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Use My Simple 4-Step Evaluation To See If You Need To Give Somebody The Boot.

Kicked Out
The worst part of being the boss, without question, is having to fire people.

And in my 20-year career, I’ve fired plenty. Some because they were a bad fit. Some because they stole from me. Some because they just weren’t doing a good job. And some because we were downsizing and had no choice but to let them go.

But every single time, it sucked.

Some bosses can fire with flair. I had a COO for a while who had worked as a district manager at Wal-Mart earlier in his career. When he had a problem with an employee, he’d sit them down and say to them with an eerily calm voice, “I’ve fired 1,000 people in my career; I won’t think twice about making you 1,001.”


That’s not me.

I dread it and put it off for as long as possible. I try to find reasons to keep the person around. I give them lots of rope and lots of chances.

You know, probably like you.

But over the years I’ve realized that keeping the “wrong people on the bus” is not helpful to anyone. I’ve found that Nike’s “Just Do It” slogan is the right policy for letting people go.

The key, then, is to make sure you’re doing the right thing. Which is why I’ve come up with a little 4-step formula that helps me determine whether or not to boot somebody. Whether you’re a home improvement contractor, marketer, or department store manager, this might be helpful to you—so here it is.

There are four things—and only four—that need to be considered:

  1. Longevity & Loyalty: How long somebody has worked for me—and how loyal they’ve been to the company—plays a major factor in how hard I’ll fight to keep them around.
  2. The Good They Do & Irreplaceability: If somebody is adding a lot of value to the company, or if they are going to be really hard to replace, that weighs in their favor.
  3. The Problems They Cause: What is the problem that is making you think about firing them? How severe is it, and who does it affect? Customers? Vendors? Other employees? You?
  4. How Much Money They Make: How much money are they making—not in raw dollars, but compared to how much production you are getting from them, and how much it would cost to replace them. For example, is this particular marketing person bringing in enough home improvement leads? Is that particular installer doing the job right the first time to keep warranty work to a minimum?

Case Study: To Fire or Not to Fire?
I had an employee who had been with me for about 7 or 8 years who was causing me some significant problems. Here is how I graded him on the 4 categories:

  1. Loyalty: Very loyal employee; would do anything I asked without hesitation. Had worked for the company for almost a decade. Very dedicated to his job.
  2. Good: He worked long hours and was very thorough in his work.
  3. Bad: He had the communication skills and decision making abilities of a robot. He didn’t know when to be funny, when to be serious, and when to be business professional. He emailed customers when he should have called. He pushed buttons when he should have been turning dials. Customers were frequently upset, but they had a hard time saying so because they LIKED him so much. We lost several customers because of poor decisions made by this employee.
  4. Pay: Since he’d been there a while, and since his job had changed, he was making about 50% to 70% more than it would have cost to replace him.

This was a tough case—his loyalty and good were sufficient to keep him around for about 2 years. But when the bad started outweighing the good, the PAY tipped the scale and he was terminated.

The 4-questions might seem rudimentary and obvious, but stop and think about it for a minute. If you have a hard time firing people (like I do), then it’s good to have an objective set of steps to rely on that never vary from situation to situation. The steps allow you to assign things like loyalty their proper weight. This turns the decision from a strictly emotional one into a logical, reality-based decision.

In fact, you may want to do a quick mental inventory of any employees who are causing you any amount of frustration… or who seem to be overpaid.

Then, if you find somebody who need to get the boot, here’s my final piece of advice: do it quick, like ripping off the proverbial Band-Aid quickly. It’s hard to do, but trust me, it will be for the better.

Click Here For Free Lead Generation Audit: We’ll perform an in-depth audit of your company’s website (contractors, HVAC experts, and everyone else is welcome) and lead generation activities. Then spend 90 minutes on the phone with you discussing our findings… and conducting an Identity discovery session. This valuable marketing insight is worth $4,500, and is yours for FREE—if you meet the conditions.

© 2015 – 2016, Rich Harshaw. All rights reserved.

  1. I can’t stand reading lengthy posts, simply because i’ve got some dislexia, but i
    really loved this post

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