I don't think he meant let those people hang around being disruptive. Just don't structure policy around them. If they are outliers in that respect, then will any policy you come up with make those people productive? Will it have overall positive benefit or will it damage the ability for the other 95% to work?
If you have 95% of your workforce who want to succeed and 5% of your workforce who are "slackers', you can provide tools to help those who want to succeed and fire the slackers. On the other hand, you can force through workflow policies that force the slackers to do minimal work while frustrating and slowing down the workflow of the rest of the staff who want to excel.
As well, the more freedom you give to those staff who want to excel, the more rope you give those staff who will not to hang themselves with. Force them to jump through hoops to show that they are working and they will do what they can to hide the fact that they're not. Give them free reign to slack off and they will not have false metrics to hide behind, nor will they feel the need to hide so much.
I agree you should fire the slackers.
But that is a policy, and you've focused on them and structured it around dealing with them, which goes against what he just said you should do :)
I think that he means do not do things like create a process that everyone must follow, full of red tape, simply because your worst employees cannot perform a task correctly.
If you have 95% of your workforce who want to succeed and 5% of your workforce who are "slackers', you can provide tools to help those who want to succeed and fire the slackers. On the other hand, you can force through workflow policies that force the slackers to do minimal work while frustrating and slowing down the workflow of the rest of the staff who want to excel.
As well, the more freedom you give to those staff who want to excel, the more rope you give those staff who will not to hang themselves with. Force them to jump through hoops to show that they are working and they will do what they can to hide the fact that they're not. Give them free reign to slack off and they will not have false metrics to hide behind, nor will they feel the need to hide so much.