We should be creating a SkyNet of Workplace Performance improvement to eliminate bad management. Why not? We have all the workplace performance metrics, right?

What if you could install an artificial intelligence designed to root out bad managers and improve organizational culture and performance—just as ruthless as SkyNet* from the Terminator franchise, but with a programmed mission to optimize engagement, motivate innovation, engage your people, and ignite team growth?

While SkyNet wanted to eliminate humanity, imagine an AI determined to extinguish toxicity, mediocrity, and demotivation in leadership to make the workplaces better environments for the workers and thus more productive and innovative through accountability, coaching and training. The implications for organizational development are immense and the situation does seem pretty possible with all the metrics we use around workplace leadership.

Could this person choose to manage and lead more effectively? Sure! (from Perplexity / not real.)

After all, most organizations have easy access to management effectiveness metrics like:

1. Team Engagement Scores – The level of employee engagement by team, typically gathered through regular surveys.

• Why It Matters: High engagement strongly correlates with higher productivity, customer satisfaction, retention, innovation, motivation and other factors.

2. Team Productivity and Goal Achievement – The percentage of team or individual goals successfully reached within a set period.

• Team Velocity & Task Completion and similar indicators: Volume and pace of work completed (e.g., story points, tasks, deliverables per cycle). There can be many measures of innovation and implementation and accomplishments.

• Why It Matters: Directly reflects a manager’s ability to drive execution and focus effort on priority outcomes.

3. Employee Satisfaction & Net Promoter Score – Employees’ willingness to recommend their manager or workplace to others outside or inside the organization, reflective of morale and leadership quality. These scores can be calculated via pulse surveys and other tools, revealing key strengths and risks for each manager.

4. Turnover and Retention Rates – The rate at which employees voluntarily leave a manager’s team or the organization.

• Why It Matters: High turnover can indicate problematic management styles, lack of support, or toxic environments. High retention, conversely, signals effective leadership and team health. As a rough estimate, the cost of an employee leaving roughly averages their total cost of salary and benefits, or higher.

5. Promotion and Internal Mobility Rate – The frequency of team members advancing within the company.

• Why It Matters: Indicates a manager’s ability to develop talent and prepare direct reports for growth roles. This is often a very good driver of employee engagement and performance / productivity.

6. Absenteeism – Frequency and duration of unscheduled absences among team members.

• Why It Matters: High absenteeism is a warning sign of low engagement, burnout, or ineffective management. And when people do not show up, you are paying them for non-performance. 

7. Quality of Work & Defect Rates – Rate of errors, rework, or defect occurrences in team output. With the quality improvement initiatives of the past 25 years, there are a lot of these metrics as well as performance standards in most organizations. There are many ways to benchmark performance across different companies in the same industries and these data are commonly used evaluation metrics.

• Why It Matters: Balances speed with accuracy, providing insight into a manager’s standards and coaching effectiveness compared to other departments or other organizations.  

8. Feedback & Check-in Completion – How reliably managers conduct one-on-one check-ins and give timely feedback inside and outside of the formal performance appraisal processes. Mentoring and coaching fall into these metrics.

• Why It Matters: Regular, meaningful feedback is a hallmark of effective managers and crucial for employee improvement and motivation. See this blog post for some ideas and tips to improve performance feedback.

9. Conflict Resolution and Team Climate – Ability to handle disputes, ensure psychological safety, and facilitate team cohesion to keep teams focused on the key performance metrics and desired outcomes.

• Why It Matters: Teams managed by leaders skilled in conflict resolution are more collaborative and resilient.

Bad Managers Destroy Performance – and they sometimes do not know why it happens!

Studies consistently reveal that direct managers account for up to 70% of variance in team engagement scores. The cost of disengaged employees is staggering—estimated to cost U.S. companies over $450B annually, with turnover, absenteeism, and lost productivity often stemming from poor leadership relationships. (From Gallup’s “State of the Global Workplace: 2025 Report and other sources.)

Some general statistics show that teams with great managers are:

• 59% more likely to be engaged;

• 56% more likely to be productive; and

• 50% less likely to leave their organization.

and we have known these things for decades. I could provide a VERY long list of the economic impacts along with customer service and retention data and so many other metrics.

The need is VERY clear: eliminate bad management,
and you accelerate innovation, engagement, and profit.

And from a management development viewpoint, even Perplexity knows what the Best Managers DO to impractical the measures above. This is not rocket surgery but about getting these managers to meet pretty straightforward and well-known behavioral criteria.

The most effective managers use deliberate, research-backed approaches to excel across key effectiveness metrics. Here’s a general list of what the best managers consistently do to move the needle on each metric, Note that doing some of these more better will generate more of the positive impacts on the metrics above, and different managers can do different things.

Note that “bad managers” often do not know what they could choose to do differently. Their negative impacts are simply side-effects of the behaviors that they choose to do. Our SkyNet approach is really designed to focus on giving them better and more supportive feedback about their behaviors! Killing them off is simply too expensive with too many negative side effects — it is better to coach and support them to simply perform like better managers!

1. Engagement Scores becomes more important. These managers

• Regularly communicate vision and purpose so each team member feels their work matters.

• Solicit input and act on feedback to strengthen psychological safety and inclusion.

• Recognize achievements publicly and consistently, using data and personal examples to back up recognition.

2. Goal / Task Completion and innovation of new ideas

• Set clear, measurable priorities so everyone knows what success looks like and encourage teamwork for work completion.

• Break down large goals into actionable steps and track progress in real time. Do simple project management.

• Hold people accountable with support, not blame, coaching through obstacles rather than penalizing setbacks.

Not every effort will be perfectly implemented but the idea is to encourage continuous continuous improvement.

3. Employee Satisfaction

• Build authentic relationships through empathy and understanding individual drivers. Ask. Wander Around and Listen.

• Regularly check in one-on-one, discussing both progress and personal well-being (not just work deliverables).

• Advocate for employee development and quality of work-life for your people — and keep focusing on well-being with upper leadership and cross-functional peers.

4. Turnover / Retention

• Invest in your own professional growth with personalized coaching and training and offer training, mentoring and coaching to your people. Feeling workplace support and growth are prime drivers of reduced turnover and personal growth and development.

• Clarify career paths and honestly discuss advancement options, building retention through expectation management. Keep people in jobs they can DO well but also allow them to grow if the choose to.

• Address toxic behaviors rapidly to protect team morale and trust.

5. Promotion / Internal Mobility Rate

• Spot and nurture talent, assigning stretch projects and providing exposure to other departments. Minimize the risks of failure and create more learning opportunities.

• Give constructive, specific supportive feedback that builds readiness for broader roles.

• Sponsor high-potential employees in formal and informal internal talent discussions.

6. Absenteeism

• Promote work-life balance by respecting boundaries and modeling healthy behaviors.

• Offer flexibility around remote work, time off, and shift swaps where possible. Allow for remote working per your organization’s frameworks. The data around remote or hybrid working is pretty amazingly positive for most organizations. See the Stanford Report (2024) for example.

• Create a supportive culture where people feel safe to vocalize stressors or request help. Make collaboration and cooperation “a thing!”

7. Quality / Defect Rates – measured performance standards

• Set clear standards and expectations at the outset. People perform better when they know precisely what is required.

• Coach frequently on both sub-standard as well as good performance and look to share best practices, offering timely correction and positive reinforcement. Note that exemplary performers do things differently to generate better results but not all performers know those behaviors.

• Encourage peer learning, so expertise spreads and backup is always available. Peer support to attain shared goals is a powerful motivator so look to reduce competition to improve results.

8. Feedback / Check-ins – regular and for everyone!

• Schedule regular, high-quality one-on-ones focused both on tasks and development. REGULAR, and not just the once-a-year evaluation. People need to know where they are on an hourly basis so providing weekly feedback is motivational and can help them better solve problems and perform at higher levels.

• Deliver praise and corrective feedback in the moment—don’t save it for annual reviews where people are worried about what they might hear. Minimize surprise and make the annual session a goal-setting process to define desired outcomes and the needed support.

• Ask for upward feedback to reinforce a growth mindset and demonstrate humility. You can always ask how they see you doing and what you might do differently.

9. Conflict Resolution / Team Climate – Do NOT tolerate poor performance

• Intervene early in conflicts, mediating openly and impartially.

• Model vulnerability and transparency in leadership, admitting mistakes and inviting others to do the same.

• Foster open dialogue during meetings to uncover and address latent tensions.

Best managers don’t just supervise—they coach, sponsor, shield, and inspire. They make intentional daily choices, backed by data and empathy, to lift every member and metric of their teams. Their impact is reflected not just in outcomes, but in the loyalty and energy of those they lead.

The Power of a Bold Name for your SkyNet Program

If SkyNet represented an existential tech threat to humanity, why not flip the script and develop an equally memorable AI brand for your organization to show that you are going to use AI in some effective ways to make improvements—a “LeadNet” or something similar. I asked Perplexity to give me some examples:

1. AI-Enhanced Leadership Transformation

• Uses AI algorithms to assess leadership potential, provide tailored coaching, and recommend growth opportunities. It helps underperforming managers either improve or move on, based on actionable, data-driven feedback.

2. AI-Driven Manager Coaching & Attrition Analytics

• Integrates AI tools for real-time coaching, sentiment analysis, and predictive analytics to identify toxic management patterns. Coaches managers toward growth while flagging those resistant to improvement for possible attrition planning.

3. Personalized AI Leadership Development

• Delivers adaptive learning pathways, AI coaching bots, and personalized feedback based on managerial strengths and weaknesses. Encourages self-improvement and authentic emotional intelligence in management roles.

4. Performance Management Reinvented with AI

• Combines intelligent analytics, ongoing feedback, and automatic goal tracking. The system surfaces coaching needs and helps identify managers who continually score poorly on peer and team feedback for further support or transition.

5. AI Strategy for Proactive Attrition Management

• Leverages AI to proactively recognize disengaged or problematic leaders before issues escalate. Facilitates coaching interventions and, if necessary, enables ethical attrition processes to maintain a healthy work culture.

6. AI-Enabled Continuous Improvement for Managers

• Automates meeting transcription, delivers actionable coaching insights, and benchmarks management quality. Provides ongoing feedback loops that nudge improvement and reduce tolerance for persistent mismanagement.

7. Next-Gen AI Leadership & Feedback Labs

• Real-time analysis of communication and decision-making. Offers simulated leadership scenarios for skills practice with personalized AI feedback—reshaping how organizations develop and assess management talent.

Notable Real World Programs & Courses

Key Features of AI-Driven Management Development Programs

• Personalized coaching, leadership simulations, and skill assessments powered by AI.

• AI-powered feedback systems to uncover and address toxic behavior.

• Predictive analytics for early detection of disengagement or potential attrition.

• Real-time adaptive training and role-play scenarios to practice key management skills.

By implementing these positive, AI-driven programs, organizations can not only upskill managers but also systematically address and phase out ineffective leadership, fostering a healthier and more productive workplace.

How AI Tools Target Toxic Leadership

Existing AI tools now analyze performance data, engagement survey results, real-time feedback, even communication styles to pinpoint problems and opportunities. There are many indicators of ineffective management—micromanagement, bias, inconsistent feedback, or demotivating behaviors. With predictive power, your AI can:

• Flag problem managers in real time; 

• Suggest targeted coaching or removal actions;

• Monitor improvement and provide better performance feedback

• Make your organizational improvement efforts visible and make coaching the norm. (Note: I am NOT a coach and do NOT want to be a coach!)

• Promote leaders who truly elevate teams.

What we are suggestion is a rewriting of your Leadership Playbook, building on your existing performance culture and using some relatively simple tools to change the nature of performance feedback to your managers. The vast majority (I could easily say ALL) can do things differently to have many more positive impacts on their people and address that Gallup Gap of 79% disengagement.

Imagine launching “PerforMAX” or “VirtuBoss” at your next company all-hands meetings. Imagine how the workers would react to a REAL initiative to improve management practices over time. Another choice is to implement it in some small test areas where the existing managers are good but not great and evaluate the results.

“Meet the AI that ensures only the best lead our teams. Our goal is to have more high-performing people and a more engaged and inspired leadership.”

Pair it with a fact-driven message:

“Organizations like ours with top-tier managers see 147% higher earnings per share versus their competitors. Let’s become one of those organizations, together.” (You can EASILY find metrics showing performance improvement results that make a strong positive statement of possible impacts. Your organization will not be the first to address the impacts of really improving leadership practices and the AI is only a feedback tool.)

Rebranding AI as a champion for people growth changes the conversation—from “robots replacing jobs” to “robots elevating leaders.” The right name signals your commitment to continuous continuous improvement, transparency, and world-class results. You will be addressing issues that are common to the vast majority of the workers and offering your managers some REAL tools for improvement.

The rest is their choice. We will give them some really solid “considered alternatives” focused on performance.

Note: You MUST improve the effectiveness of the meetings
your company spends so much time on. But that is another blog…

With the right tech, the right metrics, and a memorable name, your organization won’t just survive. It will thrive in so many different ways. Bad managers simply drag things down. So, FIX it!

—

For the FUN of It!

Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools.
Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant who is trying to retire!! He now lives in Cuenca, Ecuador.

You can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com
Learn more about Scott at his LinkedIn site.

Square Wheels® are a registered trademark of Performance Management
and cartoons have been copyrighted since 1993,

© Performance Management Company, 1993 – 2025

* Note: There is no evidence of “SkyNet” being a registered trademark for the fields of:Performance Improvement Solutions (e.g., workplace productivity tools, consulting) or Organizational Development (e.g., leadership training, team effectiveness solutions).