“I can’t abide shrubs that are wrongly chosen for a position and have to be butchered at least once a year. It is very institutional. You see a lot of that happening in public gardens.” William Martin, gardener

This butchering of plants happens because somewhere along the way, maybe because it was popular at the time, someone has planted the wrong plant and now they have to find a way to control it. They don’t want to feel that the time and effort they’ve put in has been wasted so they keep persevering rather than admit they got it wrong. That would mean having to potentially re-arrange the entire garden and, since that is too much work, they would prefer to avoid doing it.

The same thing happens when we hire someone who is wrong for the organisation or is simply wrong for that job role. Once a year we then come in and “butcher” them during their performance review for not performing to the standard we required or for not conforming to the acceptable norms of the organisation. Many managers believe it is less work to do this than it is to re-arrange the job roles and they certainly don’t like admitting they made a hiring mistake. Instead, they tend to blame the person for simply being themselves which is a bit like a gardener blaming a plant for growing the way nature intended it!

A performance review shouldn’t be about doing the equivalent of a major pruning. It should focus on further developing an already good performer. If they aren’t performing, for whatever reason, you don’t try to fix all the issues at once. When you over prune a plant you leave it with a lot of exposed areas where disease can enter. When you do the same to people you allow the disease of disengagement to take hold. Neither are good.

Tags: Leadership and gardening, Leadership and management, Leadership skills, Leading is like gardening, Performance reviews