If you’ve ever been fired you know how difficult that can be. I’ve needed to fire many employees over my 45 years as president of my own company. And while I still have trouble pulling the trigger, I’ve come to see “firing” people in a new light. Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet that “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” When it comes to letting someone go, I’ve found that what I might otherwise consider “bad” actually leads to better opportunities for my former employee and a better new employee for my company
Years ago my friend John called to complain that the magazine he’d been working for fired him. To his shock, I congratulated John when we met for dinner.
“John,” I said, “you’ve complained to me about that job for the last ten years. Now you’re free to pursue other opportunities, like writing the novel you’ve always talked about. In six months you’ll be much happier.”
John smiled and finished another glass of wine, not quite believing me. But six months later he was bragging—to me—about being so excited by all of his new projects that he didn’t have enough time for all of them.
When I opened my own law firm at age 27, it took me six months to tell my legal secretary Judy that her work was not up to my standard. She pleaded and cried before she left. That was unpleasant for both of us.
A year and a half later Judy approached me in the lunch room of the same office building.
“Remember me?” she said.
“Of course I do.”
“I’m now working for the attorney in the penthouse. And he thinks I’m the best secretary he’s ever had.”
I believed her. My requirements are high, and not everyone can meet them. Judy had found a better place to work, both for her own sake and for the sake of her new boss.
Several years ago my cousin Edward was accepted to a prestigious business school and asked me for an internship in order to get some hands-on experience in commercial real estate before starting his MBA. Visions of sugarplums danced in my head. Here was a bright young man who could raise my entire organization to a higher level. So I offered him a generous salary for a two-year internship.
Silly me. During his first week on the job, it became obvious that Edward wasn’t all that interested in real estate. I would have worked fourteen hours a day to learn everything I possibly could. Edward promptly asked to shave thirty minutes off his lunch so that he could leave half an hour early each day. After eight months I told Edward that his internship wasn’t working out. He soon found a position working with a company in the field of electronics.
Six months later, Edward told me that he was thrilled in his new job, and was elated to work until two in the morning.
My point is this. It is vital for each of us to find our personal niche in life and occupy it. Many people hate working in an office, and would prefer to become a waiter or a forest ranger. Some people gravitate toward situations that require them to be away from home for days or weeks at a time. Some love to manipulate numbers, like I do. Others prefer to interact with people. There is no “good” or “bad” here. There is only personal preference.
Only when John was dismissed could he find the life he wanted all along.
After I fired Judy she found a niche in which she was a star.
Edward was fully engaged his new internship.
Of course, if an employee doesn’t work out, the best situation would be to not hire him or her in the first place. But if you do end up with an employee who doesn’t work out for you, do not hesitate to call in your Human Resources department (which might be you) and send them to greener pastures.
Alan
This is an edited excerpt from Alan Fox’s new book, People Tools for Business: 50 Strategies for Building Success, Creating Wealth, and Finding Happiness. Click here to order a copy today.
I read a NY Times op ed piece yesterday about aging, the author feeling uncomfortable as the oldest person in the room. I wondered, “What has changed for me?”
For most of my life I have done enough to get what I wanted. No more, no less.
This means that I have watched a lot of football games, spent time in class and in travel, and completely indulged and overindulged my passions of the moment. Those passions have included accumulating wealth, finding intimacy, and in the words of e. e. cummings, “singing each morning out of each night”.
Two years ago I realized that my life, my opportunity, was finite. I was tired of weighing 278 pounds, and disappointed that I had never focused on or actively promoted my writing. I thought about my father, nearing age 100, and Grandma Moses who famously began her art career at age 80.
I decided to change, with the twenty or more years I might have left. Today, for the first time in my life, at 210 pounds I am receiving compliments about my appearance. I like that, even though it’s far too late for me to impress those breathtaking high school girls who paraded before and past me in the hallway every school day of my adolescent life, but who declined to be diverted into my used Pontiac sedan.
I decided to come out from the obscurity of my private writing forest, and, if not to dance in the warmth of the revealing campfire at the forest edge, at least to admire all those dirty but happy campers from where I could both see and be seen, if anyone cared to look. Life is messy. I thought maybe I should give it a real try.
So I’m pretty much doing what I’ve always done. More work, less television.
I’m writing regularly – one books out, one coming out in two weeks, and working on a third and more, blogging every week without fail. I’m also promoting my writing. I have found that radio and a few television interviews aren’t so bad after all. They’re even fun. Especially when they’re over.
I’m still micromanaging my commercial real estate business, with much needed help from my outstanding staff. They regularly do most of the work, and point me in the right direction each morning, even if I don’t start walking that way instantaneously.
I’m riding on the winds generated by my baby Rattle, the poetry magazine I started more than eighteen years ago. Nowadays Rattle’s editor Tim Green has grabbed the baby from its cradle, nursed and tutored it through college and beyond. Tim is the best poetry editor on the planet. With a staff of fewer than two we accomplish more than the talents of twenty. I should add, of course, that without our contributors – poets in more than 100 countries have submitted – we would be silent. It is their words we reveal to the entire world.
And I have enough time, no more and no less, for the people who are important in my life. It might be a brief encounter in my office, a regular lunch date with someone I have enjoyed for many years, or the most comfortable and intimate conversations I experience with family, dear friends, and my wife.
I am entirely mindful that my opportunities will end in somewhere between eighteen and thirty years, so I work harder, enjoy myself more, and don’t have one second left for pettiness. Toxic people have disappeared from my life, constructive people surround me.
What else has changed for me at age seventy four? Absolutely nothing.
Alan
