You've got: a dead parrot

Many times throughout your career whether it is as an HR representative, consultant or a business leader you come across your way with people who work... And that's it, just work...

Now as we all know people who just work they do it either for the sake of working or for the sake of money but in no way for the sake of your business.

If people like "just do the job" land between your awesome or perhaps less awesome team you  definitely need to spot this and ensure that person either changes his attitude towards his/her role or leaves your company. First option is more cost effective if:

• there is still spark in the person
• you see that in the specific role someone after the first couple of coaching session within a 6 months period can achieve greater things s/he did before
• you are not a lazy "boss" who requires just results and as soon as they show up you leave things loose

It is very very important to have consistency in your work and requirements, if you don't sooner or later you will fail. If you see people using the word "consistency" too often yet their work is not improving be it on a single or group level then you have got a dead parrot on board.

The reason why I use the term of "dead parrot" is because if you think of dead parrots they look kinda kreepy (just like your employers who "just do the job, kreepy but beautiful in their own sense of meaning) but they will remind you (at least me) of a parrot that's hanging upside down in it's cage on the swing, his claws and toes rigidly sticked to the swing and the only way to get it off is to cut it down (either by the claws or at the swing, first one seems too messy for some and let's face even the thought of it awful, but second one causes more "damage").
Now if you think how this looks like in real a context: first time when you see it, you get shocked but as you have never seen something like this before it seems cool and you might think your parrot (that's dead - ok anatomically we all know that their paws will open once dead, so let's not get into this but instead think...) is just pretending. You think it is extraordinary so leave it a bit longer there to hang with the hope that soon it will wake up and let everyone see it this performance he is doing. Well... Face it... It won't revive and unless you take it off, soon it will start stinking, rotting and poison the air around it...

OK... Let's put this in the context of a company not knowing who they have on board. Well actually, good ones always know, or at least use their common sense to spot it, stupid ones think it is cool and wait that the person who is like this dead parrot "wakes up", and if you leave it too long it will poison the air around it.

Believe me that's not good, really not good. If you don't believe me just wait and see, usually 6-8 months is enough to see results that will ensure at least a 25% drop in your performance, or not grow at all, so calculate that now over into time and money. Let's see some of the results: You'll loose out on an average of 30% of your great performing staff ( simply made: they will get an other job somewhere else or they'll become "just do the job"ers), you'll have to start from zero in most of the departments in many role (zero in the context that even though you hire a person with wast similar experience, that professional still needs get used to the new company culture, needs to learn that things work differently not as before and the concept of the new role is not the same as in her/his previous one, needs to get to know new people and the list could go on. So basically if you add this all up even with a great new professional with 10-15 years of experience you'll need to start from zero if you want the person to progress and grow your business as you wish for).

Now calculate: is this worth for you? Is it worth loosing out on the best at your company or you'd better shoot that parrot that's dead so that everyone hears it and as soon as possible try reset that hopefully little loss and return to the path of growing? Now comes the part when you ask: ok but what about the image of my company (specially if you fire a manager in a high position). Well guess what: you can f* your image if this person is rotting everything around him/her.

There are always ways you can go around if you prefer to take smooth but firm steps and don't be afraid of taking them, as if you ain't then just bear the consequences these bring upon you and start planning your closure.