Four types of people that can drive or kill your company

Everyone within an organization at a given time can be bucketed into these four categories. What an organization does with them can drive the business forward or kill the business. Let’s start with the easy ones first...

#1 High Culture Fit — High Performance

This is what you wish your company was made of and a continual striving towards this nirvana. These types of people are the pace cars. They set the bar high in their performance as well as their behaviors. These people you want to make sure are happy, visible and are promoted. You want to constantly be identifying these high performers and make sure you are providing them with opportunities that will help them leapfrog in their career and professional aspirations. Not nurturing and promoting these people you run the risk of having the entire organization slow down.

Recommendation: Nurture and promote, lest they leave you.

#2 Low Culture Fit — Low Performance

An organization is as strong as their weakest link. These people are best stopped before they enter the organization, but sometimes they get past your rigorous interview process. The best thing to do is get rid of them fast. And after you do that, do a de-brief on how this person was able to get hired by the organization. Learn from the mistake and improve its processes for the future.

Recommendation: Get rid of these people — quickly.

#3 High Culture Fit — Low Performance

This person may not be performing well, but is a role model of behavior as well as culture. As a company, you want to hold a high standard of performance that makes everyone better, and the company will only be as strong as the weakest link. However, what is considered “weak”? Is it just performance? As an organization gets larger, weak, good or better must include a cultural or behavioral fit component. An organization cannot scale unless trust becomes built in, culture creates the foundation for that. What good is it to have a talented marketer (high performance), but never communicates his ideas or sabotages the work of everyone else (low cultural fit). Any organization of scale must include culture as part of its high performer definition.

Recommendation: Find a new home / role.

We usually found a new role that might have been a better fit. The thinking is usually if they are a culture fit, then they may not be in the best fit. This works better when the company is large enough to have more specialities. And it has worked for our company. However, one company called this a “leftover” problem where they found that finding a new role within the company never really worked for them. Either way they found that person a new home.

#4 Low Culture Fit — High Performance

This might be the most difficult situation of them all. Most advisors are at a loss in this situation and have told us this is a “tough call.” While it is tough, it is much better to get rid of this person, and the sooner, the better — especially if it is an executive. Otherwise, keeping them accumulates organizational and cultural debt. Usually cultural debt is likened to a cancer where it is slow growing and can eventually kill a company. However, a better ananlogy I heard is accumulating cultural debt is like dealing with bad breath, inititally it is a nuisance, but at some point being the receiving end just wants the person the bad breath to stop.

Accumulating cultural debt is like saying it is better to put up with bad breath than no breath.

Here is what happens: a leader begins to behave in ways not aligned with the culture. This signals to the rest of the organization, that his/her behavior is okay. Soon people start acting the same way: not sharing information, micromanaging, or sexually harassing others — creating an environment that high performers cannot do their very best.

The CEO must ask these things:

a) How many high performers are you willing to lose over this person? More than likely this behavior is causing others to leave, you just want to make sure it’s not the high performers that leave because of the leader’s bad behavior.

b) Is this person in a mission critical role? If not, you can get rid of him or her quickly without damaging operations. If it is a mission critical role, be strategic on timing and come up with plans to fill the hole.

When it comes to behavior that is of morals, just remember that once the action comes to light, there is a portion of the organization that will be okay with certain behavior from a moral standpoint (the French president has a mistress) and others who will not be okay (Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky). The problem for the CEO is that she will not know which group the high performers are in.

And yes, companies have the right to (and should)hire and fire based off of company values, but it is not to discriminate against race, gender or creed.

Recommendation: Ask those questions, time box it, but eventually every high performaning organization gets rid of them. And you’ll feel better the faster you do it.

When dealing with low performers or toxic employees, I have never met a manager say, “I wish I really held onto that person longer”. It was always the opposite.