New year a-comin'

The new year's a-comin'...and I've got to think of resolutions!  Actually, I've given up on resolutions.  You might even say that I've resolved to have nothing to do with resolutions; they're really just a cultural joke--no one expects you to keep a New Year's resolution. They're nice ideas...goals...things we should focus upon, but often we just regress back to the mean (our mean). 

Although it seems like a non sequitur, here are a couple good questions, posed by R.K. Cooper:

1. what's the most exceptional thing you've done this week?
2. what's the most exceptional thing you will do next week?

I really like these clarifying questions.  They focus me, help me cut away the crap, the dross (now THERE'S a great word!  Underused, too).  What I don't like is that it's hard to spend each moment, each day, each week in focused concentration.  My battery just wears down.  Doing the hard thing is...well...HARD!  Pundits who exhort me to "deliver my best" seem to forget that some days my best just isn't there.  On those days, I...

JUST GET UP OFF THE FLOOR.  That's it.

squad

Some days it's one hard thing all day long: the long-simmering issue that you've brought to the point that you can effectively deal with it.  In the movies these solutions are easy to put together, and you execute them in a stunning flourish (with panache, even!)  In reality, they take a lot of time.  And they suck.  That is, they SHOULD suck.  Firing someone should suck, even when they are toxic, dangerous to your enterprise, and need to go.  As Henry Cloud notes in "Necessary Endings," it's not easy to...

• Fire an employee who should be fired
• End a relationship which is not going where it should
• Shut down a product line or a business unit
• Get out of social ties and activities whose "season has passed"
• Letting go of a dream that is not going to materialize and moving on
• Admit that something is failing and waving the white flag

Did you ever think about the guys aiming the guns?  The guy standing against the wall...he did something to get there.  It's not an accident that he's got the bricks behind him and the blindfold on.  Don't get me wrong...no doubt he's getting the short end of the stick here, but don't assume the guys with the guns are having a good day.

Today I put someone on "administrative leave."  He will be fired (oops..."terminated") because he's dangerous to our mission, and continues in a bad direction despite multiple attempts to help.  Today sucked...for both of us.  Worse for him, no doubt, but also bad for me.  Some will blame me for doing what they had advocated for.  Doing the right thing requires courage, even when it is the obvious and right thing to do.  "Sure I wanted him to go, but I didn't mean I wanted him FIRED!" they think.  Some live in "imaginary-ville," where people just magically realize that they need to go, and that's just how it works out.  No blood, no fuss, no noise.


Yeah...riiiiiight.

Note to young leaders: when you fire someone, 

you always leave some of your own blood on the floor.