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About fifteen years ago, I was running a radio station and fired a poor performer. He simply wasn't very good at what I hired him to do. A year later, I received a thank you letter from him. He got into computer programming and found he was brilliant at it. He said his firing was the turning point of his professional career.
I've been at some level of business leadership for over thirty years. That's the only thank you note I've ever received for a firing.
Former General Electric CEO and management author Jack Welch, however, would have you believe that that would be your regular experience if you follow his advice.
Welch's theory is that you should always be firing the bottom ten percent of your workforce. By that, you'll be doing your company and your fired employees a favor. You clear out the riffraff-they find their true callings.
How convenient.
According to Welch, if you're always culling the bottom ten percent and rehiring to replace them, then your company will get better and better people over time and be more successful because of it.
Its pure competition and Organizational Darwinism (survival of the fittest) played out year after year. Through the constant improving of the parts, he theorizes, there is greater health to the whole.
Not so fast...
I say that as soon as you group and classify your employees (the bottom ten percent in this case) and act upon them as a group or class, you dehumanize them.... they become a category, a number, a statistic. They are not somebody; they merely represent something. They are not the end; they are the means to the end.
Once dehumanized, employees are devalued.
Once devalued, they are disrespected.
Once disrespected, they are marginalized.
When marginalized, the relationship between management and labor is frayed.
Once the relationship fray's, morale dips.
Once morale dips, productivity plummets.
When productivity plummets, the owners lose profits.
Statistics are cold and ruthless knives. Too many managers let statistics make their decisions for them, and their actions become as cold and ruthless as their numbers.
Before you classify me as a patsy, or worse, a socialist, let me be clear-I believe in discipline and I believe in necessary firings. I also believe in rewarding our best performers.
What I don't believe in are over simplified formulas that take the effort out of management. What I don't believe in are faceless statistics that make the decision to fire someone too easy. What I don't believe in is drawing a statistical line in the sand and saying, "Oh well."
Welch wants to depersonalize firings-that makes them easy, matter of fact. And then he wants to argue that they are good for the employee too. All of this numbs the emotional impact of sending people packing.
But firings should be deeply personal and emotionally painful to carry out. If they're not, then something is wrong...there exists a mind-set that is fundamentally bad for business.
Was GE successful under Jack Welch? If success is measured merely in money made, then yes, it was. (In his defense, Welch has some good management principles too. His piece on workplace candor, for example, is spot-on.)
But real success cannot be measured just in dollars made. By that standard, Al Capone and Bernie Madoff were successful for a time too.
Success cannot be just that we make money, but also must be measured by how we make it. A great leader takes as many people with him or her as possible.
That's what employees respond to. Tough to do, though, if the main tool you wield is the cold blade of statistics and numbers.
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