Just Because It’s Catchy Doesn’t Mean It’s Right

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“I am convinced that nothing we do is more important than hiring and developing people. At the end of the day, you bet on people, not on strategies,” said Lawrence Bossidy. One of the most important things a manager can do is get the people right. It defines the capabilities of your team and creates a culture that can be your greatest competitive advantage.

“Hire slow, fire fast” is based on this idea. You want to build a strong team and you’re more likely to do that if you take your time to hire right and get rid of those who don’t work out.

When you look at things that way, it makes sense. No one wants to hire the wrong person or keep someone who’s not performing. But in practice it’s never this simple. And when managers parrot out the “hire slow, fire fast” advice without understanding the key principles behind it, they’re much more likely to screw it up.

Hiring Slow is Not Hiring Well

It’s a common assumption that if you’re hiring slowly, you’re hiring better. But consider what you need for a strong hire. You need a clear job description, a good set of behavioral interview questions to interrogate candidate’s previous experiences, and a set of objective criteria to assess each candidate in a similar way. And you need good judgment to recognize when someone’s trying to feed you a line of crap.

If you have those areas covered, then you’ll make strong hiring decisions. If you don’t, you won’t. Taking longer to deliberate doesn’t add any value. It just dilutes everyone’s memories and often causes you to miss out on the best candidates.

I once had a boss who struggled to make decisions. He would spend weeks reviewing our recommendations, debating the pros and cons and second-guessing different points. It would often delay things to the point that the recommendation became obsolete, and all of our work came to nothing. I can’t even begin to describe how corrosive this was for morale.

When candidates see a slow hiring process, they see signs of these same behaviors. They’re not impressed with your thoughtfulness and consideration. They’re upset that you can’t make a decision. They see a bureaucracy that won’t be able to move quickly in the future.

Or they’ll interpret it as a lack of interest. They’ll think that you’re not all that interested in bringing them onboard. So, they’ll keep looking until they find a better option.

You would too if you were in their position. We’ve all been in situations where we’re waiting on someone else. We rarely think the best of people in these instances.

Strong managers don’t hire slowly, they hire well. They invest the time to make sure that the interview reveals everything they need to make a decision. Then, they decide and move forward.

The best way to do this is to have a standard process. Establish clear criteria with the job description. Think of your topics and questions in advance. Evaluate candidates along objective criteria and decide whether they meet expectations.

After the interview, you have all of the information you need to make the call. There’s no benefit to drawing it out so that you can “hire slow.” So, make the decision. Show candidates that you can act with decisiveness and that you’re excited to bring them onto the team.

Firing Fast is Firing Indiscriminately

Yes, the vast majority of us work in “employment at will” organizations. Yes, that means that anyone can quit for any reason and managers can fire people for almost any reason. But that’s the legal minimum. It doesn’t mean it’s a good practice. Great leaders don’t set their standards as slightly above the legal requirement.

Firing someone is a big deal. It creates a major disruption in that person’s life. If you’re trying to “fire fast,” you’re more likely to take action indiscriminately. You’re more likely to fire someone without giving them a chance to address the issue and make improvements.

Study after study, the biggest complaint that employees have about managers is a lack of feedback. Employees want to understand where they’re struggling. They want to take steps to improve. Yet managers still struggle to provide timely, actionable feedback.

If you’re thinking about firing someone, this becomes a much bigger issue. Managers have a moral obligation to give their employees every chance to correct the issue and elevate their performance. People need to understand where they’re not meeting your expectations and what they can do to correct that.

To do otherwise is to set people up to fail.

None of us would want to be fired without the chance to make changes. None of us would want to continue struggling in ignorance, only to find out that we haven’t been meeting expectations as we’re ushered out the door. If we’d want more consideration in a similar scenario, there’s no reason to treat someone else with less respect.

Too many managers delay becoming involved in people’s performance until they want to fire them. They fail to give constructive criticism on small issues, and let those minor problems become major ones, making them much harder to address. Instead of worrying about firing fast, managers should be quicker to flag poor behaviors when they’re easy to correct. They should be quicker to get involved and coach people to make improvements.

That, as much as anything, describes a great leader. Someone who recognizes when people are struggling and takes the time and effort to help them. As Simon Sinek put it,

“Leadership is not about being in charge. Leadership is about taking care of those in your charge.”

Hire Well and Fire Well. That’s the Priority.

“If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a brilliant team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something better,” wrote Ed Catmull, describing the importance of building a strong team. “Hire slow, fire fast” tries to emphasize this idea, but like most catchy statements, often causes more problems than solutions.

Great leaders know that they need to build strong teams and a key part of that is hiring and firing well. But slow hiring doesn’t mean quality hiring. It’s much more effective to build a strong process and make timely decisions.

And too often, firing fast means firing indiscriminately. Great leaders are quick to recognize when someone isn’t meeting expectations. They’re quick to take action. But they focus on coaching and helping people improve. Only after they’ve exhausted these options do they consider letting someone go.

Hire and fire well. Speed has nothing to do with it.

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