Listening Not Firing Improves Morale

“I wanted a happy culture. So I fired all the unhappy people.”
—A very successful CEO (who asked not to be named)

The above quote comes from a BusinessWeek article. I tried most of the weekend to determine why this quote, and article, bothered me so much. It comes down to two things; hypocrisy and laziness. I’ve seen this type of thing happen before and know firsthand what it can do to an organization. Does this methodology or attitude improve morale in the organization?

I’m a realist and know that you can’t make everyone happy all of the time. In fact some people can just not be made happy. The distinction is if their attitude and complaints bring the team down, or just you. This article and CEO don’t make that distinction. They are cleaning house of all the complainers and in many cases these complainers are putting to voice what the rest of the team is feeling. This is the hypocrisy that I spoke of. Every company likes to say things like they have an “open door policy.” A lot of employees are too scared of retribution (and with a CEO like the one above I can’t imagine why), or don’t know exactly what’s bothering them to avail themselves of the open door. Instead they complain anonymously or amongst themselves. If a group of employees is negative it’s time to discuss and learn, not fire and smile.

When this happened at a company I was working at the negative people seemed to also be people with a lot of talent. This wasn’t a coincidence. Negativity in your most talented group of people should be an alarm for you, not a death knell for their career. If something is fundamentally wrong in your organization the talent will most likely spot it first (they are talented!) and their growing negativity is a sign that you should jump on the problem. Firing these people sends two messages to the organization. One; talent doesn’t matter. Two; if the talent gets fired for complaining then I as an average employee better walk around with a fake smile and bring no bad news because I won’t even get to box up my stuff before they throw me out. A culture of fear and toadyism has been created.

There are ways to spot problems in your organization before your employees even start complaining about them. The data about employee happiness and engagement is sitting in reviews, time sheets and complaint cards. Harness that data and learn the trends, the ebbs and flows, of morale so you know if the current mood is just the standard winter funk or something you really need to change in your organization.

The quote at the top of the article could just as easily be this sign put up in the break room, and would have exactly the same effect.

4 Comments

• 
  Eddie Wood November 14, 2011 at 10:33 AM

  You bring up some good points, but I think the article you reference does too. I think there are different contexts where each point of view can apply.

  Reply
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    Josh Turpen November 14, 2011 at 10:46 AM

    I agree, and say in my post, that there are contexts where in firing a problem employee is the thing to do. The problem is the myopic way the author and those that subscribe to the belief stated in the quote are applying it. Firing your way to a happy company will cost much more than listening and fixing the problems that your employees are complaining about.

    Reply
    • 
      Eddie Wood November 15, 2011 at 9:16 AM

      I do agree that firing your way to a happy company is a bad idea if there is a large scale happiness deficit in your company. It definitely means there are other problems that should be addressed.

      The types of people these authors want fired, according to them, are the ones that will seem to stifle innovation in their company, and therefore happiness(?), i guess. In my opinion, they fail to adequately support their case that certain types of attitudes are the only reasons that innovation (or a company) suffers. They seem to place a premium on the emotional high of “innovation” and creativity while discounting caution and reason. Even if you wanted to maximize “innovation”, there probably needs to be a happy balance somewhere, and firing all the people that don’t drink the koolaid is probably a bad idea. These people might have some good reasons for their skepticism that as a leader in the company you will want to know about. Otherwise, like you said, it will encourage a culture of toadyism.
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  Joshua Campbell February 1, 2012 at 9:32 AM

  While attending the UNC Charlotte States Lee College of Engineering C.E. program i found the best work groups were those where everyone showed mutual respect for each other in a conflicting work group.

  We would present our ideas and have logical discussions over why each idea was the best. Next would would proceed to tear into each others ideas pointing out every flaw in a respectful way. The only way we could find the strongest idea or system, was to try and break it.

  After that we would vote which idea we thought was best, yet the group leader had the respected final say.

  I completely agree with Eddie Wood and would never want to work at a company like that. Group-think is a terrible thing to foster.

  Also the strongest leadership quality anyone will recognize is sacrifice, and its apparent to me that CEO doesn’t have a clue what that means.

  Reply