easy to attain with clearly defined
> responsibility and cross-functional support.
>
> I am going to have to tell them that they need to evaluate each
> others strengths and weaknesses and design a process where
> everyones strengths are utilized for the good and whole of the
> team. THey are going to have to learn that some of the best
> concept people are the worse organizers, that great organizers
> often make lousy follow-uppers and that wonderful worker-bee's
> often don't want to improve upon - and great improvers often don't
> follow standards...NOW WHAT?
>
> I am going to have to tell them that they need to take each team
> members needs, perspective and issues into consideration and
> understand them to the point that they can repeat them in their
> own words, and take a share of ownership and accountability for
> those issues.
>
> I am going to have to tell them that everything is a process
> within a system...and that the best designed process does not work
> if it is not integrated into a support system with cross
> functional responsibility and checks and balances...by the time
> they realize that a team member is lagging behind...is too late
> and poor designing on their part.
>
> They are going to blame me for everything going wrong and want to
> fire me. I am going to have to take them through training on
> Process, Content and Relationship Balancing. I am going to have
> to work with them on how to think like a leader instead of a
> manager. I am going to have to get them to focus on cooperation
> instead of isolation. When they cannot resort to namecalling and
> blaming for things going wrong, I will have to suppliment their
> training, with better team skills.
>
> Why do I have to do this? I don't understand.
>
> You are the world of academia...you are creating our future
> leaders and directors of business. If I cannot simply increase
> our turnover when things don't go right, why should you teach your
> leaders that they can?
>
> I thought a part of teaching was to present difficult situations,
> so people can learn how to address them? If team members have the
> option of snuffing losers - how do they ever learn how to develop
> other team members? - how do they learn role modeling? - support?
> - to focus on problems and not people? - the gentle art of
> persuasion? - the advantages to building good will and
> cooperation? -applicable subtle manipulation.
>
> I think that if I were a teacher, I'd plant poor performers on
> each team, so that the team members can learn how to deal with it.
> Why not - thats whats in the real world?
>
> Sometimes the worse performers and laggers on the team are your
> boss, or the CEO, or the VP -what now? Mutiny?
>
> So you say they shouldn't have to deal with poor performers
> because they are getting a grade??? -like that is real. Wait
> until they have to deal with laggers who are Customers who don't
> supply quotes on time, or blueprints, or purchase orders. Wait
> until they have suppliers who default on payments. What then?
> Suppose that supplier is DuPont and owns the rights to your
> formulae.
>
> What kind of grade will they get from their company?
>
> No one here is going to go back and look into their academic
> record and say, "Oh, your project completely fell through and you
> made enemies of everyone from the CEO to the Customer - BUT I see
> you had a really high GPA at Blabla University - so you are
> forgiven.
>
> Give the lower grade student who was able to build a team out of a
> bunch of losers -like the Mighty Ducks, the fifth regiment,
> WalMart....and let the higher grade students go work for our
> competitors with the high turnover rate and the cost associated.
>
> Help me to understand this concept. Perhaps I am taking it out of
> porportion...but I don't get it. Where are they learning to
> manage the impossible? - deal with the inevitable - make the best
> out of a bad situation.
>
> I fear I will have a group of managers on a team who have the same
> excuse every time something goes wrong - how they were victims of
> someone else. How they did their job, but someone else dropped
> the ball and that was the reason the project didn't pan out, oh,
> and sorry that I didn't tell you until now (due date)!
>
> Thanks,
> Rick Corcoran
> Employee Empowerment / Kaizen Mgr.
> corcoranre@excelinc.com



--
Bill Ferris
Professor of Management
Western New England College
Springfield, MA 01119

Phone: (413) 782-1629
Fax: (413) 796-2068
E-Mail: bferris@wnec.edu

Dear Rick,

Thanks for the very thoughful response. I agree with your general thrust
and most of your details. For my part I want you to know that firing has
always been the last resort and rarely ever happens. As a professor I meet
with the students and facilitate a process by which they do what you are
recommending if it ever gets that far. But in actuality students have a
hard time confronting other students just as faculty has difficulty
confronting the percieved non-performance of their colleagues. Even when
we teach feedback skills students are fearful of using them. But we keep
working on it and in processing the "complaints" we do look at the whole
system, namely other members on the team and their behavior as well as
their environment which includes the professor. And we remmember that
these complaints are perceptions and not "the truth" so we try to
understand where these perceptions are comming from. For example, the
team perceives one person a slacker while the person in question is being
passive aggressive because he or she perceives him/herself as being
powerless in the group because his/her ideas from his/her perception are
rarely considered. But as I indicated it
is rare that we get to that place. What usually happens is that the team
,unbeknown to the professor, carries the slacker. They would rather do
the work and bitch about it privately than confront they fellow student.
And my guess, Richard, is that this is going on in your organization too.
So, I agree with you that we need to teach them better how to deal with
slackers etc. I am doing the best I can and I can use your help.

Peace and Love,

Harry


On Mon, 15 Dec 1997, RICHARD
CORCORAN wrote:

> Dear List,
>
> I have been having a difficult time accepting the concept of
> firing a team member, for several reasons. I work in
> Manufacturing Management and not in the world of Academia, so this
> might be why I am lost on this particular thread.
>
> I can't help but read threads among different teaching groups and
> try and figure out what those students are going to be like
> working at our facility, after graduation. What I picture are a
> group of managers that cannot work together and with the least
> amount of provocation, want to fire everyone else. The ideal team
> will eventually be one person. What is this teaching our
> students?
>
> I fear that teams that focus on performance will drive my industry
> back to the 60's when General Motors simply looked at bottom line
> performance figures and promoted those General Managers who
> performed well and fired the ones who didn't make the same grade.
> This saved them from having to focus on the real cause of the
> problems - them. This allowed them to shirk the responsibility of
> planning and to just reap the benefits of the results -usually
> brought about through strong arming and manipulation...cliquing
> and buddy-buddy systems.
>
> I see this as seeping into manufacturing where higher output
> operators are rewarded and lower performers are canned, leading to
> the neat trick of throwing indirect labor at poor processes and
> holding people accountable for things that they have little
> control over. "Whattya mean you didn't understand your goal? It
> was to solve World Hunger - and you didn't do it on time!!!"
>
> I see this as recreating territorialism where it made sense to
> hide data, lie about results, cover issues and manipulate data to
> make the report LOOK better, out of fear of retaliation or
> punishment. The ideal reward systems was successfully avoiding
> scrutiny, not succeding at accomplishing objectives.
>
> I see Quality dropping, Cost soaring and teamwork going out the
> window.
>
> In other words, what I am going to have to tell your students who
> want to fire a fellow team member when they come to work at our
> facility - is that they can't.
>
> I am going to have to tell them that they need to go back to that
> team and rethink the goal and put enough value into that goal that
> everyone wants something out of it.
>
> I am going to tell them that they have to break that goal down
> into steps that are easy to attain with clearly defined
> responsibility and cross-functional support.
>
> I am going to have to tell them that they need to evaluate each
> others strengths and weaknesses and design a process where
> everyones strengths are utilized for the good and whole of the
> team. THey are going to have to learn that some of the best
> concept people are the worse organizers, that great organizers
> often make lousy follow-uppers and that wonderful worker-bee's
> often don't want to improve upon - and great improvers often don't
> follow standards...NOW WHAT?
>
> I am going to have to tell them that they need to take each team
> members needs, perspective and issues into consideration and
> understand them to the point that they can repeat them in their
> own words, and take a share of ownership and accountability for
> those issues.
>
> I am going to have to tell them that everything is a process
> within a system...and that the best designed process does not work
> if it is not integrated into a support system with cross
> functional responsibility and checks and balances...by the time
> they realize that a team member is lagging behind...is too late
> and poor designing on their part.
>
> They are going to blame me for everything going wrong and want to
> fire me. I am going to have to take them through training on
> Process, Content and Relationship Balancing. I am going to have
> to work with them on how to think like a leader instead of a
> manager. I am going to have to get them to focus on cooperation
> instead of isolation. When they cannot resort to namecalling and
> blaming for things going wrong, I will have to suppliment their
> training, with better team skills.
>
> Why do I have to do this? I don't understand.
>
> You are the world of academia...you are creating our future
> leaders and directors of business. If I cannot simply increase
> our turnover when things don't go right, why should you teach your
> leaders that they can?
>
> I thought a part of teaching was to present difficult situations,
> so people can learn how to address them? If team members have the
> option of snuffing losers - how do they ever learn how to develop
> other team members? - how do they learn role modeling? - support?
> - to focus on problems and not people? - the gentle art of
> persuasion? - the advantages to building good will and
> cooperation? -applicable subtle manipulation.
>
> I think that if I were a teacher, I'd plant poor performers on
> each team, so that the team members can learn how to deal with it.
> Why not - thats whats in the real world?
>
> Sometimes the worse performers and laggers on the team are your
> boss, or the CEO, or the VP -what now? Mutiny?
>
> So you say they shouldn't have to deal with poor performers
> because they are getting a grade??? -like that is real. Wait
> until they have to deal with laggers who are Customers who don't
> supply quotes on time, or blueprints, or purchase orders. Wait
> until they have suppliers who default on payments. What then?
> Suppose that supplier is DuPont and owns the rights to your
> formulae.
>
> What kind of grade will they get from their company?
>
> No one here is going to go back and look into their academic
> record and say, "Oh, your project completely fell through and you
> made enemies of everyone from the CEO to the Customer - BUT I see
> you had a really high GPA at Blabla University - so you are
> forgiven.
>
> Give the lower grade student who was able to build a team out of a
> bunch of losers -like the Mighty Ducks, the fifth regiment,
> WalMart....and let the higher grade students go work for our
> competitors with the high turnover rate and the cost associated.
>
> Help me to understand this concept. Perhaps I am taking it out of
> porportion...but I don't get it. Where are they learning to
> manage the impossible? - deal with the inevitable - make the best
> out of a bad situation.
>
> I fear I will have a group of managers on a team who have the same
> excuse every time something goes wrong - how they were victims of
> someone else. How they did their job, but someone else dropped
> the ball and that was the reason the project didn't pan out, oh,
> and sorry that I didn't tell you until now (due date)!
>
>
>
>
> Thanks,
> Rick Corcoran
> Employee Empowerment / Kaizen Mgr.
> corcoranre@excelinc.com
>

Harry J. Bury, Ph.D.
Baldwin Wallace College
275 Eastland Road
Berea, OH 44017-2088

Tel: (216) 826-2395
Fax: (216) 826-3868

E-Mail: hbury@bw.edu

Pure Deming type TQM rant.
Mr. Corcoran does have a valid point; this teamwork stuff has been debated for years and the reasons for teamwork that he gives are exactly the reasons that teamwork has been worked into so many courses.
Cooperation - not competition: Competition is supposed to help facilitate excellence, but what often happens is that the only stake one has in another's performance is a desire to see them fail. Not good.
In most schools, colleges and universities cheating is basically defined as helping someone else or receiving help from another. Weird and a bit frightening when you think about it.
I heard about a professor who "fired" one of his students in the middle of a class after the student was unable to answer several questions in a row. He told the student that he was fired, to gather his stuff and get out of the room. The professor turned to write some things on the black board and after a minute or so when he heard the students muttering to each other, he turned around and asked the class what they thought of the firing.
Actually, the professor had set the "firing" up before-hand with the student to make a point. In the previous class there had been a discussion about firing some workers in a case and the students were virtually unanimous, "Fire them. Be hard nosed when you have to be. It's good for them in the long run." Yeah, they found out that it wasn't so much fun after all.
I can't remember where I heard of or read about this classroom "firing." I wish that I had the courage to try it.

Martin W. Broin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Management
Texas A&M International Univ.
Laredo, Texas
broin@tamiu.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: RICHARD CORCORAN [SMTP:CORCORANRE@EXCELINC.COM]
Sent: Monday, December 15, 1997 9:25 AM
To: MG-ED-DV@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU
Subject: Firing Team Members

Dear List,

I have been having a difficult time accepting the concept of
firing a team member, for several reasons. I work in
Manufacturing Management and not in the world of Academia, so this
might be why I am lost on this particular thread.

I can't help but read threads among different teaching groups and
try and figure out what those students are going to be like
working at our facility, after graduation. What I picture are a
group of managers that cannot work together and with the least
amount of provocation, want to fire everyone else. The ideal team
will eventually be one person. What is this teaching our
students?

I fear that teams that focus on performance will drive my industry
back to the 60's when General Motors simply looked at bottom line
performance figures and promoted those General Managers who
performed well and fired the ones who didn't make the same grade.
This saved them from having to focus on the real cause of the
problems - them. This allowed them to shirk the responsibility of
planning and to just reap the benefits of the results -usually
brought about through strong arming and manipulation...cliquing
and buddy-buddy systems.

I see this as seeping into manufacturing where higher output
operators are rewarded and lower performers are canned, leading to
the neat trick of throwing indirect labor at poor processes and
holding people accountable for things that they have little
control over. "Whattya mean you didn't understand your goal? It
was to solve World Hunger - and you didn't do it on time!!!"

I see this as recreating territorialism where it made sense to
hide data, lie about results, cover issues and manipulate data to
make the report LOOK better, out of fear of retaliation or
punishment. The ideal reward systems was successfully avoiding
scrutiny, not succeding at accomplishing objectives.

I see Quality dropping, Cost soaring and teamwork going out the
window.

In other words, what I am going to have to tell your students who
want to fire a fellow team member when they come to work at our
facility - is that they can't.

I am going to have to tell them that they need to go back to that
team and rethink the goal and put enough value into that goal that
everyone wants something out of it.

I am going to tell them that they have to break that goal down
into steps that are easy to attain with clearly defined
responsibility and cross-functional support.

I am going to have to tell them that they need to evaluate each
others strengths and weaknesses and design a process where
everyones strengths are utilized for the good and whole of the
team. THey are going to have to learn that some of the best
concept people are the worse organizers, that great organizers
often make lousy follow-uppers and that wonderful worker-bee's
often don't want to improve upon - and great improvers often don't
follow standards...NOW WHAT?

I am going to have to tell them that they need to take each team
members needs, perspective and issues into consideration and
understand them to the point that they can repeat them in their
own words, and take a share of ownership and accountability for
those issues.

I am going to have to tell them that everything is a process
within a system...and that the best designed process does not work
if it is not integrated into a support system with cross
functional responsibility and checks and balances...by the time
they realize that a team member is lagging behind...is too late
and poor designing on their part.

They are going to blame me for everything going wrong and want to
fire me. I am going to have to take them through training on
Process, Content and Relationship Balancing. I am going to have
to work with them on how to think like a leader instead of a
manager. I am going to have to get them to focus on cooperation
instead of isolation. When they cannot resort to namecalling and
blaming for things going wrong, I will have to suppliment their
training, with better team skills.

Why do I have to do this? I don't understand.

You are the world of academia...you are creating our future
leaders and directors of business. If I cannot simply increase
our turnover when things don't go right, why should you teach your
leaders that they can?

I thought a part of teaching was to present difficult situations,
so people can learn how to address them? If team members have the
option of snuffing losers - how do they ever learn how to develop
other team members? - how do they learn role modeling? - support?
- to focus on problems and not people? - the gentle art of
persuasion? - the advantages to building good will and
cooperation? -applicable subtle manipulation.

I think that if I were a teacher, I'd plant poor performers on
each team, so that the team members can learn how to deal with it.
Why not - thats whats in the real world?

Sometimes the worse performers and laggers on the team are your
boss, or the CEO, or the VP -what now? Mutiny?

So you say they shouldn't have to deal with poor performers
because they are getting a grade??? -like that is real. Wait
until they have to deal with laggers who are Customers who don't
supply quotes on time, or blueprints, or purchase orders. Wait
until they have suppliers who default on payments. What then?
Suppose that supplier is DuPont and owns the rights to your
formulae.

What kind of grade will they get from their company?

No one here is going to go back and look into their academic
record and say, "Oh, your project completely fell through and you
made enemies of everyone from the CEO to the Customer - BUT I see
you had a really high GPA at Blabla University - so you are
forgiven.

Give the lower grade student who was able to build a team out of a
bunch of losers -like the Mighty Ducks, the fifth regiment,
WalMart....and let the higher grade students go work for our
competitors with the high turnover rate and the cost associated.

Help me to understand this concept. Perhaps I am taking it out of
porportion...but I don't get it. Where are they learning to
manage the impossible? - deal with the inevitable - make the best
out of a bad situation.

I fear I will have a group of managers on a team who have the same
excuse every time something goes wrong - how they were victims of
someone else. How they did their job, but someone else dropped
the ball and that was the reason the project didn't pan out, oh,
and sorry that I didn't tell you until now (due date)!




Thanks,
Rick Corcoran
Employee Empowerment / Kaizen Mgr.
corcoranre@excelinc.com

Very telling criticism, much appreciated. From an academic with twelve
years in business, who has intentionally stayed out of this exchange
until now.

At 03:40 PM 12/15/97 +0000, you wrote:

>Tom Peters had some early comments on "professional managers" and
>MBA's....wish I had them handy...I think since those that he might
>have earned one himself.

With his chest puffed out and his thumb hooked in his vest, mimicking the
dressed for stress, Peters described them as those who

"Write nice memos. Look good in meetings . . . ."

Frank Bell Internet:
Project Leader fbell@nonamebbs.com
Amtrak
National Training and
Conference Center
110 S. French St.--Ste 200
Wilmington, Del. 19801

http://members.aol.com/frankwbell

Richard:
For one, I really enjoyed your contribution to the discussion of group's
firing a team member. It was a very powerful and engaging point of view
and I just want to acknowledge your effort. Thanks.

John

> -----Original Message-----
> From: RICHARD CORCORAN [SMTP:CORCORANRE@EXCELINC.COM]
> Sent: Monday, December 15, 1997 8:25 AM
> To: MG-ED-DV@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU
> Subject: Firing Team Members
>
> Dear List,
>
> I have been having a difficult time accepting the concept of
> firing a team member, for several reasons. I work in
> Manufacturing Management and not in the world of Academia, so this
> might be why I am lost on this particular thread.
>
> I can't help but read threads among different teaching groups and
> try and figure out what those students are going to be like
> working at our facility, after graduation. What I picture are a
> group of managers that cannot work together and with the least
> amount of provocation, want to fire everyone else. The ideal team
> will eventually be one person. What is this teaching our
> students?
>
> I fear that teams that focus on performance will drive my industry
> back to the 60's when General Motors simply looked at bottom line
> performance figures and promoted those General Managers who
> performed well and fired the ones who didn't make the same grade.
> This saved them from having to focus on the real cause of the
> problems - them. This allowed them to shirk the responsibility of
> planning and to just reap the benefits of the results -usually
> brought about through strong arming and manipulation...cliquing
> and buddy-buddy systems.
>
> I see this as seeping into manufacturing where higher output
> operators are rewarded and lower performers are canned, leading to
> the neat trick of throwing indirect labor at poor processes and
> holding people accountable for things that they have little
> control over. "Whattya mean you didn't understand your goal? It
> was to solve World Hunger - and you didn't do it on time!!!"
>
> I see this as recreating territorialism where it made sense to
> hide data, lie about results, cover issues and manipulate data to
> make the report LOOK better, out of fear of retaliation or
> punishment. The ideal reward systems was successfully avoiding
> scrutiny, not succeding at accomplishing objectives.
>
> I see Quality dropping, Cost soaring and teamwork going out the
> window.
>
> In other words, what I am going to have to tell your students who
> want to fire a fellow team member when they come to work at our
> facility - is that they can't.
>
> I am going to have to tell them that they need to go back to that
> team and rethink the goal and put enough value into that goal that
> everyone wants something out of it.
>
> I am going to tell them that they have to break that goal down
> into steps that are easy to attain with clearly defined
> responsibility and cross-functional support.
>
> I am going to have to tell them that they need to evaluate each
> others strengths and weaknesses and design a process where
> everyones strengths are utilized for the good and whole of the
> team. THey are going to have to learn that some of the best
> concept people are the worse organizers, that great organizers
> often make lousy follow-uppers and that wonderful worker-bee's
> often don't want to improve upon - and great improvers often don't
> follow standards...NOW WHAT?
>
> I am going to have to tell them that they need to take each team
> members needs, perspective and issues into consideration and
> understand them to the point that they can repeat them in their
> own words, and take a share of ownership and accountability for
> those issues.
>
> I am going to have to tell them that everything is a process
> within a system...and that the best designed process does not work
> if it is not integrated into a support system with cross
> functional responsibility and checks and balances...by the time
> they realize that a team member is lagging behind...is too late
> and poor designing on their part.
>
> They are going to blame me for everything going wrong and want to
> fire me. I am going to have to take them through training on
> Process, Content and Relationship Balancing. I am going to have
> to work with them on how to think like a leader instead of a
> manager. I am going to have to get them to focus on cooperation
> instead of isolation. When they cannot resort to namecalling and
> blaming for things going wrong, I will have to suppliment their
> training, with better team skills.
>
> Why do I have to do this? I don't understand.
>
> You are the world of academia...you are creating our future
> leaders and directors of business. If I cannot simply increase
> our turnover when things don't go right, why should you teach your
> leaders that they can?
>
> I thought a part of teaching was to present difficult situations,
> so people can learn how to address them? If team members have the
> option of snuffing losers - how do they ever learn how to develop
> other team members? - how do they learn role modeling? - support?
> - to focus on problems and not people? - the gentle art of
> persuasion? - the advantages to building good will and
> cooperation? -applicable subtle manipulation.
>
> I think that if I were a teacher, I'd plant poor performers on
> each team, so that the team members can learn how to deal with it.
> Why not - thats whats in the real world?
>
> Sometimes the worse performers and laggers on the team are your
> boss, or the CEO, or the VP -what now? Mutiny?
>
> So you say they shouldn't have to deal with poor performers
> because they are getting a grade??? -like that is real. Wait
> until they have to deal with laggers who are Customers who don't
> supply quotes on time, or blueprints, or purchase orders. Wait
> until they have suppliers who default on payments. What then?
> Suppose that supplier is DuPont and owns the rights to your
> formulae.
>
> What kind of grade will they get from their company?
>
> No one here is going to go back and look into their academic
> record and say, "Oh, your project completely fell through and you
> made enemies of everyone from the CEO to the Customer - BUT I see
> you had a really high GPA at Blabla University - so you are
> forgiven.
>
> Give the lower grade student who was able to build a team out of a
> bunch of losers -like the Mighty Ducks, the fifth regiment,
> WalMart....and let the higher grade students go work for our
> competitors with the high turnover rate and the cost associated.
>
> Help me to understand this concept. Perhaps I am taking it out of
> porportion...but I don't get it. Where are they learning to
> manage the impossible? - deal with the inevitable - make the best
> out of a bad situation.
>
> I fear I will have a group of managers on a team who have the same
> excuse every time something goes wrong - how they were victims of
> someone else. How they did their job, but someone else dropped
> the ball and that was the reason the project didn't pan out, oh,
> and sorry that I didn't tell you until now (due date)!
>
>
>
>
> Thanks,
> Rick Corcoran
> Employee Empowerment / Kaizen Mgr.
> corcoranre@excelinc.com