Knowing When to Fire Someone

Evaluating when to fire:

• Have you given Radically Candid guidance?”
• How is this person’s poor performance affecting the rest of the team?”
• Have you sought out a second opinion, spoken to someone whom you trust and with whom you can talk the problem through?”¹

Common excuses you may make to not fire:

• It will get better
• Somebody is better than nobody
• Transfer is the answer
• It’s bad for morale²

Doing the firing:

• Recall a job you were terrible at and think how glad you feel that you’re no longer in it
• Retaining people who are doing bad work penalizes the people doing the excellent work (retaining a bad boss is especially damaging!)³