ChronoHelix
Not sure I get the point of this AI story. This is exactly the purpose of a PIP, to address performance issues. Only numbskulls are using it as a generic punishment.
This went down a few months back and it's still on my mind.
One of my team members messed up pretty badly on a project. Nothing that blew everything up, but it ate up our time and left the client frustrated.
My director immediately pushed for a PIP.
Honestly, I didn't think it was the right call. This person had been around for years, usually crushed it, and this was their first real stumble. I pushed back and told my director that slapping someone on a formal PIP after one rough project would send the wrong signal.
He basically said I was going soft.
So I went along with the formal improvement plan, but I made it crystal clear to the employee that we were actually trying to solve the problem, not just build a paper trail to fire them.
We checked in every week. We dug into what went sideways, what support they needed, and what I was looking for moving forward.
About four weeks in, that same director who wanted the PIP started wondering why this person's work had gotten so much better.
I told him, "Because we actually fixed the problem instead of treating the person like they were the problem."
That pretty much ended that conversation.
The employee's still with me and honestly crushing it now.
This whole thing taught me that leadership and managers can see the exact same situation totally differently. Sometimes leadership spots a risk that needs to go away. As the manager, you're the one who has to figure out if the person is actually the risk or if something else in the situation needs to change.
I'm not saying PIPs are bad. Sometimes they're totally necessary.
But I'm way more thoughtful now about using them just because someone had a rough patch.
Not sure I get the point of this AI story. This is exactly the purpose of a PIP, to address performance issues. Only numbskulls are using it as a generic punishment.