3 Things to Do Before You Fire Them

0:02 What's up, guys? Welcome back to Build. And today, I want to talk about getting the right people in the right seats in your company. So, something that I wrote down a bunch of different thoughts on because over the last gosh, I want to say 4 months, that's been a huge piece of what I've been having to do. And I feel like I say that every time because I feel like every time I'm talking on this podcast, I'm like, "Here's what you have to do. The people changes." I was talking to Alex about this the other day and I was like, "Man, you." Like, you just tell people how to make more money and it's like so straightforward and easy. They're like, "I did this thing and I made a million dollars or $500,000 or whatever." And I'm like, "Hey, you need to do all these like really shitty things and in like 6 to 12 months it'll really pay off for you and it's like just such a not sexy thing to talk about." That being said, it's really important because you can't keep making all that money if you don't have the right people on your team. And this is something really relevant to me because you know we've grown from right now we're at about 175 people in the company and you know a year ago it was half that. So lots of things changing.

1:06 There's also there's not just like bringing in the new people but there's also making sure that the people that have been there for a while are in the right seats in the company. So that continues to be a challenge as you get bigger and I think as you expand it becomes one of the things that probably is dropped first. And I like to consider myself somebody who constantly is paying attention to that because I'm always thinking, how do I get the most leverage out of everyone on my team? And so I really don't believe that you can get the most leverage out of somebody unless they're sitting in the right seat.

1:34 Myself included, Alex included, Shiron included. Like we all have to be working on the right things in the right seats. So I want to walk through that because I think some of the hardest moments that we have in business in general are when we have somebody on our team and we're like they have 10 out of 10 character. They're trying really hard. They're insanely loyal. They've worked here for a long time. They fit all the values.

1:57 Everyone loves them. They're a great teammate, but they're not producing results on the team. And so because of that, you're like kind of up over it. You're like, "Okay, well, what am I supposed to do with this person?" Because they're great, but like we need to make money and make this business work and drive results. And if they're not doing that, then that's a really difficult position to be in. And so the one frame I would like to give you is that there's two different ways that people look at these problems. And I think both are important to understanding how to fix it. But you have to understand putting in more effort, putting in more hours, putting in more work, coaching somebody more, giving them more feedback will not fix a problem where they are not in the right role or where they are misaligned.

2:40 So, it's kind of similar to like in business you have strategy. When you have the wrong strategy, you can market as hard as you want, you can sell as hard as you want, you can upsell those customers. If it's the wrong strategy, you're just going to like, it's almost like cutting grass with scissors. And so, it's the same for these people problems. It's like you're cutting grass with scissors by just trying to put more effort into this person when it's actually just a misalignment problem.

3:00 And so, I see a lot of people miss that. They're like, I need to get them more feedback, coach them, etc. And I'm like, what if this isn't even the right role for them? And I really think that the most important job that you can have as CEO is make sure you have the right people in the right seats. Make sure that the people you've brought on and you've paid all this money to and you're putting all this on the line for, you're getting the most out of their performance. You're getting the most out of them and they're enjoying their job the most because they get to reach their potential.

3:25 So that's what I would like to start this off with. The first frame I want to think about is you have a situation where it's probably the most common. you have the right person on your team. And when you say right person, it's like, are they honest? Do they have work ethic? Do they fit the values? Are they smart? Are they kind? are they a good teammate? Okay, if they check, you know, these basic boxes of what makes a good person to have on your team, then it's like, okay, but why aren't they performing? Then it might be the wrong seat. And that's what I want to talk about. So, I'll give you an example for this of how you can kind of solve having somebody in the wrong seat.

4:01 I've had many countless times, I mean hundreds of times where I've had somebody who's like freaking amazing, but I just don't feel like they're in the right seat in the company. And there's two ways that I look at solving this. And the first is that I say, "Okay, maybe it's just truly the wrong seat. I look at their skills rather than their experience." And I ask myself based on their skills, like the things that they are actually absolute best at. Look at their I write down their strengths. I write down their weaknesses. Does that fit the job description that they're currently in?

4:34 And sometimes I take a step back and I'm like, it actually doesn't. You know, where I think this person would really shine is this sounds more like somebody who's a blank. So, I've had this happen multiple times. I I would say like some very like interesting areas where it happens. Like I've had people that are customer service that I think would be better in operations. I've had people in operations that I think would be better in HR. I've had people in HR that I think would be better in operations.

4:58 Lots of crossover in the skill sets there. Similar with sales and marketing. obviously a little bit more of a skill gap there because there's like some very tangible hard skills you have to learn to cross over either one. But I have seen people in either one of those where I'm like, I actually think you'd be better in marketing than sales. So, that's the first thing that you have to ask yourself is write down their strengths and weaknesses. Does this actually fit the job description that I have for the role they're sitting in?

5:23 And then you have a really cool question which is if you're a growing company and if you're bigger, you get to ask yourself, well, would they actually do better in this other role that could exist or needs to exist or is open in my company? That is like the easiest like grace from God way you could solve this problem. It's like amazing. I actually have another role that I need filled that's if they were to fill this would create a ton of value in the company that better is aligned with their actual strengths and weaknesses. great.

5:50 Go for it. Now, many cases though, you're looking at this and you're like, "Oh, no. I don't have another role for this person that would be better aligned with this stuff." And so, you have room for creativity because let me just say this, it's your company. It's your team. There are no rules. Now, there are precedents that you set. So, you don't want to set the precedent that every time someone's not a 10 out of 10 at their job, you're going to change their job. But, you do have the flexibility of like, you know what, I can slightly alter this role. Like titles don't mean a lot. If you meet a director of operations at my company, at the company across the street from me, at the company down the street from us, completely different roles. Like, it's not even close. So, if they're not even going to be the same across companies, there's no reason why you couldn't slightly change it in your company. And I have found that there's no way in which every single person on like my executive team, for example, fully embodies to a 10 out of 10 exactly what I need in every executive. there's actually little pieces that they get from each other and because of that we make like one very strong team together.

6:53 And so sometimes you look at it and say, "Okay, would a different job description or focus actually unlock this person in the seat?" Like maybe we're having them do 50% of their job is something that is actually not adding a ton of value to the company and they're really bad at. The other 50% they're killing it and they're really good at it. And if you had them do that a 100% of the time, it might unlock so much more value for the company and their performance. A good example of this is I've had multiple times where I've looked at somebody and it's like they're constantly misscheduling. This is executives and leaders more so. They're missed calls. They're missing what time to do this? They're not communicating properly with people. Why is all that? Well, they don't have an administrative support function below them. So, one thing that I've done for all my executives, for example, is like I make sure they either have an EA or an admin of some sort that's supporting them. Why is that? Because I can't tell you how many times you're going to run across this where like an executive is not very good at that stuff. Some of them are good at it, but do we want them focused on it? Do we want an executive focused on administrative tasks? Do we really think that just because it's in the job description, they need to do these things and it, you know, looks good to the team if they're very good at it, do we need to have them doing it? It's like no, they could probably get a lot more leverage in their role if they focus on the other things. So, it's like okay, cool. That's out of your job description. You don't manage any of those details. Somebody else is going to do that. Other two questions that I ask myself are kind of like tangential to this, which is like, are there things in their job description like am I asking too much of them? And because of that, they're unable to perform. So, part of that is the administrative function. The other part is sometimes I look and I'm like, oh this is actually kind of three roles and it's really unfair of me to ask this of one person. So, I actually think I need two other people supporting them in these ways to make this role more effective. I found that in many instances, especially when you're a smaller company, there's just no way that somebody is going to be able to fill every single hole in the exact way that you want. They're not going to be a 10 out of 10 everything. So, you really have to ask yourself, okay, is this really their fault that they're not a unicorn that can do six jobs at the same time, or do I need to get realistic about the fact that I'm going to have to expand my team? I'll give you an example, which is like typically the first ops hire, HR hire, finance hire, people are looking for them to do like because they don't want to spend a ton of money in the back office. They're looking for them to do everything and then they're like, "Oh my god, they're not good at this part." I'm like, "No You think someone who's like really good at like business partnership and hard convers is also really really world class at recruiting. Like those are actually two very different skill sets. So very different temperaments of people. I've made that mistake in HR a few times where it's like I had the same person over both. Either recruiting suffers or business partners suffer either way. I just realized like you know what it. I'm going to bite the bullet. If I can save three people from quitting this year with having a proper business partner setup. If I can recruit roles twice as fast with having a good recruiting setup, it is worth the extra hire. So that's another way that I like to think about it. So that's the approach that I take when it's like, okay, we have the right person and it's just truly the wrong seat. Like it's the wrong job description for them and their skills and it would take more time than is reasonable to train them up on those skills and it doesn't make sense for the business. They also don't really seem to like it. They also have other skills that if maximized can create a ton of value in the business.

10:08 It just doesn't happen to be that they're in that job description, right? That's where we have to get creative. It's like when I talk to people like, "Well, that's not your job." I'm like, "You made their job description. What are we talking about over here?" Like, there's no like HR people job description gods that are looking over your job descriptions and saying, "Oh my gosh, you shouldn't write that." Like, what are we doing? Like, you make the rules. So, like, do whatever suits the business and the person and you.

10:31 The second situation that I see is that you have the right person. This is one I've come up on a lot. I would also classify myself in here which is you have the right person wrong season of life. So, this is when you have somebody and I've had people recently and many times in my past where you know, I had someone that was an insane director of operations in my last company and so good. And then, you know, she had her third child and at that point it was like she just couldn't give what was needed for that job. You know, in a small startup type company, you know, I wouldn't say startup, I guess you're doing 50 million a year, but like startup energy, like we're still 5 years old as a company. We're young. you need somebody that's like kind of all consumed with the job and she had been that but then when she had her third kid she was like I she just couldn't like she had too many other things filling up her life and so she was the right person it just wasn't the right season for her and the season changed and that does happen with people fairly frequently I've had sickness a spouse gets sick parents die a spouse retires so then they feel like they need to retire I've had you know my last CFO in my last company. She was an amazing CFO and her husband retired. All her friends were retired. Her parents then needed to be taken care of. Though she loved the company and loved working with us, it no longer made sense for her to work with us because it didn't make sense for the season of her life. So, that is something that you will come up against a lot, especially the longer that you're in business, where you're just like, man, I really love this person, but it doesn't make sense for the season of their life. And in those instances, I'm looking at it. I'm saying, okay, is there a job in this company? They're a great fit. They're performing. they're doing a great job.

12:11 Is there another less demanding role that they could take that I could offer them? And that's like my first go-to with that roles that are, you know, all-encompassing. there are some roles that aren't that way in companies. Now, it might be that every role in your company right now, you're at the size where it's like, hey, everybody got to be like this. And then it's like, okay, well, maybe that's a discussion where you can say like, hey, I don't know if this is a fit anymore.

12:32 Can I help you find a job somewhere else? Can I give you recommendations? Can I introduce you to my friends own companies? I have done all of those things when I've realized that like this person just can't give what we need and I don't want to them to fail. I don't want to like fire them, but it doesn't make sense for them to work here. So, that's how I typically like to handle that. Now, on the other side of that, there's also where you have the right person for the right season of the business and then the business changes seasons. This is super common and I like in every I would say like rung of growth of the business you're going to see this which is you have people who are so good when it's tiny and you're just trying to figure it out and you're trying to just like get product market fit and it's all hands- on deck and you're talking all day every day and there's texting nothing's formalized there's no email there's no HR there's no legal there's nothing right it's just like wild wild west there are people that are like so good in that phase then you get to the next phase which is like you become an organization right maybe you've got 20 30 people and they start to struggle a little bit there, but like often can make it through that phase if desired. because it's a little less wild west. You need to know where things are. People need to know each other's names. You have to talk and communicate and do meetings and things like that.

13:38 and then you really move into you start becoming a company. You're 50 to 100 people. You need functions. You need HR. You need legal. You're on defense, not just offense. You've established product market fit. And now you're like, "How do I grow and maintain product market fit? How do I continue to be a leader in my industry or maintain my product market?" my slice of the market different people for all of those seasons. There are some people that I've seen can move through them. now I will say not always happily like I can tell I have teammates who have moved through all those seasons with acquisition.com but I can tell you which seasons I was like they were a little stank about that like they didn't love that season. and I will be like transparent like I don't love the season of when things feel slow. If anytime things feel slow in the company, I'm pretty much just like going to come in and rip up until it's fast again.

14:26 No matter how big the company is, I would never do well with like 20,000 employees because I think at that point like things are just slower and I I'm just not a fan of that. It just doesn't work for me. Some people love that. They love when it's slow seasons. Not a fan of slow seasons. Another way that I think about seasons is you have peace time and wartime. Ben Horwitz talked about this in his book, A Hard Thing About Hard Things. And that's essentially okay you have peace time which is like things are going well people are buying your products it's easy to do things in the business it's like happy time like we celebrate birthdays and anniversaries all these things and then you have wartime which is like we are up against competitors we don't have product market fit we are in a fast growth market and competing with other people for market share wartime some people do well in both some people do not and I could tell you like you could probably look at your team right now and say who's good at wartime and who's good at peace time. and I really think the question of that is just like who handles adversity well?

15:22 Because some people just don't handle adversity and pressure and stress well. And if they don't, then it's like, okay, that's good to acknowledge. And there's a few ways that I navigate that one, which is like if I have somebody who is like a die hard and like they just thrived in the first two seasons of the business and now in the third I'm not seeing it. I really think often I try to put them in a role that is more of an innovative role. So oftent times the people that have that like startup mentality energy, no matter what kind of role they are in, I've just noticed that they tend to do better when you put them in some sort of role where you're constantly developing new stuff. Well, there's not many places I want to do that except for marketing and product because those are two areas that you constantly want to be working on as the business and investing in making them better. So I have found that for a lot of people they do really well when you put them in one of those roles where they can constantly refresh product or refresh marketing. So it's almost like putting them in like an innovation role, a product role, a marketing role.

16:20 Like those are tend to be roles that suit people really well who did really well in the beginning and don't do as well as the company gets bigger. So I've seen that help. At the same time, like the reality is is that like the goal of a company is not to keep everybody. it is to keep the right people at the right time. There's going to be times you have the right person and you do not have a role for them where they actually have career trajectory to grow and at that point if they want to leave that's okay.

16:50 I've had to tell my team this because you know we've had people leave and maybe they've been here for two years or three years which to me is like nothing but you know it means a lot to people who've only been here for a couple years and they're like oh my gosh they're leaving and I'm like why must we think this is a bad thing? Why do we think it's a bad thing every time someone leaves the team like things change in life we don't all have the luxury of creating the perfect position for everybody for every phase of their life. The business cannot operate that way. So to a degree you have to be reasonable with yourself which is like I'm giving you guys the method to think through this stuff but at some point it's like you've done enough and like you just at some point you can't do more. Now the last phase that I want to think about where I would say like piece to this is you have the right person under the wrong person.

17:39 And that doesn't mean that either person's wrong. It means that almost like there's like a lack of chemistry. It's like, you know, you could have two friends that you're like, I'm gonna set you guys up and it's like, he's a great guy, she's a great girl. You set them up and it's like just nothing. And it's like, okay, there's nothing wrong with either of you. You just don't tend to have a very like natural forming relationship. I've seen that many times on teams. I'll give you an example. I had a leader on our marketing team, super analytical, really good at what she did, but had a guy under her who was much more creative, much more visionary, and the two of them just bumped heads all the time. he could only think in analytics, logic, numbers. She could do that, but was also focused on the bigger picture and kind of seeing ahead and the vision. because that was her role in a more creative role and she made it very clear that she was not happy under that person and so I thought they were both very important to the company. How do I keep this person? And so what I did is I actually just dotted line her to his boss. So I said, you know what, I think in this case, not in every case, it makes sense to say you have a dotted line to this person and a hard line to this person. So in these instances, the way I think about it is if they're both right for the team, but they just don't tend to have that natural chemistry with each other, I ask myself, well, what's missing that if existed in this relationship, this person would be performing better in their role, right, for the individual contributor? And a lot of the times it's something that can be supplemented if they have a relationship with another leader, if they have some sort of mentorship they're getting from somebody else in the company or if you say, you know what, we're actually going to create a different structure where it's almost like you have a dual reporting to a degree. Now again, I think somebody has to be a little bit more mature to know how to manage dual reporting in a organization, but it is something that you can do in a decent amount of these situations. So those are the three situations that I see often where it's like you have the right person in the wrong seat, the wrong season with the wrong boss. And those are the ways that I kind of remedy that stuff. There's so many times where somebody comes to me like this person's underperforming. We need to fire them. And I'm like, I don't think we need to fire them. Like what's the actual problem? And if they're a person of integrity, they're a great teammate, they've worked really hard, they've been really loyal, like there's usually a lot of options. I will say sometimes you exhaust those options.

20:11 I've had people where I've been like I've exhausted the options. There's just nothing and then I do unfortunately need to let them go. But the one thing I'll say is like these problems don't solve themselves with time or with effort of coaching on getting to a result. They are solved by thinking strategically about the team. It's sort of like in sports. you only have so much time because like you can only lose so many games before you're out the whole season. Business is the same way. So you have to ask yourself like can the business withstand this much grace that I'm giving the situation. That's always the thing that you have to kind of come back to because at the end of the day if the business and the whole team is going to suffer if you're trying these things multiple times that's going to be tough. So you do have to ask yourself that question.

20:57 Is this in service of the business? will this be the best thing I can do for the business? And that's the frame I think of. But the one thing I'll say is like, I know you're watching this. You might be thinking, oh well, what about this or this? It's like, please stop. we make up so many excuses in our head because we're like, oh my gosh, I don't want to have this conversation or I don't want to have to think through or this sounds hard. It's going to take time. Yes, it does. But the thing is like you as the founder or as a CEO or as the leader are also going to go through seasons and you're also going to have times where you realize that you may not be the right person in the right seat. you know, for me recently, I moved from CEO to executive chairwoman, and it wasn't because I hated being CEO or I felt like something lacked with me being CEO. you know, Shiron and I were really upfront about it. It's it's just seasons. And I recognized that I needed a season where things in my personal life are going to take more time from me than I had ever had before.

21:53 Like, I'm filming this. I'm 6 months pregnant. So, I'm going to have my first kid. I don't want the business to suffer. And if there's somebody else here who can do my job and they're in a different season that allows them to have more of that time, and I'm so lucky to have Shiron who is, it's like, okay, great. Does that mean that I don't miss it? Absolutely not. Like, I miss so much about it. And I don't think that I in any instance I'm in the wrong person, but wrong season. And so, I think accepting seasons of life and seasons of business is a really important thing to do. So, that being said, I hope this was helpful. If it was, maybe comment down below. What are you dealing with? What's the Do you have the right person? Are they in the wrong seat? Like, what problem? Do you have the right person, wrong boss? Do you have the right person in the wrong season? What are you facing? And let me know what you do about it.