PIPs Fail Because Conflict-Averse Managers Initiate Them Three Months Too Late
Chandra Narayanan · Chandra Narayanan: Top 5 Lessons from Leading Analytics at Facebook | E1126 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Mar 13, 2024 · at 1:09:16
Chandra Narayanan, former Facebook head of analytics and Sequoia Chief Data Scientist, discusses why performance improvement plans (PIPs) consistently fail in tech companies.
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“I think when you put up someone on a performance plan, it's three months too late. It's three months before you should have intervened and tried to do the right thing. What happens most of the times is that people put them on the improvement plan when they've already decided there's no chance of success. And that is why it doesn't work. If you think there's a twenty-plus, if you think there's a 70% chance of there, a 60% chance of them succeeding and you put them on a performance plan, then it might work. But what ends up happening is that we time it so badly. We time it at 10% or five percent or not even one percent. And I think it's the timing which is a problem. And most managers take too late to interview. And so, and they're not willing to have honest direct conversations. And because they don't have direct conversations, it becomes that much harder. Largely because most of us are conflict-averse and we won't have those conversations. And it becomes too late.”
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