Mark and Charley’s Performance Review

By Keith Schmitz

Gentlemen come in, have a seat and oh by the way, please close the door.

We are going to take the rather unusual step of giving you a joint performance review. On top of that, you haven’t had one so it is about time.

To be honest with you, we have to be somewhat critical about your lack of contribution to our organization, in this case being the Milwaukee metro area. Maybe that was misstated. Make that no contribution.

As you know, or maybe you don’t, for any organization to succeed it has to work together as team. Metro Milwaukee has a lot going for it; a hard working and smart labor force, a great place to raise a family, a collection of leading universities, great cultural and entertainment attractions, and bunch of other attributes. Yeah things are not perfect. Poverty is a big problem, so is crime and we need more people to move here.

But one reason why we cannot get traction on any of these challenges is the team is not pulling together the way it should. You two guys have seemingly done all you can to create derision between our stakeholders.

A level of disagreement is essential to the dynamic of any organization and is healthy but there reaches a point where it is not. You have taken it way over the top and fanned rancor within our team. Like any business, while incompetence can get you dismissed, so can a profound inability to work well with others.

That includes an excessively high level of disrespect to our leadership team past and present including Dick Abdoo, Don Richards, Mike Cudahy, Tom Barrett, Marcus White and most recently Steve Jagler. Basically the position of management is when you have serious people doing serious things you don’t get in their way with petulant diatribes.

As well as throwing body blocks in the path of members of the organization trying to positive things, you lack an appreciation for forward-thinking ideas, from light rail to diversity programs to stem cell research. You fail to consider to consider alternatives to the health care crisis that has been detrimental to our organization. You have never offered up positive ideas for attacking our local problems.

In business, a sense of proportion is important and here you display extreme deficiency. Instances where you have wildly overstated the issues include alleging wide-spread voter fraud, the need for conceal and carry, Wisconsin as a tax hell and internationally advocating the invasion of Iraq and in so wasting valuable resources for no apparent reason. Your perception of situations is clouded by a wall of preconceived notions higher than the Hoover Dam.

In short, gentlemen you have failed to provide value to the organization.

On the positive side, you exhibit good personal grooming habits.

Though our policy precludes dismissal, a copy of this review will be in your file.

We hope this evaluation leads to some improvements in your performance.

Please close the door on the way out.