The Manager’s Guide to Surviving Poor Performance Figures

Scenario: The latest figures are out and it’s not looking good. You have not hit your key performance targets. Your meteoric career trajectory suddenly feels imminently parabolic. Don’t worry. There are several proven techniques that you can use to survive this situation – or at least buy yourself enough time to find the next job while the fan still spins unimpeded.

1	Challenge the data Spread as many rumours as possible about the quality and completeness of data. This will allow you to say that the figures cannot be relied upon. There may be bit of a risk if the production of the data is itself your responsibility.  Luckily most people won’t spot this.  If this fails…. move on to
2	Challenge the method of calculation Suggest that the figures are being calculated wrong. Experiment with alternative calculations, randomly missing bits out - or including other bits - or changing the time periods used. If you are lucky you will eventually stumble across a method which comes out with the ‘right’ number. It does not matter how irrational this method may appear. Next, insist that this new method should become the standard method to be used from now on. If anybody suggests that the target should also be recalculated in line with the new method, put your fingers in your ears and wait for them to go away.   If this fails…. move on to
3	Challenge the target Don’t worry about the confident assurances you gave the powers that be six months ago.  Stress that the target is clearly over-optimistic.  Don’t worry if it was you who originally came up with the target. Nobody will remember this.  By now it is simply ‘The Target’. Say that ‘The Original Target’ was based on ‘an unadjusted growth factorisation methodology’. Nobody will understand this, so they probably won’t challenge you. If they do, say that the original figures were all provided by the Finance Department. If you are the Finance Department, say the figures were originally provided by the Information Department. Everybody knows that these are two parallel universes and that their figures never agree. Calculate a new target which is exactly 1.47 % lower than whatever you actually did achieve. Tell everybody that this new target is in line with the corrected growth model. If this fails…. move on to
4	You should be treated as a special case Assert that the target is absolutely fine for everything except those areas which are your responsibility. The significant differences in your areas mean that you should not be held accountable to the same target as everybody else. The unique factors particular to you mean that this target never could be achieved (Actually this last sentence may be entirely true, but not in the way you want people to think). To add weight, come up with any three very detailed observations about the areas that you manage. The fact that these features may be present in other areas, or even all other areas, does not matter. If this fails…. move on to
5	Everybody else is doing badly too Did you say you should be treated as special case? Actually, what you meant was you are the exactly the same as everybody else, and everybody is doing badly. Other people doing badly too is good. To a layperson, it may suggest that all your peers are incompetent too. But you can use it to imply that there are massive external forces operating which make it impossible for anybody to meet the target. It does not matter if nobody knows what these forces are. Find all the others doing worse than yourself and lump these together to present your performance against a ‘peer group figure’ If this fails…. move on to
6	Find a small part that did reach the target Ok so you clearly failed to meet the target. But this does not mean that you completely failed to meet it. Break down the area you are responsible for into every possible component part. If you are lucky, at least one small area will have met the target. Focus all attention on this. The performance in this area should be taken as a reflection of your management competence. The other areas which failed were ‘atypical’, or experienced unforeseen circumstances, such as staff taking their Christmas holidays at Christmas. If this fails…. move on to
7	We are on trajectory Ok so you clearly failed to meet the target. But it’s ok because you have met the level required to be ’on trajectory’ to eventually meet the target. If you have missed that too, you may have a problem. Bur you could say that you are ‘on target to converge with the recovery trajectory’. There is a good chance that you can simply change the trajectory to fit the actual performance. If challenged say that the trajectory ‘needed to be reprofiled to take account of seasonal factors’ If this fails…. move on to
8	The latest figures are not typical It is important to create the impression that last month was completely unusual, leading to a misleading position. The expression ‘perfect storm’ comes in useful here and most of the people you are talking to will assume that your performance has somehow been affected by bad weather If this fails…. move on to
9	Create a Diversion With luck there will be some other area in the organisation which is currently sitting slightly below target. Draw attention to this everywhere you go. Suggest that we need a ‘crisis meeting’. If this does not work, set fire to one of the offices. With luck the routine performance meeting will be cancelled. If this fails…. move on to
10	Play for time Send a ‘High Priority’ email to the Information Department at 10:40pm on Sunday evening the day before your meeting. They almost certainly won’t get this in time. When required to give an explanation for the performance figures, you can truthfully say that you are “still waiting to hear back from Information” If you are really unlucky, the Information Department might drop everything to ensure that the information you asked for is sent back to you before 8:30am the next day. If so, don’t open the email. Later you can say you were having IT problems and didn’t get it in time. If you need a much longer breathing space, commission somebody to do a study. If their eventual report highlights any concerns about how you have done things, disown and discredit it immediately. Then commission another study. If this fails…. move on to
11	You haven’t been provided with the right tools Insist that you need information to 11 decimal places, disaggregated into 30 second time blocks, plotted against National Grid Reference, and standardised against average telephone number. Make it clear that without this information it is impossible for you to monitor your performance. If provided with this information, ask for it to be broken down further. Ask for the data to be provided in a dashboard updated every minute of the day and night, viewable on your smartphone even when it is switched off. If this fails…. move on to
12	We have a plan You can survive almost any performance crisis so long as you can reel off a list of remedies that you can claim will resolve it. It does not matter what these are. It is even better if you can say you have started to implement these already. You don’t actually need to have a document outlining what you are going to do. You just need to say that you plan to have a plan. If somebody asks when it will be ready say the Communications Plan will be covered in the plan. Be careful not to create any tangible milestones in the plan. If this fails…. move on to
13	I am arranging a meeting…. This old technique is still worth a shot as some of your younger colleagues may not yet have encountered it. Here’s how it goes: Acknowledge that this performance is a significant concern and you are taking immediate action to deal with it. Announce a list of people being invited to an urgent meeting to discuss it. The subliminal message is that the performance failure is really down to this wider group rather than yourself. By appearing as the convenor of the meeting you may also get credit for being proactive. If you are forced to actually go ahead and have the meeting, try to leave everybody with impossible tasks to complete. It does not matter what these tasks are or whether they are relevant to the performance. If this fails…. move on to
14	We need more staff Never miss an opportunity to turn your own failures into a bid for more resources. If this fails…. move on to
15	We were let down by somebody else Find any example where somebody else did not manage to do something on time. Portray this as the ‘root cause’ of your performance problem. It does not matter what it is. Recruitment is a good area to choose. If you are lucky you can blame HR for not getting an advert out on time. It does not matter that they waited for six weeks for you to finish writing the job description.  You can also blame all the potential candidates who chose not to apply to work with you. If this fails…. move on to
16	I am new Portray the performance failure to be a continuing consequence of a legacy of deeply embedded problems. These are taking longer to deal with than originally estimated. Imply that your predecessor left things in a real mess. You can get away with this one for anything up to five years. Play down any claims you may have made in your job application to ‘hit the ground running’.  Delete all references to your ‘first hundred days’. But be  careful to ensure that the credit for anything that has been achieved does not also go to your predecessor. If this fails…. move on to
17	Blame your staff Don’t be sentimental. You must be prepared to throw members of your team under the bus. Remember, success is collective, and all stems from your skilful leadership. But blame needs to be delegated as quickly and deeply as possible. Suggest that you have inherited a group people who don’t have the right skills. If these individuals are all people who you recruited yourself, suggest that they are ‘now struggling to adjust to requirements of the changing environment’. Most importantly: suggest that the staff may have deliberately concealed the performance problems from you. Stress your disappointment, especially given your past support for them and the blame free culture you are striving to introduce. If this fails…. move on to
18	Burst into Tears Ask for a private one to one meeting with your line manager. Just as the conversation moves onto the performance figures, bust into tears. Invent a list of traumatic things that have just happened to you. This is unpredictable, but it can be surprisingly effective. Be careful not to over use it though. It can become counter-productive if you try it every day. If this fails…. move on to
19	Pretend to be Leaving Announce that you are leaving. This may deflect the urge to fire you. You can probably spin this out for about 18 months before people begin to wonder why you are still here. It is even possible they will forget all those missed performance targets and they will offer you a promotion to stop you leaving If this fails…. move on to
20	Leave No need to worry, they will almost certainly provide you with an excellent reference to help propel you on your way! If this fails…. Ouch!

Disclaimer Any resemblance between these observations and any of the various organisations that I have worked in is entirely.