Malibu beach at sunset. The Yorkshire ballad "Scarborough Fair," of which there are many versions dating back hundreds of years, is about an exchange, between former lovers, of promises of rewards upon completion of impossible tasks. For example, "Ask him to find me an acre of land/Between the salt water and the sea-strand/Plough it with a lamb's horn/Sow it all over with one peppercorn." An acre of land between the salt water and the shore (sea-strand) simply does not exist. Sowing an acre with a single seed is impossible.
The impossible task is a recurring theme of poetry, mythology, literature, fable, and song. Most often, the setter of the task is an evil figure — royalty, slave master, demon, or devil. The recipient is usually the hero of the piece, and often triumphs by achieving the impossible through trickery, wit, strength, or heroism. When we hear these stories, we can easily recognize the preposterousness of the task and the evil of the taskmaster. But when we ourselves are in the place of the hero, we have a much more difficult time perceiving the impossibility of the mission we've accepted.
Photo courtesy the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) is a tool of performance management, commonly used when someone is performing below expectations. PIPs usually serve two purposes. The primary purpose of many PIPs is to provide a framework that helps supervisor and subordinate collaborate to elevate the subordinate's performance. The secondary purpose is to provide documentation for termination proceedings.
Often the first purpose is professed but fictitious. A plan is presented to the subordinate, but failure is foreordained. Documentation of failure is the true goal.
How can subordinates determine whether failure is foreordained? Here are some indicators that suggest that the true purpose of the PIP is documentation for termination.
- Objectives are essentially unachievable
- Realistic objectives are achievable. That is, given appropriate resources and time, they can be done. Some PIP objectives are simply unachievable — they are inherently impossible, or they exceed the bounds of human knowledge.
- The timeframe is unrealistic
- PIP durations are often set uniformly across the organization, independent of the nature of performance issues. One PIP might be focused on keeping more regular hours; another might be focused on repairing trust between co-workers. Keeping more regular hours might be addressed in weeks; repairing trust can require months or even years of effort. If the PIP timeframe is clearly too short for the issues to be addressed, the PIP is at risk of foreordained failure.
- Uncontrolled resource commitments
- If the subordinate is unable to obtain and defend necessary resource commitments, the plan is a fiction. A PIP that depends on resources that the subordinate can't get or keep is at risk of foreordained failure.
- Meeting the objectives isn't objectively measurable
- If determining If the PIP timeframe is clearly
too short for the issues to be
addressed, the PIP is at risk
of foreordained failurePIP execution success is subject to opinion-based debate about whether or to what extent something happened in the preferred manner, then that PIP is at risk of foreordained failure. Sometimes opinions aren't based in fact. - Plaintiffs assess achievements
- Often, the need for a PIP arises from complaints by third parties dissatisfied with the subordinate's performance — the plaintiffs. If a plaintiff assessment is the principal factor determining successful execution of the PIP, the subordinate is at risk. Because some plaintiffs view successful PIP execution as a refutation of their original complaints, they have a conflict of interest.
- Interpersonal issues are the focus
- Because relationships are inherently bilateral, both parties almost always contribute to difficulties. To assume that one party to the relationship can repair it unaided is naïve. PIPs are appropriate for interpersonal issues only if an investigation has previously determined that the other party isn't contributing to the difficulty. A PIP undertaken without such prior determination is at extreme risk of foreordained failure.
Supervisors who design PIPs for "one last try" at performance improvement are risking being perceived as having set up their subordinates for failure, unless they eliminate these factors from their PIPs. 
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you need to make this work?" Your answers can doom your effort — or make it a smashing success.
Some Hazards of Skip-Level Interviews: II- Skip-level interviews are dialogs between a subordinate and the subordinate's supervisor's supervisor.
They can be both heplful and hazardous. Here's Part II of a little catalog of the hazards.
Impasses in Group Decision Making: III- In group decision making, impasses can develop. Some are related to the substance of the issue at hand.
With some effort, we can usually resolve substantive impasses. But treating nonsubstantive impasses
in the same way doesn't work. Here's why.
Bad Trouble: Coping strategies- When Bad Trouble develops at work people make choices about coping. If they cope constructively, they
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See also Workplace Politics and Workplace Politics for more related articles.
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My blog, Technical Debt for Policymakers, offers
resources, insights, and conversations of interest to policymakers who are concerned with managing
technical debt within their organizations. Get the millstone of technical debt off the neck of your
organization!Beware any resource that speaks of "winning" at workplace politics or "defeating" it. You can benefit or not, but there is no score-keeping, and it isn't a game.
- Wikipedia has a nice article with a list of additional resources
- Some public libraries offer collections. Here's an example from Saskatoon.
- Check my own links collection
- LinkedIn's Office Politics discussion group
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