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Last Chance EIPs | Execution Accountability
Business Craft | 13 minute read
Full Value Sub
October 06, 2024
The Prime Directive makes every contractor’s team member accountable for executing to meet client expectations. When client expectations are not met, a contractor finds winning work at the lowest qualified price challenging. The same principle applies to team members that do not meet a contractor's expectations. Team members find keeping employment and professional growth challenging.
Businesses have a responsibility to put team members in the best position to succeed. Quality leaders, learning moments and SOPs mostly will be enough to put team members in the best position to succeed. But....
Occasionally there will be a team member that struggles embracing leadership, learning moments and SOPs. Terminating them is an efficient and easy solution. In a world where labor is scarce, terminating them may not be the best solution.
Execution Improvement Plans (EIPs) are the last tool available for contractors wanting to make a final effort to aid a struggling team member in becoming a productive team member.
An EIP is a documented tool that shows a team member’s deficiencies and outlines opportunities for improvement within their role. An EIP should outline a clear way to measure improvement with a deadline usually of 30 to 45 days with team members and 45 to 90 days with team leaders. If the team member’s attitude becomes more defiant, create a new revised EIP that notes the defiance with a timeline no later than the end of the week to improve their attitude to company expectation or face termination. (Verify with your state’s employment laws.)
Walking the Talk | EIPs are learning moments with terminal hammer. EIPs align with an execution centric culture. EIPs should be used when a team member continues to make the same mistake over and over.
Team Member Assessments nurture and support an execution centric culture that embraces mistakes and learning moments that develop experience. EIPs illustrate and confirm that making the same mistake over and over will not be and cannot be tolerated in an execution centric culture. Repeated or recurring mistakes waste labor and material while falling short of meeting contractor and client expectations.
EIPs are important to existing team members, and the team members receiving them keep the execution-centric culture aligned and healthy to all stakeholders' benefit.
EIPs should be used when a team member receives two recurring “Inconsistent” ratings on their team member assessment. Two is a rule of thumb. Situations may occur where more than two “Inconsistent” ratings are acceptable. Remember the team member assessment's goal is to nurture an execution centric culture. Inconsistent execution cannot be allowed to erode an execution centric culture. How many “Inconsistent” ratings are allowed, and constructing an effective EIP that is aligned with an execution centric culture will never be easy as reflected in the following quote.
"Decisions don’t get to the desk of the President unless they’re 49-51. I spend my days splitting hairs, but that’s the job I raised my hand for." Source: The Diplomat - Season 1 Episode 3. Contractors should insert Owner or CEO in lieu of President.
Key points of an Executive Improvement Plan (EIP)
Review Inconsistent Challenges | This should be clear with two or more “Inconsistent” ratings on their Team Member Assessment. Review notes of repeated or recurring mistakes in the “Comments” section of Team Member Assessment. Keep the challenges to no more than three.
Reinforce with Learning Moments | Clearly review how to achieve the necessary level of execution. Make sure the team member understands expectations.
Provide Deadline | Clearly define the probationary period. Note that not embracing the items outlined in the EIP can shorten the period.
Accountability | Clearly note the consequences of not embracing and addressing the challenges outlined in the EIP is termination as a team member.
EIP Illustration
Background and Context for the EIP Example Below | A trade contractor hired a person looking to change to an industry with more security and growth opportunities than the food industry. The plan was for her to work part-time, then full-time as an assistant estimator and assistant PM. The plan was for her to be fast tracked to a PM and be the face for the contractor in a new out-of-state market. Management had seen her be promoted into various sales management roles several times over the last three to five years in the food industry. She worked with restaurants from concept through construction to opening. Project management skills that were expected to transfer to construction.
Over her time with the contractor any improvement was hard to see. She was provided with training videos and mature fully developed written SOPs to reference when needed. She never seemed to reference the SOPs, and never watched one training video.
Management really needed her to work out and was hoping that an Execution Improvement Plan would help her focus and move forward. The company's owner scheduled a time with her on Monday to meet with her Friday morning. She texted him about 8:30 Thursday night saying she could not make the meeting because her girls were home from school on Friday. She didn’t know this after they had been in school for three weeks. She provided no other times she could meet the owner.
He drove back home. The owner called her at 3:00 to tell her she was terminated. She told him she was in line waiting to pick up her girls!
Note this EIP was crafted but never delivered to the team member. This is okay. You may provide a team member with an EIP, and their attitude or other challenge may deteriorate further. If so, terminate them early. Their other team members will appreciate the distraction being removed.
EIP Example
Date
RE: Execution Improvement Plan (EIP)
Dear Team Member,
Normally, reviews are done with Team Member Assessment. With the current unexpected challenges, an EIP creates a clear productive way forward.
You were hired with the expectation that you would be executing many of the non-experience centric responsibilities of a PM when Contractor’s volume increases later this year. We understand that PM cannot fully developed without experience that is developed with time and repetition.
The compressed period was aggressive for someone with no construction background. But a compressed period was required by Citadel’s operational needs and your income needs. The purpose of starting you on a part-time basis back in March was to reduce the stress and pressure caused by this compressed period. Time that has proven unproductive, and likely wasted.
Over the last couple of weeks, duties assigned to you have been reduced to basic administrative responsibilities of an assistant estimator and assistant PM. While this reduction of responsibilities has seemed to reduce the number of administrative errors, it creates major problems for the company and you. The company’s problem is you are being paid about 50% more than your current responsibilities warrant. Your problem is any transition to becoming a PM with more compensation is being pushed well into next year at the current pace. Both these challenges seem unbearable to both parties' long term.
The challenges below need to be overcome by the end of September.
Lack of Value | It seems unlikely you are giving the company 40 hours each week. We are very flexible in allowing employees to address family issues, but we expect 40 hours to be delivered each week. It is hard to regularly hear you do not have time, or you are rushed with your current workload, when you are missing meetings, and not regularly available during regular business hours when we do not see a proportional amount of activity after normal business hours making up the lost time. (FYI: Your activities across company’s tech stack are date stamped.) Last week was the first time anyone noted after hour emails from you. We are providing you with the flexibility to work the required 40 hours within your schedule, but we are paying you to work a full 40 hours each week.
Effort | You have not watched one of the training videos after the first training session was recorded. This is very hard to understand when you say you understand how to perform the task at the end of training, then say you didn’t understand the training when you are not able to execute a function where training has been received. This is one of the reasons you have repeatedly heard, “You are not asking enough quality questions.” When you are rewatching the videos, you should be asking quality questions, or you should be consistently executing tasks as you have been trained. No Citadel employee has had fully developed SOPs, training and support you have been provided. No earlier employee has struggled as much as you have struggled. Without better questions, we cannot provide better support. Help us help you.
Administrative Organization and Execution | Project Management is management of details. We are unable to begin teaching the construction specific knowledge needed from a project manager because you are struggling to consistently execute basic administrative functions. You have struggled with compiling the basic details required and consistently processing those details correctly. This struggle is unexpected and troublesome. Consistently processing operational details is a weakness of the company. You were hired to correct this weakness, not expand the weakness.
You need to significantly improve effort and value in September. You need to eliminate repeating the same failures in administrative organization and execution in September.
Details and execution are critical in successful project management. We still believe you have the skills needed to become a successful PM at Citadel. You need to show the company you will become a successful PM in the near term. Near term is defined as when the company’s volume increases later this year. Currently, we do not believe you are on track to provide the necessary support the company needs to execute the expected increase in volume.
Signed by,
Owner – CEO
Other Supervisor, if needed
Assistant Estimator and Assistant PM
Link to Walking the Talk | Nurturing a Culture of Execution | Part 3 of 4
Last Chance EIPs | Execution Accountability | Part 4 of 4
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