How Do You Handle A Perfectionist In A Company?

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A consulting company has an employee who is a perfectionist. The company can bill clients for standard work to complete a project to the client's specifications; however, this employee wants to continue to use unbillable time to perfect the work, and considers this work to be of research benefit to the company. The employee brings valuable expertise to the company. However, the CEO wants to impress upon this individual that the company is a business, not a research organization without completely discouraging the employee's enthusiasm for their work. How have you handled perfectionists within your own organization?

Advice from a group of CEOs:

If the employee brings valuable skills that are important to the company's strategic direction it makes sense to work with the individual. Take the example of an employee who is intrigued by the potential of the company's technology and body of expertise and wants to push this. One option becomes focusing this employee on future product or service development rather than client services and restructuring compensation and incentives accordingly.

An increasing number of US and European companies allow employees in development positions 10% to 20% of their time to pursue pure research. This has been a benefit to companies like 3M who have produced many of their break-through products from this independent research. Post-it Notes is an example. Software companies also see value to this and by design allow employees time to pursue research interests and actively use employee enthusiasm and research as a strategic advantage as they develop new capabilities. At the same time, these companies create rules or guidelines to assure that the remaining 80% to 90% of these individuals' time is devoted to current business.

There may be long-term benefits to this individual's work. Why not allow the employee one day per week to focus on research, but limit the focus on pure research to this one day - as well as any evenings and weekends that they want to devote to this on their own time? This way the individual is encouraged to pursue their research ambitions, but with a framework that clearly states that the company wants 80% of the work week to be devoted to billable work.

By using this approach, you can communicate the Company's need for billable hours, but simultaneously satisfy the employee's research and perfectionist needs. The objective is to come up with a win-win solution that meets both the employee's and company's needs.

About the Author:
Sandy McMahon is publisher of Ceo2Ceos (http://Ceo2Ceos.com), a non-commercial site for executives to share best practices. He is also President of Executive Forums of Silicon Valley. With over 20 years of executive experience, Sandy has a BA from Brown, an EdM from Harvard, and an MBA from Duke.



Article Originally Published On: http://www.articlesnatch.com


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