I went to see the girl I'm mentoring this week (my mentee?) and was disappointed to find that she actually seemed a lot more relaxed than I was...

I guess it was partly the timing. I'd had a pretty rotten day - my plan to get my HR manager to deal with our stragglers has not only failed to solve the original problem, it’s also produced a new one: should I consign my HR manager to the 'not quite good enough’ pile too? After all, if she's no good at cracking the whip, maybe I need to find someone that is (especially as these days whip-cracking is a core competency). To make matters worse, a big client called to say they were pulling our contract (‘afraid we’re having to batten down the hatches, you know how it is’), which is going to put a big dent in our numbers. So it's fair to say I wasn't in the best of moods when I arrived for our first session.

My mentee is actually slightly older than me, which cheered me up a bit - although she's only six months into entrepreneurial life (after ten years as a corporate wage slave), so I felt there was stuff I could usefully tell her. I also liked her business, which was a relief; diplomacy isn't my strong suit, so I wasn't sure how I was going to give her advice if I thought she had a rubbish idea in the first place. Plus she seems very nice, which also helps.

However, she’d just come from a very good day (big new client win) and I’d come from a very bad one – so if anyone was in need of a glass of wine and a shoulder to cry on, it was me. Sure enough we started off talking about some of her people issues, but it wasn’t too long before we kind of drifted onto mine. To be honest, I found it quite useful – she may be inexperienced but she’s pretty smart, so she was actually a good sounding board. When you’re really close to a decision, you’re always a bit inclined to over-complicate it – sometimes you need an independent view to distinguish the wood from the trees.

And to be honest, I think I actually demonstrated an important part of being a successful entrepreneur. Starting your own business might often be called 'going it alone', or something like that, but it's actually quite the reverse. Running a company can be a lonely business, and you only succeed by utilising the talents, advice and contacts of those around you. And that means you have to be fairly shameless about asking people for help - from high-flying business leaders, to your friends and family, to random strangers you've only just met. Or even people who ask for help from you.

Anyway that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. Of course, it’s quite possible that my mentee was just a bit bemused by the whole thing – I’m guessing that when you sign up to have a mentor, you’re kind of hoping that she'll give you advice, rather than vice-versa...

secretdiary@managementtoday.com

Last week a reader who'd just seen my blog about handling stragglers emailed to suggest getting my HR manager to do some work with the pair in question, to discover what their strengths were. If it turned out they were in the wrong job, she said, it will make their departures much less painful, and it might even turn out that I could use them somewhere else in the business.

Well I thought this was fantastic advice, so on Monday morning I grabbed my HR manager and ran the idea past her. I emphasised why this was a bad time to be carrying passengers, told her that I had misgivings about these two people, and explained to her exactly what I wanted her to do (And the great thing is, this is a secret diary - so I get to pass off all your great ideas as my own! Sorry...).

I was particularly pleased with this plan because it seemed like a great way to help her to become a bit more commercial. As I may have mentioned before, my HR manager has many talents: she's very thorough, very well-organised and very empathetic - she can spot potential flashpoints a mile off (even if there isn't one, occasionally). But she does find it a bit hard to remember that her first loyalty is to the business, not the individuals within it. And since this was half-way between development and performance management, I figured it would be good practice for her.

However, the problem with this girl is that she's an incurable optimist. Admittedly, that's probably what makes her such a nice cheery sort of person. But it also means that she's developed a kind of selective deafness. No matter how many times I say: 'this person's a problem, they need to shape up or ship out', all she ever hears is: 'this person has a problem, it's up to you to make it better'. She's convinced that anything is possible with a bit of training and coaching; that the ugliest of corporate frogs can be turned into CEO Charming. Personally, I'm of the view that if someone looks like a frog and smells like a frog, chances are that they'll probably spend their lives sitting on a water-lily eating passing insects (or whatever it is frogs do).

The result is that she focuses almost entirely on development and not enough on performance. Sure enough, I watched these two people come out of their meetings with her, and they looked happy as Larry. I was hoping for at least a whiff of fear - after all, unless people understand exactly how much of a problem they have, they won't be sufficiently incentivised to solve it. Sometimes this does mean giving them a rocket - but my HR manager is so desperate to avoid upsetting people that she always ends up sugaring the pill. And that's no use to them, or to me.

I realise this is a development need on her part, but I've no time to worry about that now. I had to make sure my message wasn't getting lost in translation, so I ended up speaking to them both directly and explaining the situation. Ultimately I have no qualms about playing bad cop to her good cop, if that's what it takes...

First of all, thanks for all your letters of advice following my blog last week about dealing with stragglers. I can't tell you how great it is to spout off about my problems into the ether, and receive a string of thoughtful and practical suggestions in return (I felt briefly like a hugely self-important celebrity). I'm only sorry I can't reply to you all individually. But one point that particularly struck me was about the effect on morale - I've been worrying about unsettling the rest of the team, but as one of you rightly pointed out, firing someone can actually have a very positive effect if they've become a burden on everyone else.

In fact, inspired by your goodwill, this week I agreed to be a mentor to another girl who's just started a business. Now you might argue that a) I've got enough to worry about and b) it sounds suspiciously like the blind leading the blind. And you'd be right on both counts. But I figured that not everyone's lucky enough to be able to get advice from you lot, so it was probably the least I could do.

To be honest, I've always been a bit sceptical about mentoring. Admittedly, this is partly because I'm a closet egomaniac and always think I'm right. But it's also because there’s a big problem with mentoring, as I see it: it depends entirely on who your mentor is. This might seem like a statement of the bleedin' obvious, but I don't think everyone sees it this way; some people think it always makes sense to have a senior business person around to bounce ideas and problems off. Sorry, but I don't buy that. Unless that person has specific experience that will help me with a specific problem, I might as well ring the Samaritans. My dog's a useful sounding board, but I don't take him out for dinner once a month. After all, it's pretty unlikely that one person will be an expert on everything from strategy, to people, to finance stuff.

I've also had some bad experiences with mentors. When I first started, I had some useless bloke from Business Link, who hadn't been anywhere near a real business since 1926. I got rid of him when I persuaded a very senior guy in our industry to mentor me, but that was actually no better. He obviously knew everything there was to know about the sector, but it had also been a long time since he'd been involved in the nitty-gritty. And he was so used to telling people what to do that he just talked at me. I'd ask him about something and he'd say: 'Right, do this immediately'. I felt like I was his secretary, there to take notes - and that really isn't my style. So, useful though his contact book was, I eventually drew a line under that too.

But I think that as a result I've learned what makes a good mentor. Primarily, you should have some relevant experience, and at a relatively similar level. Second, you need to know a little bit more than they do (in the kingdom of the blind, etc). And third, you shouldn't tell them what to do. Your job is to listen to their problems, tell them about your relevant experiences, and help them talk through their options. Then they can make up their own mind in an informed way.

And personally I'm a lot more comfortable with that. It's enough hassle having responsibility for all the decisions at my own company, let alone at someone else's...

secretdiary@managementtoday.com

Previous blogs:
Handling the stragglers
Taking the rise
Breaking and Entering
The importance of Plan B
Competitive selling
The elephant in the room
Office relationships
Money troubles
I Don't Need No Bad Advice
Value creation
HR Therapy
Difficult people
Partnership Troubles
Bad debts
About Me

There's a certain type of employee that I've never really handled well. I call them stragglers: the people that you know in your heart of hearts will never quite be good enough, but are not so bad that you obviously need to get them out the door at the first possible opportunity.

It's not that I mind sacking people. I don't enjoy the process, obviously – but if they're criminally incompetent, or wholly amoral, or shockingly bone idle, then I have no qualms about the outcome; for me, these people are like a virus that's making my little baby company ill, so I need to purge it before it does any lasting damage. The problem comes with people that you're not really sure deserve to be sacked. They may not even have done anything wrong, as such – but you just can't shake the feeling that they're always going to be a bit second-rate. And that's the fastest route to having a second-rate company (and thus to me having a second-rate bank balance).

The prevailing wisdom (well, if you count business books as such) is that your choice here is very simple: if they fit the culture, you keep them and train them up; if they don't, you get rid. Now the second part's a no-brainer (as someone once said, I'd rather have a hole than an a$$hole) but it's also rare, because we don't hire many people who don't fit. For me, the issue tends to be the ones who are perfectly nice people, but just aren't as good as they seemed to be at interview.

There are two reasons why I hate this. One, it means I messed up the recruitment process – and I hate being proved wrong. Two, I know that getting them up to speed will be a lengthy process, involving substantial time and effort from people with better things to do. Frankly, I just don't have the patience to see that through, and I'm not convinced that a business of our size can afford to be doing it – particularly since in 95% of cases, they'll never end up being better than average. In fact, it just feels like you're compounding your original mistake, by wasting even more time correcting it.

I realise that you're not supposed to admit to this kind of thing. These days, every business is desperate to paint itself as a nurturing employer, which cares deeply about its staff and invests heavily in their development. But I can't help it; I just find that whole process incredibly boring and frustrating. However many fluffy HR bibles I force myself to read, I can't shake the instinct that if people need that much work, they're more trouble than they're worth. So I invariably try and palm it off on my HR manager, who invariably employs too much carrot and not enough stick, and the problem doesn’t get solved.

I decided this week that I've got at least one and possibly two stragglers at the moment. And to be honest, this is not really a good time to be carrying passengers – it's not like last year, when we were so busy that we just needed bums on seats. But you also feel a certain obligation to your staff at times like these – you don't want to be (or be seen to be) the type of company that slashes and burns as soon as it gets a bit sticky. In some ways, it’d be nice to be one of these big US companies like GE or Goldman Sachs, which always chops the bottom 10% - but you can’t really get away with that here.

The nice thing to do would be to take these two under my wing and develop them; the best thing for the business might be to get rid now. And in times like these, I’m not sure where my first loyalty should lie. Answers on a postcard...

secretdiary@managementtoday.com

Previous blogs:
Taking the rise
Breaking and Entering
The importance of Plan B
Competitive selling
The elephant in the room
Office relationships
Money troubles
I Don't Need No Bad Advice
Value creation
HR Therapy
Difficult people
Partnership Troubles
Bad debts
About Me