Let them go!
“The standard you walk past, is the standard you accept.”
Lieutenant General David Morrison AO.
One bad employee can destroy company culture. A situation I see with clients all the time is tolerating bad attitudes and behaviour, and that includes from the leadership team! By protecting these people (liabilities!) and trying not to upset them, you may be completely missing that tolerating this behaviour can be detrimental to the broader team.
In high-growth businesses, there are two main reasons this happens:
1. Tolerating ‘brilliant jerks’.
These are people who are technically talented but display unfavourable behaviours that can be disruptive and even distressing to others. By allowing them to continue to behave as they do, can destroy any attempts by the broader team to live by the company values and align with the culture you’re trying to build. Addressing the challenges of these employees, while difficult, is crucial.
In 2019, Atlassian addressed the issue of ‘brilliant jerks’ by ditching an out-of-date grading system.
Expectation of role
Contribution to the team
Demonstration of our company values
They updated their performance process so that employees can receive one of three grading levels on each element, based on “growth mindset language” — rather than a score, they either get an “exceptional year”, a “great year” or an “off year”.
This ensures that it’s not just technical capabilities that are being measured but behavioural capabilities, link to values, and mindset.
2. It’s likely that in the early days, you hired your mates.
It’s possible that they have reached the peak of their capability and don’t have the potential to scale with your business, and they’re no longer working out. But you don’t want to let them go. They were with you at the start, and they’re loyal. They’re your mates!
In his biography, ‘The Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs’, Walter Isaacson discusses how Jobs prevented what he called ‘the bozo explosion’ by not tolerating managers allowing mediocre people to stick around. “If something sucks, I tell people to their face. It’s my job to be honest.”
While I’m not condoning this blunt approach, I do encourage you to really consider the impact of poor performance and lack of capability on the rest of the team. What you may be ignoring is that not only can they not do their job and others are having to pick up the slack, but they are probably becoming disgruntled themselves. They’re no longer in the inner circle and feel they are losing ownership. They are making life miserable for everyone around them.
Question - would you hire that person today?
Be a legend, let them go! It’s time to make a tough call. And that means YOU make a tough call.
Legend List
Start here:
1. Be honest, who are the brilliant jerks in your business?
2. Who are ‘wrong’ people you are holding on to?
3. How are you going to make the tough calls?
If you’re ready to let go of the brilliant jerks and work on your people strategy, I’d love to chat and see how I can help.
