Talk:Vitality curve

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The opening sentence[edit]

The opening sentence doesn't seem particularly clear to me:

"A vitality curve is a leadership construct, assigning credited with certain proportions of the production to proportions of a producing population"

Could someobody reword it so that it makes more sense? 80.195.186.192 22:15, 28 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

NPOV Contentions[edit]

If the article is titled "Vitality curve," why is the biased term "rank and yank" used throughout instead?

I hope someone who knows about this will make the last section NPOV. Does rank and yank always fail? Can it work for a limited time? If so, maybe the section could be called "limits of rank and yank". Is GE still using it? If so, does anyone know how their results are now? And is there any real evidence that it encouraged dishonesty at Enron, or could the criminal executives there have been dishonest from the start? —JerryFriedman 22:14, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

On Enron, there were actually a lot of people who were dishonest in that whole mess, not just the execs but others, too. Structural and corporate-cultural issues take part of the blame, though crooked behavior on the part of the execs also does. EventHorizon talk 20:15, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Just a fly-by note, because I happened to read this - the last section is hopelessly POV, and someone needs to revise it. I've tagged the article with an NPOV notice. Snowspinner 02:49, Feb 7, 2005 (UTC)

Not really. I wrote that section, and I don't think it's POV. The following are undebated facts:

  • The most famous example of "rank-and-yank" is Welch's annual firing of 10% of his workforce,
  • This is founded on the assumption that 10% of any human workforce will be nonproductive,
  • This assumption is fallacious: removing the chaff will increase average quality... until a point where almost none of the workforce is nonproductive. Then firing people based on "rank" is no longer useful.
  • At which point, "rank-and-yank" becomes counterproductive, resulting in office politics/gossip and unethical behavior. (In general, few people care when you fire nonproducers, but once you start firing productive people, a lot of bad things happen, because the people who remain 1, wonder if they will be next, and 2, have to work longer hours to fill the gaps. Companies are most productive when there is loyalty; the fact is that loyalty begins eroding when people think they might get unfairly canned or demoted, not when it actually happens. The mind is probabilistic like that.)

EventHorizon talk 16:46, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Interesting. So, when an organization has taken a wrong turn, made a bad decision, what would prevent the clear-sighted dissenters from being identified as the non-productive 10 percent? Nothing, I gather... -- Geo Swan 15:54, July 10, 2005 (UTC)
1) "I wrote that section, and I don't think it's POV." That statement in itself is POV!
2) There is a flaw in your argument however, in that you seem to make the assumption that aside from the 10% firings, there will be no other changes made to the workforce. A company using a system that cleans out the bottom performers every year would likely fill the vacancies soon thereafter, probably adding back to the 10% every year. Employees also retire, promote, transfer, quit, are fired for other reasons throughout the year, etc.. The empty spots are filled with new employees from 20:70:10 stock and the cycle repeats, improving the workforce with every iteration, but never perfecting the workforce. C performers can never be fully removed, as new may be added at any time, to be weeded out in the next cycle.
You should probably add to the reasoning: top 20%'s eventually retire, perhaps moving 70%'s up to fill their positions, and 10%'s might be hired to fill in the chain. So the constant removing of the chaff could be considered adapting to a constantly changing workforce, organizing chaos. It may be considered negative reinforcement, but the people that survive in those circumstances are the candidates that are most likely to improve the company. leeach 17:05, August 6, 2005 (UTC)

It's certainly not justified to say that "rank and yank" in general fails just because it failed in one particular case. EventHorizon's comments make the assumption that the world is unchanging, that the people who are productive today are the people who are productive tomorrow, that fresh blood doesn't help that much to revitalize an organization, and that a side effect is too much interpersonal competitive pressure which has a negative effect on productivity. I find it hard to believe that the many companies actually employing the rank-and-yank technique (which are mentioned in the first reference [1] would agree with EventHorizon's analysis (even though it may be, in the end, spot on - I wouldn't express an opinion either way).

The article also doesn't present any evidence that this technique didn't work out well for GE.

But GE is now crashing and burning but hard to say how much is due to past poor decisions of managers trying to look good. Problem is managers don't usually confess to their mistakes in management decisions or policy, especially publicly.Rkcannon (talk) 00:35, 18 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

To fix this article, I would recommend:

  • Say whether or not GE is still using this technique, and what happened after 2001.
  • Find other case studies, especially any that ended differently.
  • Find some statements from advocates of rank-and-yank and quote or summarize them, citing sources. Balance this with the same thing from critics. The views of both sides need to be treated as claims, not repeated as fact. As it stands, the claims of one side are being reported as facts, and the other side is either not mentioned or is dismissed as "ideologues". (That word is a pejorative and should not be used except to describe the views of third parties.)

--Beland 07:02, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Merger/rename?[edit]

It seems to me that "Vitality curve" should be treated as a part of Pareto principle a.k.a. the "80-20 rule" or the "law of the vital few". Rank-and-yank should be treated either as a part of the same article or under the heading "rank-and-yank"; I think I would mildly prefer the latter, since it's distinct and is likely to have a fair amount of material specifically devoted to it. -- Beland 03:59, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Welch[edit]

did J Welch really do as well as the article says ? maybe not http://seekingalpha.com/article/865351-why-jack-welch-is-overrated-and-why-you-should-buy-ge http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/10/ges-jack-welch-on-bls-book-cooking/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.195.10.169 (talk) 23:55, 7 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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Page doesn't really explain what a vitality curve is[edit]

This article focuses on the criticism and adoption of the practice, while spending almost no time explaining what it is.

At the very least, I'd expect to see a trivial example (and diagram?) showing how it is done. Having read the article, I'm none-the-wiser how I would implement it.

86.16.90.216 (talk) 06:33, 4 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

What does crime or academia have to do with Pareto's principal?[edit]

From the article on Pareto's Principal: Pareto's observation was in connection with population and wealth. Pareto noticed that approximately 80% of Italy's land was owned by 20% of the population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle

Furthermore, in 1937, Joseph Juran stated that this principle also applied to defects, so that 80% of the problems are caused by 20% of the defects. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2565827/#:~:text=In%201937%2C%20Joseph%20Juran%20stated,called%20this%20the%20Pareto%20Principle. 2603:3024:602:BB00:A857:A371:EF08:A13D (talk) 23:23, 19 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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