Last night I spent an hour on the phone with my friend Bob. It was the day he fired Gordon. Once upon a time, Gordon was projected to become the CEO of his mid-sized manufacturing company when my friend retired.
The fact is that Gordon always performed. He routinely exceeded his targets. He finished his projects on time and, mostly, under budget. But there was always that nasty human thing. Gordon wasn’t a bully but he was a pig. He was self-centered, self-promoting, and difficult to work for. So why did it take close to ten years to fire him?
Gordon made his numbers. He got results. And so, for a decade, he was counseled in performance reviews and sent to training. Not much got better but he still made his numbers. A succession of coaches were hired to help Gordon. That didn’t seem to work, either. So, why did my friend finally fire him?
That’s the question I asked him. After all, Bob and I have had conversations about Gordon for a very long time. It turned out that the inspiration came at dinner.
My friend’s company had just lost a first-rate engineer, a talented young man who simply wouldn’t or couldn’t work with Gordon. The engineer had been with the company for less than a month.
That evening at dinner, Bob talked to his wife about how much he hated losing such a talented person. Natalie, his wife, asked, “How many great people have you lost because of Gordon?”
Bob swears he never really thought about that. He was aware that people left because of Gordon, but he never tried to assess the cost. He drove back to the office and started going through files and when he came home, it was with the resolve that Gordon had to go.
I know there are other Gordons out there who’ve still got their jobs. I know that some are still around because their bosses value performance over people. But I also know that some of them are still there because too many companies don’t have a way to assess the cost. It seems when it comes to things we can judge loss to the penny. But when it comes to the human side we have no way to judge lost people, lost talent, and lost potential.
