Are there unintended consequences in the the shift to a culture of “high performance”?
I am gathering insight on a pet theory of mine. The theory is that creating/maintaining a culture of high-performance can have unintended consequences – particularly as it relates to talent management. I find this especially true in difficult economic times when reductions-in-force are more commonplace. For example… I’ve noticed that in organizations that actively manage out mediocre performers, the negative impact of layoffs, on morale, tends to be higher than in organizations that don’t as aggressively remove underperformers. The rationale being that in these high-performing cultures, employees are less able to rationalize the reductions as a “weeding out” of the poor performers. I am not arguing against high-performing cultures. Instead, I am trying to validate my views that there are elements of talent management – in high performing organizations – that need to be uniquely managed and planned for. These actions differ from organizations that have less-than-aggressive performance
