Firing the Top Percent of the Class
An Old Lesson from Dr. Deming About Variation in People and Systems
THE AIM for today’s newsletter is brought to you by a recent Newsweek article that caught my attention. Headline reads: Companies Are Quickly Firing Gen Z Employees. Within we learn a recent survey conducted of 1,000 business leaders in August has revealed that 1 in 6 US businesses are hesitant to hire new graduates, while a symmetrically-curious 6 in 10 had already fired new graduates they hired this year! 75% of survey respondents said that some or all of their new hires were unsatisfactory.
Cited reasons?
Graduates come unprepared for “structured” work.
Generally unmotivated
Possess poor communication skills
Lacking in professionalism
Further in the article, an HR consultant Bryan Driscoll offers that the burden to close these gaps is more on the employers than higher-ed:
Driscoll said employers are now asking for skills not prioritized by the education system. When graduates subsequently fall short, companies are not investing in training either…
“Instead of teaching new hires what they want from them, employers are simply firing workers for not being prepared. It's a cyclical issue that reflects systemic failure on multiple levels…”
“Companies are failing workers by not taking responsibility for training and hoping that a college degree can substitute,” Driscoll said. “It never has and, in our current system, it never will.”
All of this reminded me of the biting commentary Dr. Deming offered while facilitating the Red Bead Experiment at one of his four day workshops. I’ve mentioned it before, but here’s the audio clip:
Transcript:
Stay in business for the best workers, no doubt about it: that'll do it.
We're going to work two shifts. Have to keep up production! Two shifts proceed on this first shift. Keep the place open to the best workers. Fantastic contribution to management!
Some companies take the top percent of the class! Serves them right…
Source: Red Bead Experiment with Dr. W. Edwards Deming, The Deming Institute YouTube Channel. (mark 6:52).
I find the Newsweek article puts an ironic spin on this for me: management is now firing the top percent of the class…
I digress: Why did Dr. Deming make this remark? In the context of the Red Bead Experiment, he is slyly teaching a lesson about how variation in systems applies more broadly than the on the production floor: it also applies to systems of learning and people themselves. Consider:
Are all college graduates the same?
Is there variation between them?
What does “above-average” mean?
What does “top of the class” mean?
In his remark, Dr. Deming is mocking management’s fixation on using an abstraction as a substitute for thinking and managing their operation as a system. For them, colleges and universities are just another supplier whose products need to be sorted good from bad. Are they “in spec” for the job, or “out-of-spec” ? “Above-average” or “below-average” ? “Red Beads” or “White Beads” ?
Deeper question: Is there also variation in the good?
Friend and mentor Dr. Bill Bellows offers this example: What do you call a person who has graduated at the top of their class from medical school? What do you call them if they graduated at the bottom of their class? Who would you see for major surgery? Who would you see for a hangnail?
Most new participants to the Red Bead Experiment come away with the mostly-correct impression that the system is responsible for the red beads being in the bucket and not the workers who can only “follow the procedure”. It takes a while to appreciate that the simulation distracts them from considering whether the white beads they delivered were in a condition the customer would accept:
As happens in some iterations of the simulation, some of the top workers from the first day end up fired by the third day because they had some rotten luck: through no fault of their own, the system’s probabilities and variation worked against them and they ended up the losers.
Same difference for the unmotivated and unprofessional new graduates, I think. All those years of rating and ranking and exceeding expectations in school worked against them on the job. C’est la vie.
Rx? Improve.
If variation is, as Dr. Deming teaches, a pervasive phenomena, what can we do about it? The first thing is to understand whether the variation is “routine” or “extraordinary”. If the quality of new graduates has declined, why do we believe that? As Deming contemporary Peter Scholtes asked his clients: Did you hire dead wood, or live wood and killed it?
In other words, look at the way you onboard. Look at how you design the work for people to do: is it fun and engaging, respecting their skills and talents, or dull and “pay your dues” drudgery that they can’t wait to escape? Is their intrinsic motivation squelched at every turn, or engaged with opportunities to move to roles that better suit them? Is there a robust culture of learning where employees are supported to grow intellectually and acquire new skills, or is this rigorously managed for only “acceptable” topics? Moreover, do people enjoy the work they do?
Heavy work, ahead, and no instant pudding is on-tap to solve this. However, this is the work that new hires could be mentored to learn and become tomorrow’s enlightened leadership.
What do you think? Drop a line in the comments below.
I'm realizing that lack of training is a serious problem everywhere. And every time you ask management why training (or anything else) can't be done, the answer is always "we're too busy." There's never a time when everyone isn't too busy. So I'm trying to figure out what this thing is. What are the real causes behind this "busy inaction" disease, and what can be done about it?