The co-worker or subordinate that is a slacker is a large problem in any entity. These are the people that started early with the "Dog ate my homework" routine and have been at it ever since. We are going to try out a department devoted to foiling these characters. Its success will in large part depend on you providing anecdotes, success stories, pleas for help, suggestions to solve pleas for help and so forth. So, we'll give it a try for a few weeks and see what happens. I'll offer the following as a starter.

Over the years, I have seen many slackers avoid accountability. They are masters at parsing words and obfuscating or nullifying their boss's orders. Here are some suggestions as to what to do if one of these characters becomes your responsibility.

Sit them down and give them an assignment. Take as long as necessary to explain the assignment and to have them feed back to you their understanding of the assignment. You are in a negotiation and the first rule of negotiations is that the one who is in a hurry loses. Of course, your slacker is not in a hurry, for what else do they have to do? Besides, they can brag about how important they are based on how long they spend in your office. Pay no attention to that possibility--take your time and get "buy in" on every step of explaining the assignment. The most crucial matter is agreeing on when the assignment is due. This should not be a mandate from you, at least at first. Ask them when they think they can have it done. They may respond with too short of a time to do the assignment adequately or too long (you are lucky if their response is too short, for you can lengthen it and look magnanimous). After some give and take, make sure that you both agree on a schedule. Then, as a last thing in this meeting, go over the assignment again, checking to make sure that all details are fully understood and agreed upon, including, most importantly, the exact deliverables and when and where and in what form they are to be delivered.

Now, of course, despite your best work, the assignment will not be done on time and to the specifications you require. You are dealing with a professional slacker here, they are not going to let you off so easily.

What they will expect you to do next is give them more time. Don't fall for that one. Instead, take the assignment away from them, give it to someone else and start over with this character on a new assignment. And, of course, be as careful as before (both with the new assignment and the reassignment to someone else of the original).

Now, at this point, one of two things are going to happen. Either you have retrained the slacker and they do the new assignment or they fail again.

If they complete the new assignment, all you have to do now is keep on operating the same way with them. If the organization is big enough, they will find a way to get transferred out of your department within two or three months, for you make them work. They are then no longer your problem.

If they failed on the second assignment, you do like you did when they failed the first time--reassign that work to someone else and give them a new assignment. If they do this two or three times, you have a great case for dismissal and they are gone.

Another way to think of this is to watch a professional baseball team manager, particularly observing how they deal with pitchers. They will put in a new pitcher, and pull them when they get in trouble. A few days later, they will try them again. And again the following week. If by the fourth or fifth week this pitcher is not getting the job done, they get traded. It is as simple as that. Some call it the two can't principle: if you can't do it, you can't stay.