A CEO client told me recently he had had his head in the sand regarding a direct report. The direct report didn’t like to be pinned down and avoided it at every opportunity. He used technology as a kind of smokescreen to shield himself from accountability. The individual made it virtually impossible for the CEO to communicate directly with the people in the department. Their loyalty to the direct report was evident in their constant deferral to him and their reluctance to talk to the CEO and others in the company, even the marketing people who would eventually have to sell the product.
People often have periods of disappointments, so you don’t want to remove a person from a job too soon if there are things you can do to get the person on track. But many business problems are the result of letting things slide, ignoring the fact that the job is evolving while the person isn’t, or vice versa, or the decision to put the person in the job was wrong in the first place.
Instead of dealing with the issue, you harbour resentment toward the person, maybe even avoid her/him, until the frustration boils over and you ask the person to leave. There are all kinds of psychological reasons for avoiding such situations, whether it’s fear of the person’s response, or a sense of loyalty, or your need to be liked.
When a mismatch becomes evident and someone is failing in a job, it is important not to jump to conclusions. When you first sense a problem, you have to get to the root cause. Maybe the person has a psychological blockage, a know-how that’s missing, or bad chemistry with a key person in another function. Sometimes the fault lies with a boss who fails to provide direction.
In the case of the CEO mentionned earlier, he did some clear thinking about the whole history of his report and a pattern emerged from previous conversations, results he had or had not delivered, decisions made and things he said to him or other people. He concluded the report was not the right person to lead the operations, his technical brilliance notwithstanding. When the CEDO told the board, the response was not what he expected: the directors supported the decision to replace the individual, but made it clear that he had been slow to act. The company had lost precious time and money.
Pierre Robitaille