us and attention is directed toward their stars, they'll find their organization soaring upward.

You and your organization can be successful only when your best workers are focused and motivated. They must be fully engaged. Their needs must be met. Each star is different. Most want challenging work, freedom and flexibility. Stars must be well paid.

S

Executives spend too much of their precious time addressing poorly performing employees. They lament that they squander 90 percent of their hours dealing with the bottom 10 percent of their work force. When they are not either disciplining them or somehow trying to compensate for them, they find themselves creating new systems and procedures to counterbalance poor performance.

In all my years in consulting, working with large organizations and small, I regularly hear this from executives who are totally exasperated by poorly performing employees. Why is this happening and what can be done?

Executives should be focused on things that provide the organization with the greatest return on investment. Whether it is new products, customers or services, your limited time should be directed toward things that will generate the greatest benefit for the organization.

The same thinking has to be used when dealing with employees. Your top-performing employees generate more productivity, better service and new ideas, and they usually do it without upsetting the organization or you. Yet they often get the least attention from executives who are more focused on the problem employees. This equation must be changed.

Executives need to reassess their thought processes. They need to stop trying to fix the unfixable. Successful executives emphasize raising the bar in their organization and not coddling the bottom. When their focus and attention is directed toward their stars, they'll find their organization soaring upward.

You and your organization can be successful only when your best workers are focused and motivated. They must be fully engaged. Their needs must be met. Each star is different. Most want challenging work, freedom and flexibility. Stars must be well paid.

So

or performance.

In all my years in consulting, working with large organizations and small, I regularly hear this from executives who are totally exasperated by poorly performing employees. Why is this happening and what can be done?

Executives should be focused on things that provide the organization with the greatest return on investment. Whether it is new products, customers or services, your limited time should be directed toward things that will generate the greatest benefit for the organization.

The same thinking has to be used when dealing with employees. Your top-performing employees generate more productivity, better service and new ideas, and they usually do it without upsetting the organization or you. Yet they often get the least attention from executives who are more focused on the problem employees. This equation must be changed.

Executives need to reassess their thought processes. They need to stop trying to fix the unfixable. Successful executives emphasize raising the bar in their organization and not coddling the bottom. When their focus and attention is directed toward their stars, they'll find their organization soaring upward.

You and your organization can be successful only when your best workers are focused and motivated. They must be fully engaged. Their needs must be met. Each star is different. Most want challenging work, freedom and flexibility. Stars must be well paid.

S

is new products, customers or services, your limited time should be directed toward things that will generate the greatest benefit for the organization.

The same thinking has to be used when dealing with employees. Your top-performing employees generate more productivity, better service and new ideas, and they usually do it without upsetting the organization or you. Yet they often get the least attention from executives who are more focused on the problem employees. This equation must be changed.

Executives need to reassess their thought processes. They need to stop trying to fix the unfixable. Successful executives emphasize raising the bar in their organization and not coddling the bottom. When their focus and attention is directed toward their stars, they'll find their organization soaring upward.

You and your organization can be successful only when your best workers are focused and motivated. They must be fully engaged. Their needs must be met. Each star is different. Most want challenging work, freedom and flexibility. Stars must be well paid.

S

ion or you. Yet they often get the least attention from executives who are more focused on the problem employees. This equation must be changed.

Executives need to reassess their thought processes. They need to stop trying to fix the unfixable. Successful executives emphasize raising the bar in their organization and not coddling the bottom. When their focus and attention is directed toward their stars, they'll find their organization soaring upward.

You and your organization can be successful only when your best workers are focused and motivated. They must be fully engaged. Their needs must be met. Each star is different. Most want challenging work, freedom and flexibility. Stars must be well paid.

S

us and attention is directed toward their stars, they'll find their organization soaring upward.

You and your organization can be successful only when your best workers are focused and motivated. They must be fully engaged. Their needs must be met. Each star is different. Most want challenging work, freedom and flexibility. Stars must be well paid.

Sometimes organizations create internal personnel systems that undermine managers' ability to take care of their star performers. Often these systems are based on out-dated, egalitarian models which say everyone should be treated the same so as to preserve some perceived notion of harmony and teamwork. Such systems do not differentiate between the bright light and the dim glow. Nothing could be more wrong. It is better to treat the stars as stars and retain them than to lose the mediocre over a fairness issue.

As for the rest of your work force, managers must train and develop their employees and provide continuous coaching in hopes of creating new stars. But terminate the nonperformers when your best efforts to coach or reassign don't pay off. It is in the employee's best interest to find a place where they can be successful. And it is in yours and the organization's best interest to part company before the nonperformers contaminate the rest.

Surveys consistently show that good performers complain when underperforming employees are tolerated while they themselves are often overworked and ignored. When the McKinsey Group asked thousands of employees how they would feel if their employers got rid of nonperformers, 59 percent strongly agreed with the option "delighted," yet only 7 percent believed their companies were doing it.

But should executives simply discard nonperformers? Some employees cannot do the job, others