At the end of last year, I transferred from one public organisation to another, having successfully applied for a management role, but I found that my new workplace produced mediocre work. The staff just seemed to lack any drive for high performance. This was not a problem at my previous organisation – we all strived for good outcomes there, and had a strong, shared commitment to quality work. I often found myself wishing I was managing my old team, rather than trying to learn how to be a manager at the same time as trying to learn how to deal with poor performance.
Staff attitudes in my new organisation were troubling. I was concerned about poor performance and acceptance of unproductive and often unprofessional behaviours among my direct reports, but I noticed some of the same problems were common across the whole organisation. I think attitude was part, if not most, of the problem.
We have important work to do for the public, and running back to my last organisation wasn’t going to help anyone except me, but I knew it was going to be an uphill battle to get staff up to a level of performance that the public deserves.
I watched the staff dynamics and found that normalisation of underperformance was being modelled by certain places – certain staff – who had a lot of influence across the organisation.
If I could motivate these particular underperforming staff to perform better, I figured that the collective attitudes might also improve as other employees follow suit.
So, I started building professional rapport with these influential and underperforming staff members. As I grew to understand them better, it dawned on me that these employees were actually really keen to improve their work performance, and by association, the work environment. They just didn’t know how.
I’ve worked closely with these people since then, gently teaching them some of the good practices we used to use in my old workplace. Word, and better performance, quickly started to spread to other staff.
I’d be lying if I said the organisation had magically transformed into a high performing culture, but the plan is definitely paying off in modest ways.
Persuading more influential staff to change their ways seems to have worked, giving the rest of the organisation the little shock it needed. It’s good to see everyone lifting their game, slowly, and I no longer waste time fantasising about going home to my old team. Now I fantasise about building a team here that is just as good.
