At my last job running a several hundred person digital marketing company, I was once told that my "A***ole factor was not high enough". The advisor was an extremely successful executive who knew me very well professionally. Apparently this advice was passed on to him by his mentor when he was fresh out of business school. And it did help him. It helped rationalize creating a perspective of how one has to be dispassionate about management, especially in large companies.
Personally, I've always struggled with this. I still do.
I'm slow to fire. A struggling employee always deserved a second chance. And may a third and may be even a fourth! I have stepped in to solve problems when the right thing to do was to step back and evaluate whether the right person was in the right role. I couldn't help but buy their excuses when they appeared to be genuine. And in more occassions than one, I have crossed the line of professional management by personally getting involved. For instance, several years ago one of my employees needed some money for an emergency and was wondering whether the company could loan it to her. Long story short, I ended up loaning her the money.
Statistically, this approach hasn't really worked well. In well over 50% of the cases, the employee in question had to be fired. Or worse still, he or she would leave the organization when a better opportunity presented itself. Making me feel like a complete idiot in that process. Hindsight makes it abundantly clear that when you encounter a problem employee, the right first thing to do is to step back and dispassionately evaluate whether the person is a good fit. There might be some collateral damage, but I've seen a lot of managers flourish with this approach.
I've asked myself why I struggle with this. The answer to me, lies in the fact that I am unable to separate work from the rest of my life. It was true when I was making eighteen thousand dollars a year at my first job, as a programmer in Wisconsin. It was still true when I was making, well, a serious multiple of that money, running one of the largest ESPs in the world. I've always treated my job as an intensely personal endeavor. Akin to sustaining my family. I do not know whether my past successes are a cause and effect of this approach or it just correlates. And seriously, I do not care to find out.
When you think this way, the people who work with you or for you become friends. Well more than friends, they becomes psuedo family. Their problems, to some degree, become yours. And their failure doesn't appear to be independent from the organization's success. And so the statistics I have outlined a couple of paragraphs ago don't seem to matter. Well at least not completely.
I don't intend to confuse compassion with making savvy business decisions. We bought several companies while building out what eventually became Epsilon Interactive. And we have let a lot of people go. Letting incompetant or attitude challenged employees go, isn't what is up for discussion. The question is how much effort should one spend isolating situational reasons from inherent incompatibility, when an employee doesn't meet expectations.
I re-opened this debate in my head when we got started with Sprinklr many months ago. Several people reached out and volunteered to take a pay cut or work for free. Of course, we couldn't risk people's careers without establishing the business (which now it has). But it amazes me to see how human beings respond when they feel 'touched'. And how they defy the economic and social counsel to go with what their heart says. I suspect that is why the Sprinklr team now routinely works 14-18 hours a day. It has to be, because no-one is being asked to and no-one is being paid overtime.
To some degree, Sprinklr is an experiment. We are trying out a concept called 'integrated living' with Sprinklr India. When we moved into our own building for Sprinklr India recently, I asked the head of Indian ops to model it after a regular house replete with a kitchen, bed and TV. The hypothesis is that when you remove the artificial boundaries that a 9-5 culture introduces, it might actually be a good thing for the company. If the company genuinely cares about each employee as a person, they'll care about the company. And then you can stop telling them how, when and where they should work. And how much vacation they have. And strangely, in spite of not being told, they figure out the best way to make magic happen.
And if Sprinklr doesn't work out, well, may be I'll start working on improving my 'A***ole factor' :-)
What do you think? Do you have to be an A***ole to succeed?
"the best" he said very slowly, "is yet to come",
.rt.
