Edit The Team

Posted October 25, 2019

When you type a document, do you leave typos or do you go back and change them as you type? Most likely you change the typos as you type or, at least, you finish your thought and then fix the typo. You most certainly do not complete the entire document and then return to fix all the typos because, if you did that, you would be apt to miss some of the errors you made and forget about others.

The same is true of business. I recently was watching a video interview of Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter and Square. When asked what his number one learning lesson from his entire career was, he quickly responded to “Edit the team”. Mr. Dorsey, went on to elaborate by saying that he realizes now he should have edited his team far quicker than he did, and recognizes that it was a setback for the growing company. Just as you edit a document, you must edit your employees. Your employees are not going to be with you from beginning to end. As leaders, too often we feel that we can train, mold, and inspire a particular employee to be a team player, a team sport, and buy in to our “whatever it takes” culture. But, many of your employees don’t see your vision, they don’t have the whole picture of where you want to take the company. You do. You are best suited to determine when an employee’s effectiveness has run its course.

You might like an employee and they may be doing good work. But, there comes a time when you must be honest with yourself and determine if said employee is adding value to the organization and to their teammates. Maybe you have reached a point where you are entering a new step in your business development and you must bring in more experienced people. Just like the document, if you wait until the end, if you wait until your business is a success, you might be waiting forever because it will be hard to reach that point without the right team.

But what about loyalty? What about keeping the team together? Sure, as long as the work is not beyond their ability, there should be no problem keeping the team together. However, the moment an employee shows signs of negativity, lack of ability or general feelings of disconnect from the work environment, it’s probably time to edit them from the team and move forward. I know what you’re thinking. It sounds harsh, cold, and just plain heartless. I too have struggled with this in my business. In the end, we as Owners, Leaders, and Managers must ensure that we do what’s best for the organization, which ultimately is what’s best for the majority of the team. Not to mention, you most likely are doing a favor for the employee as well if their current position is not what they’re passionate about.

But, why, you ask? Negativity in a work environment spreads like wildfire. Once one person catches it, it is very hard to control. Therefore, editing one person from the team rapidly puts the fire out before it gets out of control and it shows the remaining employees that you will not stand for such negative behavior.

I would be remiss if I didn’t reiterate that the caliber of your employees will have a tremendous impact on your company’s profitability (many studies have proven that). Having loyal and hard working employees who understand what they are doing and have the ability to learn and grow with the company is an asset beyond words. It is also something that is incredibly rare. As a result, as a business owner, you have to be ready to edit the team at any moment if you want your company to succeed.

By Tom Bryan, Managing Partner of ISGF.