Surrounding Yourself with Great People Starts with One Hard Thing

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My executive assistant, Holly, came running into my office and blurted, “Sanjay, there’s a crazy woman in the lobby, screaming she’s going to sue us!”

Moments later Holly and I were in the lobby and approaching a woman yelling at the receptionist, demanding to be let in to the building. I interrupted, asking the woman, “What’s going on? How can I help?”

She responded, “Who the fuck are you?” and before I could answer, shrieked, “My husband is having an affair with some whore in your company and I’m going to sue you!”

I was then told through a cascade of swearing and tears that our head of IT, her husband, had been having an affair with another employee at the office, and we had facilitated the affair by providing a venue for them to meet and ‘carry on’, making us liable for some imaginary legal damages.

We eventually tracked down the wayward husband and sent him and his wife home, but here’s the thing. That IT manager had been a thorn in our sides for months. He was unreliable and a negative influence, but I had resisted firing him because his skill set was important.

Worse, when I did fire him in the aftermath of his wife’s revelation, an ‘anonymous’ hacker took down our company’s servers and threatened to destroy all our customer files. Yep, solid character that guy. Fortunately a call from the RCMP Cybercrimes unit settled that problem quickly because we knew it was him.

From your choice of life partner to your choice of office manager or choice of boss, the people in your life are going to make or break you. So the most important thing you can do is be careful about who you let in to your inner circle.

Right?

Wrong.

Yes I’ve regretted some of my hiring decisions, but often people have surprised me. What I’ve never regretted is a single time that I ended a relationship.

The secret to surrounding yourself with great people isn’t having a better filter as you meet them, it’s in being diligent about removing them once you actually know them. So why is this so difficult?

Humans used to exist in societies where the most important survival trait was being able to get along with others and to have the protection of the tribe. That isn’t true any more, but because of our evolutionary history, it still feels like a dagger to the heart when deciding to end a relationship, and it hurts even if you’re the one holding the dagger.

The only time you have all the knowledge you need to evaluate someone is once you’ve already been in the relationship for a while. When you hire, you’re right 50% of the time, but when you fire, you’re right 100% of the time.

The marketing associate who proudly claimed she didn’t drink or do drugs, but when I saw her smoking up she said cannabis didn’t count because it’s a plant. The accounting graduate who charmed every interviewer, but couldn’t do simple math. The CFO who admitted she hated spreadsheets.

The IT Director who piled up boxes to block his office windows so he could have sex with a girl from customer service.

I waited too long to fire each of them.

I’ve rarely seen someone I fired later become a star somewhere else. Once you know, you know. Some people are just destined to be around people with lower standards. Don’t be someone with lower standards. Work on your dagger grip, get better at firing.

When you have that termination conversation, you will often hear “Give me another chance, I’ll improve!”

Do they ever improve? No. They never do. They might plod along, barely avoiding getting sacked, but they’ll never be a star. And that’s what your job is as a hiring manager. Finding stars.

Every butt in a chair is taking up space that could be filled by a star.

Your job is to find stars, not to put butts in chairs.

Steve Jobs famously said “A’s hire A’s. B’s hire C’s.” and he worked tirelessly to avoid letting any B’s into his company. You can’t be successful at this all the time, but when someone reveals themselves to be a B or a C, take action, fast.

You may wonder, ‘but what will people think?’, worrying that people will question your judgement or your loyalty or your compassion if you fire a bad employee. Trust me, everyone knows they’re a bad employee.

People who suck have bad reputations. You will always look good breaking up with them. At least a dozen times, I’ve had a fired employee tell me, “If you fire me, everyone else will quit!” It never happens. Everyone else is happy they’re gone.

You’re judged by the company you keep. You may think you’re being compassionate, or inclusionary, by keeping people of questionable motives or integrity or morals around you, but trust me, people of quality are judging you and spending less time with you as a result. Your A-players are thinking of leaving because you have low standards.

Derek Rivers says, “Nobody ever left a good marriage.” And nobody ever left a relationship that was working for them. Stop worrying about whether you’re making the right decision.

Be a manager of quality people. Be a person with quality friends. Have that difficult conversation now.

You’ve already waited too long.

1. The secret to success is surrounding yourself with great people.

2. I think it’s time we take our relationship to the previous level. 

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