The 4 Quadrants of Employee Performance

A simple but effective way to improve your team's performance and cooperation

The Simple 4 Quadrant Analysis

This week we’re taking a break from the technical side of managing your automation company to talk about the human capital side; your most valuable resource.

If you’re more of a video learner you might want to watch my Automation AMA vlog on this subject. You can skip to 11:19 if you don’t want to watch the entire thing.

A simple technique to evaluate our staff and employees is this simple 4 quadrant analysis. It was popularized by Jack Welsh of GE but to be honest he probably stole it from someone before him. Essentially you break the quadrant into 2 axes. The vertical (Y) axis represents performance. Or how well the person does their job from a technical and quantifiable standpoint. Are they a great programmer ro do they make a lot of mistakes. Does the purchasing person find the best pricing or do they miss discounts?

The horizontal (X) axis represents values. This is how much do they believe in the mission on the company. Are they rowing the same direction as everyone? Willing to pick up slack when needed. Be careful in defining this as “work ethic” as I know some people with very high worth ethics that have low company values.

A Simpler View

Another way to look at this is to relabel the axes into a bit more simplistic terms. Those will high performance “CAN” do the work. Those how have low performance “CAN’T’. Employees with high values “WILL” do what’s required and those with low values “WON’T”.

When you put in in these simpler terms many people can related much better to each individual's traits and qualities.

Quadrant 1: Lower Left

In the lower left we have employees with low performance and low company values. These people are considered expendable. In fact it sounds harsh but they are “Useless”. They don’t get the work done and they complain about it constantly. They argue with management about rules and procedures. These are the problem children. And they need to be dealt with immediately. These employees should be given a severance and told “You will be successful somewhere, just not here.” Once gone, I guarantee you will notice an increase in happiness and morale in the rest of your staff. (Note: if they are very close to one of the axes you may give them a bit of time to improve. But if they are far from an axis you’re better off just letting them go now.)

Quadrant 2: Upper Right

In the upper right you have your “A Players” or “Rock Stars”. These are your bedrock employees. They usually get the work done correctly the first time, are on schedule and they truly believe in the mission of the company. They are ambassadors for the brand and will always go the extra mile even if it garners them no personal gain. Reward these employees. Promote them from within, give them extra responsibilities and compensation. Do not make the mistake of taking them for granted however. These are the employees who will be with you for 10+ years.

Quadrant 3: Lower Right

In the lower right quadrant you have your “C Players” or “Wrong Seat” employees. These are unique people. They try VERY hard. They believe in the company and generally are easy to manage. They just cannot get the work done or maybe they just struggle with the task. In many cases you can elevate these employees to A Players just by changing their job duties. Maybe that mechanical designer makes a lot of mistakes but he is very organized and good with customers. Maybe moving him to a Project Manager position is the answer. Get creative as these employees’ hearts are truly in the game. They just need to be put in a place where they can be more successful. I’ve had some of my (eventual) best employees move from this quadrant up to the A quadrant.

Quadrant 4: Upper Left

In the upper left quadrant we have perhaps the most perplexing and hard to deal with employees. These are the Prima Donna’s or P.A.s (Performing Assholes). We all have at least one of these. They are the genius programmer / designer / engineer / plant manager who never fails to produce superior work. They get it done on time and correctly almost every single time. They have amazing ideas and can execute flawlessly. They also are exhausting. The don’t follow procedures (they think it’s for everyone else). They don’t turn in their time sheets or log their hours. They disagree with corporate decisions that many times don’t even affect them. Basically they get the work done but the amount of time you send babysitting them is inordinate.

They are far more difficult to deal with than the Wrong Seat employees as switching technical tasks is often easier than getting a person to adopt company values. It takes a lot of personal attention to get these people to understand that eve though they are irreplaceable from a technical standpoint they are NOT from a values standpoint. These employees can be the rotten apple that infects others quickly. They see these PAs getting away with not following the rules and A players can quickly slide to the left into this category.

Personal Note: I probably would have been placed on the far right edge of this quadrant for parts of my early career. I was an excellent engineer and PM and did the work of 2 other people. I was also arrogant, unwilling to follow the rules, and had a basic disregard for authority. “What do you mean I need to fill out the 49.11b ISO form? I’m busying programing this robot. You fill out the form.”

However once you start running a company you learn you cannot exist int he quadrant for long. So, like other, I matured and stopped being the Preforming Asshole.

Using the Chart

Get your management group together (don’t go at this alone) and draw this chart on a whiteboard or create one using Excel. Now go through each of your employees and collectively discuss where they belong. Not just in a quadrant but specifically where. You may have an employee who is right on the border between two quadrants. By placing them closer or farther from an axis you can determine how easy/hard it’ll be to move them to the desired quadrant.

We used to repeat this exercise at least once a year but every 6 months would be ideal. Keep the old chart to see if you have made progress in moving employees to the desired areas.

Conclusion

You will find that some people who promote this technique tell you to work with the Useless and to fire the Prima Donna’s. While this may be true in some organizations I have found in technical companies like automation & robotics that you are better off working with the super smart people on their values than you are trying to improve both the technical and value aspects of the lower left quadrant.

Ranking is only the first (and probably easiest) step of course. Now you need an action plan on how to encourage and promote growth in your employees. More on that in a future article.

---

The Automation Navigator is brought to you by Automation AMA, a company founded and run by an industry leader in assembly, robotics and packaging. Automation AMA offers a variety of services to help you on your automation journey or to help fine tune your engineering, sales, operations and business development departments. Learn more at www.automationAMA.com or shoot me an introductory email.