Fire First; Ask Questions Later
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Hiring is often an impulse buy. It is the candy in the check-out aisle or Chipotle on the way home. Sure, the need may have been there for a while, and (to depart from the analogy) well documented and analyzed. Even the process may have been extremely well thought-out. But at the end of the day, the actual selection of the person from the piles of resumes and the hours of interviews is most often an impulse buy. It’s a gut reaction. Who seems to be the best fit?
Most of the time, hiring managers can’t even put their finger on precisely why Person A got the nod over Person B. Maybe it was a side comment at the interview or a slightly more professional appearance. Maybe the applicant simply had the mannerisms of the person the hiring manager pictured in her head. Whatever the reason, in today’s employment market, where most any help wanted notice is met with a flood of resumes, the answer is rarely clear-cut merit. The answer is a feeling.
Firing is different. When you fire someone, you damn well better have a reason. And that reason can’t be that the employee doesn’t “look the part.” The reason has to be clear, easily articulated, backed up by documentation, and merit-based.
Therein lies the lesson. For the typical business, more thought goes into why people are asked to leave the company than into why they are asked to join it. Certainly, it’s easy to understand why. A good bit of planning precedes the meeting at which an employee is to be let go. The discussion is bound to be tense. The parties’ interests are in direct conflict. What’s more, the firing decision is likely to be scrutinized – by the soon-to-be-former employee, the employee’s soon-to-be-former coworkers, and possibly even by a plaintiff’s lawyer, if not a judge, down the road. The company had better have its ducks in a row.
So what does that mean?
Often, it means that the company has documented the gap between the employee’s performance and the company’s expectations. Drill down a little further, and it means that, at some point, the company put pen to paper in order to clearly describe both the standard of the job and the ways in which the employee’s performance fell short.
In my (almost) 25 years representing business owners, I’ve come to notice a common phenomenon. (And yes, I’m aware that “common phenomenon” is an oxymoron of sorts, but I use the word because what I’ve noticed is, true to the definition of “phenomenon” notable or remarkable.)
I’ve noticed that the expectations of the company, in terms of a clear job description and key performance indicators are often determined only after the person has been hired. This is particularly true in small-to-midsize companies where employees often wear many hats and fewer policies and systems are institutionalized.
Dr. Lee Thayer, CEO coach and author of numerous books including Leadership: Thinking, Being, Doing and The Competent Organization, contends that organizations in hiring usually make 3 mistakes:
- The person was probably provided with a list of activities to be performed. That’s the way conventional “job descriptions” are constructed. There may have been some past experience or credentials thrown in for the company to hedge its bets.
- It was likely nothing was said about what was to be accomplished. You can’t measure activities objectively. But you can measure accomplishments.
- The person was most likely hired for a “job.” He or she was not hired to a role in the organization’s future. It is the future that really matters, not the past. Past performance does not predict well to future performance.
In other words, the person being fired was probably not told, at the time of hiring of specific reasons that might lead to dismissal. Why? Because these reasons had not yet been thought through.
I was trained as a trial lawyer at the outset of my career. The first lesson in preparing a case for trial was to write your closing argument first. Figure out what you want to be able to tell the jury, and then make sure you introduce the evidence and elicit the testimony to back it up.
Hiring, I’ve learned, is no different. If you envision the ending first – the precise reasons why you may have to fire this person you’re thinking of hiring, you are more likely to set the stage for a successful hire.
In other words, fire them first…and you may not have to fire them at all.
