David Bianconi thought he was doing the right thing when he saw an employee doing well and rewarded the individual effort with a promotion. But in a number of cases, he ended up ruining the person’s ability to help Progressive Medical Inc.
“I saw people flourish at one level, and when we tried to move them to another level, they would fall apart,” says Bianconi, founder and CEO at the provider of managed care services.
“I have ruined a couple people and I blame myself for that. I put them in a position not to succeed but to fail. I understand it now, but unfortunately, it was at their expense. It took me several episodes to realize that being loyal to people does not necessarily mean promoting them. There are other ways to be loyal.”
There are also other ways to put your people in a position to move up in your organization. One of the most important lessons Bianconi learned was that just because you can promote someone today doesn’t mean you should do it today.
“If there is a hole to fill, there are options of how you can fill that hole,” Bianconi says. “You may not need to go out and hire someone and fill that hole with an external person today. Or you may not need to promote someone internally to fill that position today. Another option may be to take someone you think might be a good candidate for that position and allow them to go into that position and visit there for several months and see how they do. If they don’t perform, the act of moving them back to where they were is much easier if you’ve never consecrated them with some title that says they own this domain.”
This philosophy of patience with moving employees up the ladder has paid dividends for the $188 million company. It’s reduced the number of promotion mishaps by making sure employees are ready to move up. It also provided a framework for Bianconi to anoint Kevin Banion as the company’s president and chief operating officer in January.
“When I named him president, I told him, ‘Kevin, I need to make you the president. You’ve been running the company; you just haven’t had the title,’” Bianconi says. “Kevin had already been doing it. The only thing that changed was his title and he got a little boost in pay. He had been doing the things he needed to do and I have a great person who is very talented and proven in that position.”
Here’s how Bianconi eased the pressure of advancing in the company of nearly 500 employees by slowing down the process to make sure employees are ready to move up.
