Upholding Performance Standards
When someone is doing well, performance management is easy. Overseeing your report’s work doesn’t take much time or energy when they’re consistently delivering great work.
If you begin to doubt that your report is meeting their level expectations, the situation requires more precision. It’s natural to try to justify a deficient performance, or give someone more time or different types of projects to show they’re capable of developing a skill. While we should allow some grace, we also need to be honest with ourselves and with our report about their deficiencies and not let things linger. To put a fine point on it, a cycle or two to allow someone to show development is great; six months is not.
Junior (L1) and Mid (L2) contributors are expected to progress to the subsequent level within two years of hire or promotion. The period between 1-year hell yeah and 2-year progression is vitally important for you as manager to monitor performance. Between those formal points, you should do cycle reviews. At every completion of a cycle project, look back and do an informal check of their technical and non-technical skills, using the same standards we use for formal reviews. This allows you to address small performance issues immediately, then give your report notice of where they’re falling off and how to correct. It also gives you a comprehensive and cumulative sense of their trajectory. What we shouldn’t do is coast between the 1- and 2-year marks due to lack of formal process, backing ourselves into making a tough, significant decision about someone’s future at the 2-year mark. By the 2-year mark at that level, Junior (L1) and Mid (L2) contributors should be exceeding expectations in all categories.
A key point when doing any performance check — tell your report you’re doing it and then what you’re thinking once you’ve done it. If you look back and are impressed with their work, tell them. Likewise if you look back and found they needed a whole lot of help to get something over the finish line, tell them you noticed and that they need to recover from that. Coach them. Drill into what happened and workshop with them how they can improve.
A final note on authority. Managers at 37signals are in a tough spot because you’re part peer, part authority figure to your teammates. You respect them, their skills and knowledge, the work they do, and the care they put into the work they do. You’re walking a fine line between guiding them using the expertise you’ve gained over your career and relating to — and working alongside — them on the same team.
When someone’s performance is good, you don’t have to think about that balance at all. But when someone’s performance is lagging, you have to assume a position of authority. That means upholding the very high standards we’ve benchmarked for performance here. It means making difficult judgment calls based on hard evidence, and standing behind those calls. It means having tough conversations with your report any and every time you need to have them.
Recovering from Underperformance
Not all underperformance results in termination. When a manager identifies a performance issue early, addresses it directly, and works with their report to correct it, recovery is not only possible but common. The same cycle review practice described above is your best tool here: catching issues while they’re still small enough to fix without formal intervention.
When your report is working to recover from a performance lag, your job is to be clear and consistent with your observations, feedback, and expectations. Be explicit about what improvement looks like and by when you expect to see it. Check in regularly — not to micromanage, but to show you’re paying attention and that you’re invested in their success. Acknowledge progress when you see it. Recovery is hard work, and a manager who only shows up to deliver bad news is not as effective as one who also shows up to say, “I’ve noticed your effort and your improvement in [specific area], and it matters.” When you’re satisfied that your report has recovered to the point that your more frequent monitoring is no longer needed, inform your report and People Ops (and celebrate that!).
You may have lingering doubts about your report’s abilities to perform, even when they’re back on the right trajectory. That’s human and more or less expected; trust has been damaged. If you find yourself second guessing your assessment that your report has “graduated” from underperformance, lean on the performance metrics. Those are objective, clear descriptions of level-appropriate performance. People Ops is also available to support you and your report throughout this process, and you should keep them apprised of the details of your report’s positive progress and your approach to managing it.
Termination Due to Underperformance
Managers are responsible for identifying and addressing lapses in their report’s performance. They are responsible for leveraging their expertise and experience at 37signals to instruct their report on how to correct. They are not, however, responsible for doing so at the expense of their individual contributor work. If performance issues get to a point where you are spending an inordinate amount of time guiding your report through underperformance or expending a distressing amount of mental energy on how to coach your report through underperformance, it may be time for you to delegate responsibility for their performance to senior leadership. Talk to your People Ops team if you find yourself struggling with balancing your core work with managing an underperformer, and they will help you negotiate handing off performance management temporarily to avoid capacity strain.
Whether or not coaching your report through underperformance conflicts with your core work duties, you’re required to inform People Ops (and optionally inform senior leadership) of severe lapses in performance, so they may document, advise, and conduct regular follow-up conversations on the issue. Contact People Ops as soon as you’ve identified a serious performance lag, and before you begin talking to your report about correcting it so you can align with People Ops on the path forward.
Severe underperformance is defined as falling below the expectations set forth in the career progression framework for your report’s job/level. It may also be defined as a particularly crucial one-time mistake that severely impacted operations. If you don’t know if your report’s performance is poor enough to warrant intervention, contact People Ops. Most often you should err on the side of caution and intervene.
The timeline to termination varies, of course, based on the severity, frequency/pattern, and irrecoverability of your report’s performance issues. But broad strokes, it’ll look like this:
- You identify a serious lapse in your report’s job performance. You determine if it’s part of a larger pattern or a one-time mistake. A one-time mistake earns more leniency than a pattern.
- You alert People Ops and work with them to design a plan that allows for correction with a timeline and measurable benchmarks for success. The timeline is not immovable; if your report fails to show improvement after a few weeks, you may proceed directly to termination.
- You deliver the plan to your report with direct feedback about what went wrong, how they need to correct, and the timeline on which they need to correct. You offer support, but are clear that this is not just a corrective conversation. Their performance fell so below expectations that their job is in jeopardy, and they need to recover to a point that you are confident in their continued abilities. You are clear that the timeline as presented is malleable; they need to recover with urgency.
- You work the plan with your report. People Ops checks in weekly on your progress. You keep them apprised of any changes, positive or negative, and your candid impressions along the way. If you see no hope for recovery at any point, inform People Ops so they can begin the termination process.
- You commit to a firm decision to retain or terminate your report. If you cannot do that, People Ops or senior leadership works with you to reach a decision.
- Once termination is decided, you work with People Ops on a termination checklist which is shared with you in Basecamp. Most of the checklist consists of paperwork that’s People Ops’ responsibility. The only items on the checklist that pertain to managers are (1) determining when the termination will take place, and (2) scheduling the final termination conversation with your report. See the chapter on Navigating Difficult Conversations for structuring that conversation.
- After speaking to your report to inform them they’ve been let go, your job is done. People Ops follows up with them on last-day logistics and paperwork.
Whether or not you’re able to manage your report all the way through the end of their tenure with the company, it is usually the manager’s responsibility to inform their report when the decision has been made to terminate their employment. If you find yourself truly unable to have that conversation due to personal or professional reasons, it may be delegated to People Ops. However, you may be relieved of all management duties going forward in that case.
To reiterate: if at any point you experience a lack of capacity to perform your own core job responsibilities due to managing a report who is underperforming, alert People Ops at once. They can (and have) assumed performance management responsibilities in those cases so you’re not strained to the point that your performance also begins to suffer. Your managerial responsibilities in cases of severe underperformance are significant, but they are also easily shed.