Half Time Work, Full Time Results
Steven Smith throws in an interesting question about hiring half time worker (link from Mike Ramm): Would you hire a person who works only 20 hours per week but produces full time results? Additional assumptions here say the person – Albert – will guarantee he’d achieve expected performance and he expects his time not to be wasted. Especially the former makes the whole case a bit theoretical, but anyway – that’s a hypothetical question.
Both Steven and Mike are surprised with different mangers’ negative answers. Both would hire Albert without much thinking. In most cases I would not.
First that’s a bit of primaballerina approach. I say a bit because it was said that Albert is liked by his colleagues, but still he expects to be treated differently than the rest of the team. Second, software development is quite often a collaborative job and that way you limit that aspect for the whole engaged team. However I could quite easily accept these two. Thing which, in most cases, would push me to “no go” decision is impact on teamwork.
I’m even leaving on the side questions like “He can, so why can’t I?” from other people which would sooner or later appear. Having Albert in the team you no longer can build “one for all, all for one” atmosphere. In emergency situation you’d end with highly committed majority ready to add something to standard 40-hour workweek and Albert who works from 9 to 13 because he hates his time to be wasted. I guess the high level of people’s engagement would be rather temporary.
Strong, integrated, high-performing teams are usually born when things go wrong, not when everything looks easy and you can actually allow to waste anybody’s time. And you need a specific set of people to allow it happen. Albert wouldn’t suit in vast majority of cases. I just wouldn’t take the risk.
4 comments:
Pawel,
I wouldn't say that I gave my opinion "without much thinking". I usually think a lot before I hire someone because I know that my people are my most important investment. But don't forget that this is just a hypothetical case!
I posted more arguments in favor of the decision to hire a person like Albert in a new post in my blog.
Take a look if you are still interested.
Mike
Mike,
Yes, you haven't mentioned that the hire would be made without much thinking (that was Steven's point), but anyway it was a "yes" decision.
I know there are a lot of arguments if favor of hiring Albert, but I'm yet to see something which would really compensate impact on teamwork.
The problem I have is rigidness of his statement: leave me alone and I am not working any longer than 20 hrs. That would be a killer for the team dynamics. So i would also go with the no. (if it a one person gig-by all means, have a ball)
That being said, there is nothing wrong with motivating your team to be effective, and manage on results and not on time spend behind a desk. However, then management will decide that the project can be done at half the duration :)
Sure, there's nothing wrong with motivating the team to work more efficiently, but doing that by negative examples (and Albert is a negative example - I insist on that one) isn't the right path.
I've always tried to praise people who maybe aren't the best when talking about knowledge or experience, but lead the team in commitment and will to help others. You underline positive attributes then.
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