Book Section Article

[Rajesh Thomas]

Firing People:  What You Do Versus How You Do It There sure is a lot of talk about firing people these days.  I try to stay away from the raging emotion, ideology, and irrationality of politics.  But I feel compelled to comment on a claim that I keep encountering—one sometimes stated openly and sometimes implied — about firing practices in the private sector that is distorted, misguided, and often downright wrong. Here’s the alleged “lesson” that bugs me:  The practice we see in Washington of firing people in sudden, impersonal, and often humiliating ways is sometimes portrayed as a reflection of how things are done and ought to be done in “real” businesses.  I beg to differ.  Yes, there are often good reasons that people ought to be removed from their jobs. Yet (at least outside of politics) both the research evidence and wisdom from the most skilled leaders suggest that firing people in humane and caring ways is best for the organization, the people doing the firing, and those who are sent packing. In The Asshole Survival Guide, I quote veteran senior executive and venture capitalist Michael Dearing on this point.  Michael fired quite a few people over the years.  It was necessary when he held senior roles at companies including Filene’s Basement in Boston, eBay in Silicon Valley, and as co-founder and CEO of a chain of shoe stores in Los Angeles that went out of business.  As an early stage venture capitalist at Harrison Metal, he sometimes has to remove CEOs or pull funding from the start ups he invests in for business reasons. BUT, as Michael puts it, “there is a difference between what you do, and how you do it.”  Michael’s goal is to fire people in the most dignified and civilized way, to treat the person with respect, to thank them for their efforts and accomplishments, and often, to help them find a new job that is well-suited to their talents.  Michael treats people this way both because he is a caring person and it is in his best interests as a hardcore capitalist. Michael’s experience dovetails with lessons the I learned early in my academic career, when my research focused on the processes of organizational decline and death.  I studied how humane leaders implemented tough decisions such as firing, layoffs, and closures.  I discuss such lessons in Good Boss, Bad Boss and in this McKinsey interview and video.  In short, the four hallmarks of leaders who do firings or layoffs well are:

They give affected people as much prediction about how the process will unfold so they suffer as few unpleasant surprises, which frees them from being in a constant state of fear and enables them to plan their lives.    They create understanding by explaining why the decision was made to people who are sent packing and to their surviving colleagues.    They find little ways that people who are let go can exercise control over how and when they leave.  Giving people a say over the wording of the announcement or whether they leave immediately or stay around for a few days, for example, can help people feel less helpless or ashamed about losing their jobs.     And, above all, leaders express compassion to the person who is being fired and when they discuss the person with others.

Rather than bad-mouthing people who they fire, in most cases, smart bosses do the opposite.  Venture capitalist and former CEO Ben Horowitz wrote a lovely piece on how to do layoffs that captures what a humane firing process looks like – prediction, understanding, and control are evident throughout.  This paragraph does an especially good job of showing what compassionate leaders do during layoffs:

Be present. Be visible. Be engaging. People want to see you. They want to see whether or not you care. The people who you laid off will want to know if they still have a relationship with you and the company. Talk to people. Help them carry their things to their car. Let them know that you appreciate their efforts.

Ben is talking about layoffs done to cut costs; a humane compassionate process may take different forms when a single person is fired for poor performance or unsavory behavior. But treating people with as much dignity and respect as possible, while doing the dirty work that must be done, remains the guiding principle.  There are at least five rational reasons why treating people with dignity is a good for your organization and for you.

Ripple effects Treating fired people with respect rather than disdain dampens the fears of employees who remain.  Employees know that, down the road, they may be sent packing too, and often think, or even say, when a colleague is canned “I wonder if I am next” or “But for the grace of god go I.”  When they see that colleagues are treated with dignity in the process, it amplifies their psychological safety and confidence in you as a reasonable and sane leader.  And the resulting dampening of their fear, anger, and anxiety helps them concentrate on doing their jobs and to feel good about going the extra mile for you and the organization—and makes them less likely to start looking for another job.  Replacements   If you are firing a person that you need to replace, by treating them with dignity, you are less likely to scare away strong candidates for the position – especially internal candidates who see your civilized firing style first hand.  But if you treat fired people like dirt, word will spread (including to external candidates), and they may well decide against taking a job that may end in ugly insults and humiliation.  Your organization's candidate pool More generally, if your organization develops a reputation for cruelty and vindictiveness in it’s firing process, word will spread (by word of mouth, social media, and especially at sites where employees provide anonymous evaluations of employers such as Glassdoor), and will drive away strong candidates for all positions.  Risk of revenge and litigation By treating the people that you fire with dignity in the process, they are less likely to become angry and vindictive former employees who sue your company (and you) and bad mouth you to others.  Much as I have seen with Michael Dearing and other compassionate leaders, the people you fire with dignity may even thank you, remain loyal to you, and say good things about you and your organization.  Your day may come Finally, if you have belittled, bad-mouthed, and otherwise disrespected the people that you fire, you ought to worry about what will happen when the tables are turned—when the day comes that you get fired.  Colleagues who have watched your nasty ways over the years may not be able to resist giving you a taste of your own medicine.   But if you have treated others well, they are likely to return the favor in kind, and help you preserve your sanity and dignity in the process.

Sure, there are instances when abrupt and even nasty firings make some sense.  For example, an abrupt firing with a bit of public shaming might be wise if an employee commits such an awful or unethical act that you want to make an example of him or her – to send the message that some behaviors are unacceptable.  But beware of using such reasons as an excuse for your rash, stupid, and mean-spirited actions.  Research shows that you are especially prone to treat people like dirt if you wield power over them, feel rushed, or are tired.    If any or all of these pressures are at play, beware that an incompetent, lazy, or mean-spirited employee is especially likely to unleash your inner jerk.  It may help to slow down and take a few minutes to imagine that it is a few days later-- and you are struggling to fix the ugly mess that you’ve created by impulsive, insulting, and humiliating actions. Sometimes imaging an ugly future can save you from the pain of actually living in it.

The Friction Project   The Asshole Survival Guide will be published in September, so my main focus these days is on preparing for the launch.   But I am devoting a couple hours each day to a long-term effort with my co-conspirator Huggy Rao on the causes of and cures for dysfunctional organizational friction (and on the times and ways that friction is a good thing).   This learning adventure was sparked by the stories, struggles ,and strategies that we heard from leaders and managers in all kinds of organizations since we published our scaling book in 2014:  From big organizations like InBev and The Gates Foundation, medium-sized start-ups like Philz Coffee,  and even small start-ups like Pulse News (before it was acquired by LinkedIn).  Huggy describes such conversations with leaders, managers, customers, clients about the causes and cures for friction as “50% therapy, 50% organizational design work.”  We have been struck by how difficult it is for people to get  simple things done in even small organizations, how the frustration drives them crazy, and the resulting fatigue from dealing with such obstacles day after day can destroy their will to do what is best for their clients and customers, teams, and themselves (including the will to remove the causes of such friction).     In response, we’ve started working on a multi-year learning adventure, which we call “The Friction Project.”  It is part of our Designing Organizational Change Project, which is hosted by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program.  We are planning to write cases, do traditional academic research (we are supporting related research by colleagues and students), teach classes to Stanford students and executives where friction is a core topic, and are talking with senior leaders about experiments or pilot programs that they might try to reduce unnecessary friction.   Our recent and current efforts focus on two kinds of “friction products.”   Short pieces.  We’ve written a few pieces on the causes and cures for destructive friction.  This post on LinkedIn and Harvard Business Review online describes how our d.school students used human-centered design to reduce friction, frustration, and despair-- and amplify dignity--for clients at a social services agency.  My post at LinkedIn and Medium on Why Your Job is Becoming Impossible to Do speculates about why people in too many organizations have strong incentives to add friction and complexity, and few, if any, incentives for removing these maddening impediments.  And I joined my former student and research assistant Rebecca Hinds (who is also helping with friction project) to write this INC story on how Dropbox took extreme measures to eliminate unnecessary meetings and design better meetings.    The Friction Podcast.  The Stanford Technology Ventures Program has been sharing talks from its weekly Engineering Thought Leaders series as videos and podcasts for some 20 years—check out “ecorner” to see their stuff.  Now, Stanford Professor of the Practice Tina Seelig (see below) has launched a podcast series called the Stanford Innovation Lab.  I am following in Tina’s footsteps and working with two wonderful STVP staffers, Eli Shell and Rachel Julkowski, to record a “season” of 10 or so conversations with smart people about organizational friction.   Thus far, we’ve recorded rollicking conversations with Huggy Rao about the project , with Patty McCord (renowned for her role in building the Netflix culture and reinventing UR in the process), Michael Dearing  (the early stage venture capitalist who runs Harrison Metal who I quoted earlier and one of the most creative people I have ever met) Dominic Price (Head of R&D and a Work Futurist at Atlassian, a fast-growing software firm), and Professor Melissa Valentine (who does wonderful research on organizational design that has uncovered how “light” use of structures and hierarchy can go a long way to reduce friction).   Rachel Julkowski also interviewed me for an episode about the how certain types of assholes––especially petty tyrants ––create unnecessary friction and what to do about them.      We have a few more interviews planned, and then Eli will do his magical editing and such, and we will release the season, I hope, in June.  We are learning a lot from these podcasts and I hope that you will too.

M. RAJESH THOMAS
+919840421627
Start teaching others what you know,
you may end up learning more.