Effort vs. Production — Getting People On the Correct Page
Written by Jerry Roberts. Follow me on Twitter.
Change, Communication, Success

You have to love people who give 100 percent all the time. Athlete’s call it “leaving it all on the field.” There’s nothing left in the tank. You did everything you could to deliver the winning results.
Sometimes people in our organizations give this level of effort, and still fail.
What if a worker tries as hard as humanly possible, but fails on a regular basis? What should you as a leader do?
Effort vs. production
In some of our public schools we have adopted the position that a child’s self-esteem is to be protected at all costs and that effort alone is to be celebrated — even if the student gets the wrong answers on tests. Obviously, this presents a problem if we never hold the child accountable for results.
The post-school world has a far different orientation: Results are just about the whole enchilada. Effort is great, but we’re evaluated on what we deliver, not what we promise or what we try to do.
I love people who make a huge effort and give their all. I’ll bend over backwards for someone like that and give them every chance I can to succeed. However, at some point I will have to grade them on performance.
Not doing so will eventually hurt the organization and be unfair to everyone else on the payroll who do perform to standards.
Herein lies a ticklish issue with some young workers in the Gen Y (aka Millennials, Gen “We”) category. They may have been conditioned to provide effort but not be held accountable when they failed. How will they react when they enter an environment where 100% accountability is the norm?
For the Gen X or Baby Boomer manager who is expected to use the available organizational talent to accomplish goals, what does this mean if part of your team believes that just working diligently is enough to earn a paycheck and be promoted?
It means you’ll need to re-orient them or probably replace them.
Since I already know that the worker is trying hard, I want to let him know that this is appreciated. I’ll never criticize people who give their best effort. That sends the wrong message entirely, especially since many of us also employ people who never work up a sweat and only score marginally better results.
Talk it over and set a plan in motion
If you’ve got one of these high energy, high effort (but low results) workers on your team, here is my 8-point plan to try to turn things around:
- Congratulate the effort and the enthusiasm. It’s obviously important to him so don’t diminish the value of either.
- Immediately thereafter you have to discuss that, while those factors are important and appreciated, performance is geared to results and his advancement will be dependent on what he delivers.
- Ask him how he feels about that. “That’s cool” is not an answer. Ask open ended questions to draw out his opinions. He may never have been asked this question before.
- Gain agreement that in moving forward, results and effort must go hand in hand. Create a set of performance metrics that are easy to understand and ask your worker to hit a mutually agreed upon level.
- Plan for his success. Lay out his path, step by step, with him contributing to it. Does he really understand what’s required?
- Try to help him score some early victories. When he does, throw a pizza party in the office to celebrate.
- Keep him on a short leash and call for weekly meetings (make them brief) so both of you can check the numbers. You don’t really need these, but you can use them to motivate. It’s amazing what you can do to pump people up in 5 or 10 minutes.
- When he hits his quota or goal, celebrate again. Then, start the next cycle.
Accept the results and do what you need to do
If the plan works you probably won’t have to revisit the situation. Somebody who works his tail off but doesn’t deliver isn’t an administrative (discplinary) problem, they just lack some missing piece that prevents them from making good things happen. If you supply that piece you’re likely to have a valuable contributor added to your team.
If it doesn’t work, retool and try again. Like I said, I want to honor serious effort. If you can’t figure out why he still isn’t performing, consult with other managers and do everything possible to salvage him.
Should nothing change, just accept it for what it is and counsel the worker that he’ll likely do better in another field. This is often the case. That other field could even be within your organization.
Some people transfer from one department to another and undergo amazing changes. Sometimes their next supervisor just says the right words and pushes the right buttons. This is the same as a career .220 hitter changing teams and suddenly batting .300. His new hitting coach was able to find the defect in the swing and corrected it. It happens.
If no transfer is possible then termination would follow or, if you can, give the worker time to find other work and let him resign.
Small companies have more flexibility in areas like this, but some large organizations can also soften the blow. I’ve even seen some offer help in finding other work.
It’s not a perfect world and you won’t get a storybook ending every time. The main thing is to give gratitude for the effort while reinforcing the idea that results must accompany it.
It’s a system that works and may be worth a try if you’re in a situation like this.
Got an opinion?

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One Comment
Success Mindset
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