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The rational response from employees to stack ranking is immediately (or ASAP) quit upon receiving a low-ranking slot. Company is (ostensibly) happy to get rid

The rational response from employees to stack ranking is immediately (or ASAP) quit upon receiving a low-ranking slot. Company is (ostensibly) happy to get rid of a "low performer", employee finds their market value, everyone is theoretically happy. Ironically, if your hiring process (arguably a difficult aspect of management and leadership) is firing on all cylinders, stack ranking is blind to that, and thus strongly disincentivizes improving your hiring practices in the first place. It's a perverse form of letting bugs slip through careful coding and design practices when they are far cheaper to fix, and letting them loose into production facing customers when they are way more expensive (monetarily and soft factors) to resolve, but in the hiring and retention realm. I learned about stack ranking the hard way. When I quit, it caused all sorts of commotion, culminating in the CEO personally calling me to nicely and politely ask me to stay, far contrary to my worst-slot ranking would suggest. That opened my eyes to its drawbacks. I can see a use case for stack ranking as a leadership tool in situations with clear featherbedding, but when used as a permanent policy it's management cargo-culting at best, Jack Welch fetishization at worst.

Mithaldu 10y ago
What did you end up telling the CEO?
- yourapostasy 10y ago
  Politely declined; burned no bridges. I already accepted an offer by the time I quit that added 50% to my base pay, with bonuses on top and lots of career development benefits (pay to send me to speaking engagements at conferences, for example), and with a direct manager who was eager for my contributions. In that particular instance, stack ranking's practical effect served to severely depress my skill base's value and my compensation plan, as there were several fast similar offers, and the frantic response from the stack rank-using company's management layers highlighted they had a good idea of the value I was delivering. The CEO understood both the surface and subtext, after some very good salesmanship got nowhere. If any readers ever find themselves in a similar situation, do not explain the details of why you refuse to stay on, as that only cracks opens a door to high-pressure negotiation. Easiest way out is simply state you already accepted a very attractive offer, if pressed for details respond the other company swore you to not disclose the terms to anyone, and stay polite. Like a proper diet and working out where there is no substitute for doing the work, stack ranking rarely if ever substitutes for accomplished, attentive leadership (as contrasted with tactical aspects of management, a core prerequisite to said leadership). It is a useful scalpel if/when wielded properly, and is best left in the toolbox otherwise.

Mithaldu 10y ago

What did you end up telling the CEO?

yourapostasy 10y ago
Politely declined; burned no bridges. I already accepted an offer by the time I quit that added 50% to my base pay, with bonuses on top and lots of career development benefits (pay to send me to speaking engagements at conferences, for example), and with a direct manager who was eager for my contributions. In that particular instance, stack ranking's practical effect served to severely depress my skill base's value and my compensation plan, as there were several fast similar offers, and the frantic response from the stack rank-using company's management layers highlighted they had a good idea of the value I was delivering. The CEO understood both the surface and subtext, after some very good salesmanship got nowhere. If any readers ever find themselves in a similar situation, do not explain the details of why you refuse to stay on, as that only cracks opens a door to high-pressure negotiation. Easiest way out is simply state you already accepted a very attractive offer, if pressed for details respond the other company swore you to not disclose the terms to anyone, and stay polite. Like a proper diet and working out where there is no substitute for doing the work, stack ranking rarely if ever substitutes for accomplished, attentive leadership (as contrasted with tactical aspects of management, a core prerequisite to said leadership). It is a useful scalpel if/when wielded properly, and is best left in the toolbox otherwise.