What’s It Mean to Fire Fast

Yesterday I was at the Foley and Lardner Tech event in Chicago.  The first panel had some successful entrepreneurs on it talking a bit about their journeys.  One of the questions was on getting rid of people that were not propelling your company forward.

I want to make sure that everyone understands we are talking about employees here, not founders or co-founders.  That’s a different issue entirely.

One entrepreneur said, “Imagine yourself sitting behind your desk and having a person come into your office and tell you they were leaving the company.”

If you are happy they are leaving, it’s probably the right decision.

We have trouble firing people for a lot of reasons.  One is our own admission of failure.  It was probably the entrepreneur that hired the person in the first place.  It’s sometimes hard to admit that it’s not going well because you feel like you might be exposing a flaw in your own decision making process.  Another is that the entrepreneur might be afraid at what investors are thinking.  Hint, generally investors are pretty happy to see entrepreneurs cut out people quickly that aren’t moving the company forward or are not a fit with culture.

We tend to want to be loyal too.  There is an element of “we are all in the trenches together” and you don’t feel disloyal by getting rid of someone.  That’s human and comes from proximity.  But, wishing things will change won’t make it so.

CEO’s have to be leaders.  You have to ask yourself, are you leading or are you following the people on your team?

If someone isn’t working out, don’t let it fester.  You need to ask them to leave.  Be nice, but firm.  It’s never an easy conversation but usually they will know it inside them too.  In early stage startups, if someone doesn’t fit with the culture they can upset the whole apple cart and no one wins.

Here is a pro tip I picked up that I thought was pretty insightful.

After a couple of weeks, ask new hires to tell you where they see holes in the organization or process.  What gaps are there?  What do they think could be made better?  Where is the business missing?

New hires are fresh eyes on a situation and might give you a perspective that you didn’t consider before.  Good CEO’s understand that and won’t be offended by what they hear.