Comment by raganwald | Hacker News Reader

Comment by raganwald | Hacker News Reader

Turns out that there’s a strong correlation between a student’s grade and their assessment of the professor’s abilities.

Very interesting.

I don’t listen too carefully when a poor performer tells me how awful their previous manager was.

Wait, what? Are we confusing correlation with causation here? Let's say, for example, that a manager tends to give female employees poor ratings (or whatever BigCo calls a grade). Do we discount their negative assessment of the manager? If there's a poor relationship between an employee and a manager, I'm not surprised when there is negative performance and a negative assessment.

Aren't we extremely interested in negative performers? We need to triage. Some employees are stars and will be stars no matter how you manage them. Ignore them, keep the kitchen stocked with whatever they drink. Some employees are poor performers no matter what you do. Identify them and fire them immediately, or better still leak their résumé to competitors, you get a 2-for-1.

The area of management opportunity are the "swing performers," those whose performance can be influenced by management practice. Some of the negative performers will be irredeemable, but some will be swing performers and it's worth listening to disgruntled poor performers if you can find a way to filter for swing performers in the hope that you can identify opportunities to turn them into good performers.

>Turns out that there’s a strong correlation between a student’s grade and their assessment of the professor’s abilities.

One possible explanation is that the student's evaluation of the prof is based on how well he understands the course material (since the prof's job is to induce that understanding) - which, of course, also impacts the student's grade.

>Turns out that there’s a strong correlation between a student’s grade and their assessment of the professor’s abilities.

In my experience with classmates, it initially might also look like this correlation is true, however I think the hypothesis is a bit more involved.

In one case, one class was taught with quite easy grading policies and many people ended up getting good grades - yet the smart students were unhappy with the professor and lack of challenge. In another cases, I've seen quite difficult abstract math classes and smart students would complain about the teacher as well - because of personal incompatibility - the teacher's style just didn't click with the student. And also, many times weak students would express a lot of respect and positive rating of a professor even though the teaching was over the top of their heads.

Yet obviously there were the lazy/less smart types who would just reduce the challenge to complaining about the prof - yet they are probably likely to complain about people in different situations (i.e. job)

Interesting data point for you. First, Break All The Rules found that average managers put most of their time into their worst performers. Great ones put most of their time into their star performers. The reason? Both groups can improve, and a 10% improvement in a star is worth a lot more than a 10% improvement in a dud.

I'd be interested in the study data. The data I've seen suggest that great managers put most of their time into manageable employees, the ones I called swing performers above. It could be that some stars swing between good and great, while some median employees swing between poor and good. If there are stars who have a 10% swing based on management investment, then yes there's a better ROI working with them.

I agree with the idea that it's a poor idea to spend most of your time with your worst performers. The problem with the worst employees is that many of them are irredeemable, so you can't get 10% improvement out of them, except possibly by micromanaging them to the point where you're doing their work)--and that doesn't scale. They're unmanageable in a negative sense, and thus you need proportionally more investment to get poorer returns.

One strong exception to a dictum against spending time with worst performers: Spending time identifying unmanageable poor performers does generate very high returns IF YOU FIRE THEM. In software, poor performers can actually have negative productivity: Their presence slows the rest of the team down.

I don't have the direct data. The book I referred you to summarizes the findings of a series of studies by the Gallup organization.

>Spending time identifying unmanageable poor performers does generate very high returns IF YOU FIRE THEM. In software, poor performers can actually have negative productivity: Their presence slows the rest of the team down.

excellent advice. Before going into mission, platoon leader should better shoot all his bad soldiers, so they wouldn't slow the team down.

I don't know about shooting them, but removing them from the platoon might help.

nice, correctly incentivising, performance management system - if you shown yourself a bad soldier then you don't get to go to dangerous mission(s). I bet you'd be a respected 4-star general ...

Horrible comparison. First, it's not uncommon (historically) for bad soldiers to have been executed. In Russian history alone, I can find examples of that (Trotsky's decimation in the Red Army, based of course on the Roman practice).

Second, in this case the poor performers aren't executed. They're let go, usually after being put on a pip (which can be viewed as a notice to look for another job). They can improve their performance in another job (if someone is smart, but doesn't get these things done it's a wake up call for them to establish better discipline). Similarly, in the military poor soldiers aren't usually sent into front line battles (being delegated to secondary roles).

>Horrible comparison. First, it's not uncommon (historically) for bad soldiers to have been executed. In Russian history alone, I can find examples of that (Trotsky's decimation in the Red Army, based of course on the Roman practice).

I can only say - Kirk Douglas, "Paths of Glory". It said all about bad performers and management.

>Similarly, in the military poor soldiers aren't usually sent into front line battles (being delegated to secondary roles).

you're kidding, right?

Your "swing performers" theory also applies to teaching. In an online course I used to teach I found there were roughly three types of students: - People who already knew the subject and/or were capable self-learners, and who only needed me for some comments and the final assessment. - People who could benefit from my concentrated effort and actually learn during the course. - People who, for whatever reason, would not respond to efforts to help. Some of them were functionally illiterate, which is a real problem in online education. Of course, they should have been culled out by intake, but I digress...

I would spend the first third of each course identifying each group, and for the rest I would use my time more efficiently by engaging directly with those in the second group.

Now you have given me a name, I am going to call them "swing learners". Thanks!

I think that not listening a poor performer's opinion too carefully on any subject is generally good advice.

exactly. Where is no glory in getting star performance from star performers. The glory is in getting it from bad performers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com