(Found elsewhere)
THE GUY YOU FIRE
There’s a guy at the office where you work. He’s the same guy who’s been in every office where you’ve worked. You’ll know the one I mean.
He’s that guy who’s the loudest in every meeting, and is full of opinions about the best way to do things. He’s constantly promoting his own ideas and putting down the suggestions of others. He’s critical of those in charge, and loves to go on about how he’d do so much better than they ever will.
Yet you’ve noticed, over the time he’s been around, that he’s never actually accomplished anything of substance. No idea of his ever had any meaningful detail or plan attached; and, when given something to actually do, this guy bungled it, and someone else had to step in.
He cannot execute. Despite his resume, despite his claims, he has no real skill or experience.
You don’t promote that guy.
He’s the guy you fire.
Okay, so he bungles things. Don’t we all, from time to time? Who among us hasn’t overlooked an important detail, missed an essential cue, lost track of the schedule? It happens to the best, right?
When that happens, we offer a mea culpa, to signal to those around us that we own our mistake, and to reassure them that it won’t happen again.
But not this guy. In all the time he’s worked here, he’s never admitted a mistake. He’s never taken responsibility for a single failure – and there have been many.
You don’t put that guy in charge of anything.
He’s the guy you fire.
Instead of accountability, he offers an endless trove of excuses. He has one for every occasion. There are a million reasons why his efforts came to nothing, but they serve only as a bulwark to deflect attention from his own incompetence.
His pals chime in and bolster his excuses. But that, of course, only makes things worse: you don’t make excuses for a guy like that.
He’s the guy you fire.
The most heinous of his excuses for his failures is the blaming of others – passing off responsibility for his incompetence on those who are far more capable than he. In doing so, he takes his initial mistakes and multiplies them, not only failing his own agenda but weakening those of others, by diverting them into squandering time defending themselves from unjustified insinuations.
His pals, seeing how well this works, begin to emulate him. But you don’t aspire to be like that guy.
He’s the guy you fire.
And he has another trick – you've seen him do it over and over. Not only does he excel at reassigning credit for his own poor performance to others – he's equally adept, if not more, at taking credit for their bona fide accomplishments. He can convince an uncomfortable percentage of those around him not only that he isn’t responsible for what has gone wrong, but that he alone is responsible for all that goes right.
And that uncomfortable percentage, despite all evidence, buys into it. Even if some part of them realizes it’s smoke and mirrors, they want that magic that he obviously possesses. So they stick close to him, and openly admire him.
But he’s not a guy you want to be anywhere near. You don’t watch that guy’s sleight-of-hand and then decide to admire him.
He’s the guy you fire.
The irresponsibility and excuses, blaming others and taking false credit should be enough to get any employee shown the door, and if he’s getting away with all of that, you’d think he’d rest on his laurels and not get any worse. But he does.
He doesn’t leave it at that. He goes the extra mile, not just heaping blame for his own weaknesses on others, but magnifying the damage by openly putting them down. He serves up ridicule and scorn, even for those in charge, eroding not only institutional confidence in their abilities, but in their character. He has disdain for everyone and praise for no one.
You don’t give that guy praise in turn; it only emboldens him.
He’s the guy you fire.
There’s a guy at the office where you work. You’ve known him for years, watched him, been wary of him. He’s all of the above, lacking in every single feature of cooperative success: he has no competence, no scruples, no empathy, no character, no moral compass, no self-restraint.
Worst of all: his successes in his shady, self-promoting games have empowered him as a master manipulator, shaping events all around him, whether his touch is apparent or not. His success in drawing attention to himself, and winning the fawning loyalty of those who can’t or won’t examine his performance too deeply, have left him with a level of control over the company’s future that is not only unwarranted but deeply disturbing: his need to control has resulted in a perverse variation of the Peter Principle, and he is hovering too close to the steering wheel. If he gets his hands on it, nothing but chaos will result.
But he’s not a guy who should ever be in charge of anything; a man like him shouldn’t be entrusted running a McDonald’s, let alone the company that provides your livelihood. You’d never put your life, or the lives of your family, in his hands. No company would ever put such a man in charge.
He’s the guy you fire
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