
House cleaning is a very necessary part of our personal and professional lives and when it is neglected, in business especially, it sends a very clear message that there is no clear set of expectations. Expectations for performance have to be clear but also the benefits of performance have to be clear too. Sometimes when we expect people to change we fail to make it clear what the benefits are or we use some pathetic negative benefit like “you can keep your job.” All change requires additional work, even if it is just the psychological work of forming new habits and most of the time it is for no additional pay or incentive. That, makes it truly hard for anyone to jump on board. Jack Welch of General Electric fame makes “Candor” and “Differentiation” two of his first themes in his book “Winning.” According to Jack you can’t lump everyone into the same batch. Performers must be rewarded and poor performers cannot be left to languish, you have to act and act differently with each group or your message about expectations will become muddied. The question is when to act and how? One thing I am sure of is that we are not born with the ability to know how to change, people need tools to change, so do the house cleaning only after there has been enough time and tools provided to make change possible.
I will cover some of those change tools next week.