For months, my client Antonio wrestled with how to handle his direct report Zoe. Zoe was a senior manager who executed tasks without fail, ensuring accuracy and on-time monthly delivery of client invoices for their professional services firm. But her communication style and unpredictable energy caused frustration, drama, and last-minute scrambles for others in the organization, pulling them away from client work and reducing productivity.
Antonio didn’t want Zoe to go; he wanted her to change. He invested months giving critical feedback and developing clear plans and measures to hold her accountable to new behaviors. Sometimes, the interventions sparked a shift, but within weeks, Zoe returned to her habitual state.
Antonio finally recognized that Zoe wasn’t ready to change—and that he couldn’t force her. The ongoing effort was draining the team’s time and energy, as well as his own. The right decision was clear: She needed to leave. But when?
To fire now, or wait?
Experts have long decried that once you’ve decided to fire an underperformer, you must act quickly. That’s especially true if you have a tendency to procrastinate or second-guess your decisions; acting quickly allows you to move forward, faster. In theory, it also relieves the team of the stress of tolerating a teammate who’s not pulling their weight.
But in many streamlined, post-layoff organizations, firing fast creates business gaps. There’s often no capacity left for the organization to draw upon.
For example, what happens when the underperformer interacts directly with clients or customers? Even the most carefully planned departure can spark worry and concern among those who interacted with the terminated employee. Or, what if the departure puts additional stress on an already-stretched team? Add in fears of being accused of bias, and many leaders tell me they feel damned if they do and damned if they don’t.
While “firing fast” can be compassionate and fair, it also can be risky if it generates short-term problems and possibly longer-term consequences. In Antonio’s case, he needed to decide how to weigh the relief of letting an underperformer go quickly versus the risk of creating business gaps that impact the entire company.
Since Zoe handled complex and data-sensitive client invoices, he knew training someone else on the systems and nuances of each client could take months. However, failing to send invoices on time would result in slow cash flow, creating more serious issues. With no obvious successor, plus the firm’s hiring timeline averaging between eight and 10 months, Antonio felt stuck.
The answer was to separate the decision on whether to fire from the action on when to fire.
Separating decision from departure
Making a true decision allows us to move forward. In fact, the Latin root of the word decision is decidere, which means “to cut off.” If you’ve ever spent time ruminating over a pros and cons list, you know the importance of cutting off your options and making a clear decision.
When we’re taking on any emotionally charged decision (such as ending someone’s employment), we stall because we blur aspects of the decision together. Instead, we can make decisions faster and more effectively if we break it into parts, cutting off other options as we go.
For example, my client Jase led a 200-person specialty unit inside a global marketing firm. He’d worked diligently to help Mike, one of his account executives, grow the ability to effectively manage complex client expectations—a requirement of the job. After several candid and difficult conversations over time, Jase had enough evidence that Mike would not be able to rise to the level the role demanded.
Upon consulting with HR and his leadership team, Jase made the first decision: It was time to let Mike go. “Making the decision itself was a relief,” he told me, reflecting on the due diligence he’d done to get to this place. “I was waffling back and forth, unsure of what to do because I wasn’t yet sure of how to manage the consequences of Mike’s leaving.” Separating the decision of whether to fire from the decision on when to fire allowed Jase to stop overthinking the situation and move forward.
Tackling timing
With the decision now made, Jase could more easily consider the second decision: when. To tackle this, we reviewed these questions:
- What’s the biggest anticipated business disruption when this person leaves? (Again, not if.)
- What systems or processes will need additional time, energy, or financial investments?
- Who else can participate in this transition? What’s the cost of rerouting their current capacity?
- What other decisions does this departure invite us to make, such as outsourcing processes or partnering with vendors or other departments?
After reviewing the realities of the business, plus considering his own personal capacity, Jase decided to delay the actual termination discussion for two months. During that period, Jase partnered with his HR colleagues to redirect focus to three areas:
- Reviewing team workloads, offloading low-impact work to create available capacity
- Creating a client and internal communication plan for the transition
- Mentoring possible internal hires for Mike’s client responsibilities
Not only did these actions ensure that the business was protected when Mike departed, but they also forced Jase to address team-wide workload and talent issues more strategically. If Jase had simply terminated Mike at the same time he made the decision, Jase’s days would have been swept up in filling short-term gaps instead of creating a longer-term plan.
Warning: resist procrastination
While you may decide to separate the decision of whether to let someone go from the decision of when to do so, don’t consider this permission to delay taking action for long. Tolerating low performance always incurs a cost to the organization, to your team, and especially to you, the leader. Be sure to involve your HR department, boss, and/or other advisors for cross-checking your thinking for any blind spots or biases, make the decision on timing—and stick to it.
Of course, this strategy isn’t appropriate in all cases. It’s just one more option in a complex and interdependent world of work to balance short-term needs with long-term interests. In the end, doing your due diligence and making decisions that work for today’s realities will open doors to new possibilities you’ve never considered.
