Let's be clear about the corrosive effects of avoiding this problem. A recent survey from McKinsey is fairly chilling：Keeping poor performers means that development opportunities for promising employees get blocked, so those subordinates don't get developed, productivity and morale fall, good-performers leave the company, the company attracts fewer A players, and the whole miserable cycle keeps turning. McKinsey asked people who had worked for subpart managers what it was like，and they agreed strongly that the experience“ prevented me from learning，” “ hurt my career development” “ prevented me from making a larger contribution to the bottom line, ” and “ made me want to leave the company. ”

It gets worse. Employees know who the underperformers are. They know that the top executives know who they are. So every day the top team fails to address the problem, it's sending a message: We're not up to managing this outfit. Refusing to deal with underperformers not only makes your best employees unhappy, but it also makes them think the company is run by bozos.

Why don't companies act? Some fear it would lower morale, which is nonsense. McKinsey asked thousands of employees whether they'd be“delighted”if their company got rid of underperformers, and 59% strongly agreed—jet only 7% believed their companies were actually doing it. Executives often say they leave poor performers in place because they want the company to be seen as humane. That's just more evasion of reality, of course. As Ed Michaels of McKinsey says, “ The attitude is,‘ Let's be fair to Charlie. He's been here 21 years.' But we say,‘ what about the eight people who work for Charlie? You're not being fair to them.'”Debra Duna, a senior executive at Hewlett-Packard, puts it like this:“ I feel there is no greater disrespect you can do to a person than to let them hang out in a job where they are not respected by their peers, not viewed as successful, and probably losing their self-esteem. To do that under the guise of respect for people is, to me, ridiculous. ”