Happy New Year, You're Fired
Startups
can't afford to hang on to people who don't perform -- or don't want to. They
are poison to any company's culture and you need to remove them.
BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS@TULLMAN
I hate to be a contrarian but, while everyone
else seems to be focused on hiring the right people as soon as humanly
possible, I feel obliged to mention that moving just as quickly to fire the
right people right about now is equally critical if you want your business to
succeed. With great talent so expensive and scarce today, it’s difficult to
think about firing the people already on board who simply aren’t getting the
job done. Yet starting out the new year (and the slow return to the “new”
normal) with the best possible team in place is especially important in these
complicated times. People who aren’t producing need to be not producing
somewhere else.
Letting people go now when they’ve stuck with
you over the last two very painful years seems harsh although - if you’re being
honest with yourself - maybe that’s because they had nowhere else to go. The ones
with serious alternatives have already “greatly” resigned and the ones who are
just kidding themselves about their marketability are no great loss. And, just
to be clear, I realize that now might not be a great moment to do some pruning,
but the truth is that there’s never a good time to do hard things and - after
the fact - you’ll almost instantly realize that you’re relieved and that you
should have acted sooner. No entrepreneur I know would say that they’ve ever
fired anyone too soon. Waiting and hoping things improve isn’t going to make
things better.
It’s not the employees you fire that
ultimately make you miserable, it’s the ones you don’t. These are the people
that you should get rid of because they’re the ones whose actions and attitude can kill your
culture and eventually cripple your company. These
conversations aren’t going to be easy, but they are essential. A company’s
ultimately only as good as its worst employee and chain sawing some dead wood
at the bottom raises everyone’s game. As we used to say, our average employees
now work elsewhere.
Taking care of the low-hanging fruit and bagging the bad actors is the first step.
People who are just phoning it in and who aren’t trying or just don’t care
about their work need to go as soon as possible.
Then you have to move on to the people who
aren’t qualified or no longer capable of doing what their jobs demand. Some of
these folks are too scared or too embarrassed to admit that they’ve fallen
behind or lost a step or two. It’s not a sin not to know; it’s a sin not to ask. You can try some
retraining, but with the accelerating rate at which core technologies keep
changing and increasing in complexity, trying to teach old dogs new tricks is almost
always a losing proposition. We’re all immigrants in this new digital-first
world and the kids coming up are digital natives. This makes a huge difference
in their attitude and understanding, which directly impacts their performance.
There’s no digital “strategy” these days - it’s digital everything.
And finally, the entrepreneurial world is
tough, bumpy, and even scary for many people who just aren’t cut out for the
journey. They need a degree of stability, security and certainty and a lot more
assurance and clarity than the vague, ever-changing, and ambiguous environment
of a startup will ever offer. Your job description doesn’t include babysitting
or comforting them; you’ve got a business to build.
But the hardest cases, and the ones where
you’re going to really have to stick to your guns and just make the final call,
are the ones who will also try your patience and your ability to manage what I
call the “peanut gallery.” The peanut gallery is all those folks - investors,
board members, other managers, customers, clients, congregants - who only see
things from the outside and not the daily nitty gritty. These same characters
are always pushing for new projects, more chances, additional “conversations,”
polite warnings - basically anything to avoid overt conflict, ugliness, hurt
feelings, and especially making a final decision. More CEOs go bald tearing
their hair out following these kinds of touchy-feely meetings and healthy
discussions than through the stress of their day-to-day jobs. Bystanders never
seem to give you any credit for already trying a million times to make things
work before you ever bring a personnel problem to their attention.
These particular problem employees fall into
three basic buckets: (1) pleasant enough people who are just lazy; (2) crafty
people who have checked out mentally - basically quit without leaving - who are
happy to keep getting paid; and (3) passive-aggressive people who put on a
great show when the grownups are around and looking, but who act like difficult
assholes the rest of the time when the coast is clear.
Because their “sins” of omission and
commission aren’t readily apparent to the people who don’t have to work with
them, count on them, and cover for them when they drop the ball, making a
convincing case for their departure is more challenging. Only you know exactly
how many times you’ve already had heart-to-heart chats, how many second and
third chances these folks have already burned through, and frankly how hard it
is to push a rope - to motivate someone who just isn’t that interested in
changing or improving.
And only you understand how aggravating,
discouraging and debilitating it is to have to constantly pick up the pieces,
do their jobs for them, and eventually end up just taking on far too many tasks
yourself because you simply can’t bring yourself to ask them again. Only others
who have been to this movie and understand the drill can appreciate what a
horrible and soul-sucking situation it is. And believe me when I say that it
will never get better by itself.
So when, not if, you inevitably find yourself
in this sad situation, here are the three smartest things you can do.
First, there’s no cure for laziness or lack of
energy and desire. This is purely a performance issue and the easiest to
address. Simply tell the spectators that the individual isn’t getting the job
done and needs to go and tell him or her the same thing. If you’re lazy or
unreliable, the skills or other talents you may have don’t really matter.
Second, you’re actually doing people who
aren’t with the program mentally a big favor to boot them because maybe they’ll
find a better opportunity and a way to succeed somewhere else. These hangers-on
present serious morale risks to the rest of the team, who always see what’s
going on and either wait to see how quickly the problem will be addressed or
start looking around themselves for a better place to be.
Finally, with respect to the nasty ones who
are unhappy themselves and basically just daring you to do something, you’ll
also be doing them and yourself a big favor to fire them quickly and put
everyone involved out of their misery. These are usually the toughest cases and
it’s helpful to get ahead of the inevitable “what just happened” questions by
giving a heads-up to a few key folks on your side and making it clear that this
was a practical and not an emotional decision.
Again, the bottom line in all these kinds of
personnel situations, is to remember that only you are really in a position to
make the case-by-case personnel decisions and the sooner and more swiftly you
act, the better the results will be for you, your people, and your business.
DEC 28, 2021
The
opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of
Inc.com.