“Knowing what you know today – would you hire this person?”
Why do start-ups fail?
I’ve posed that question to many entrepreneurs after their start-up was shut down, and about half of them said, “The team was not right.”
“What do you mean the team was not right?” I kept on asking, to which most of them replied, “We had this person who was not good enough.”
Another reason that I’ve heard quite often was, “We had communication issues,” which sounded to me more like, “We had ego-management issues.”
I then asked the more important question, “When did you know that team was not right?” the scary answer was, “Within the first month.” All of them said exactly that.
Wait a minute, if the team was not right and the CEO knew that within the first month, the problem was not that the team was not right – the problem was that the CEO didn’t make the hard decision required to build a strong and successful team.
Making easy decisions is easy – making hard decisions is hard, and most people don’t like to make hard decisions, mainly because you need to assume responsibility for the results.
The problem amplifies as in a small organization, most of the hard decisions will be for the CEO to make, and this is where it becomes complicated. In a small organization like a start-up, nearly everyone is involved with everything. Think of a small team or even a group or a class that you were in and ask yourself: If there was someone that didn’t fit – would you know it? The answer is of course you would, and it doesn’t matter if someone doesn’t fit because they are underperforming or because that person is unbearable – everyone knows, period.
If everyone knows that, and the CEO doesn’t do anything there are only two options that cross the mind of everyone else:
- The CEO doesn’t know, which means the CEO is clueless and this is not good.
- The CEO knows and still doesn’t do anything – that’s even worse, as it indicates the CEO lacks the leadership to make hard decisions.
The result, by the way, is always the same – the top-performing people will leave because they don’t want to be in a place that lacks the ability to make the right and hard decisions, and they will leave because they have a choice.
What Should The CEO Do?
Every time you hire someone, allow yourself 30 days before you ask the following question: “Knowing what I know today – would I hire this person?” If the answer is no – let them go the next day. Not doing so, you’re creating more damage to yourself, to the organization, and, to your team. And, trust me, that person will also be thankful, that you are allowing them to find the right place for them.
It can be 30 days or more. What’s important is setting a deadline for making the hard decisions.
I spoke at a conference to entrepreneurs and mentioned the importance of hiring and firing. After I finished, a startup founder came to me and said, “You helped me reach a decision about my co-founder.”
The day after, we met again at the conference and he said: “I did it and I feel so much better and so is the other co-founder, not to mention that other members of the management team, came and supported me saying it was about time, thank you.”
Firing And hiring
That’s the name of this article and also a chapter in my book, Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution, and no, I didn’t get it in reverse; it is more important to fire fast than to hire right. That’s why the chapter’s name has firing first. Firing is a hard decision; hiring is an easy one to be made.
Firing is hard for a few reasons: because we are good people (or want to think of ourselves as good people), and firing may be harmful to the person we fire. It is hard because we just hired this person, it was a lengthy process, and we don’t want to go over it again.
The last reason is that by firing a team member, you admit that you were wrong in hiring them in the first place. Now, this is an opportunity to establish the right DNA for the company–one that says clearly, “It is ok to make mistakes as long as we fix them fast.”
The real reason for firing fast is impact.
Remember, everyone knows if there is someone who should not be there. This is why firing someone is more impactful than hiring another excellent staffer. Since everyone knows, if you fire that person, the trust in the organization and its leadership increases, and therefore the commitment to the leadership and company increases. The result is that everyone will perform better.
In some cases, I hear the concern,“What if I’m wrong? What if I fire this person and the organization is not happy with it?”
Guess what? You are usually the last one to know if someone doesn’t fit and, therefore, if you fire them, the organization will be happier.
If you don’t trust me on that, go and ask some people (peers in particular, but also direct managers) this very simple question: “On a scale of one to 10, how sorry would you be if that person leaves?”
You may want to ask that differently with some other people involved or as an open question: “Which person, if he or she leaves, will you really be sorry to see leaving, and vice versa – which person if he or she is no longer in the company would you not mind if they left?”
The Mediocre Curse
One of the app developers at one of my startups was not good enough and was slowing down progress, the team was really small, there were three of them, one for iOS, one for Android, and another one doing pure research on the capabilities of devices and connectivity.
I spoke with the R&D manager and the answer that I heard was “I know that he is not good enough and I’m looking for a new hire to replace this person, but right now this is the only one that we have.” I kept on hearing this answer for a while and I told the R&D manager that actually not releasing the mediocre engineer is the reason we are not recruiting a new one.
Eventually, the R&D manager agreed to release the app developer. It took only a few more days to find a replacement, something that was on the agenda for more than 3 months.
If there is someone who shouldn’t be there, the excuse that it is temporary is a bad one. Make the cut swiftly, so you can heal faster.
In most cases, when you need to decide, you know what’s the right one – but you are looking for confirmation. The team will provide you with what you need.
The course
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