Navigate the Wrong Fits (The “C Box”)

No matter how long you’ve been at this, and how great your hiring systems are, the time will come when you make a mistake and let a person through the net who shouldn’t be in your company. The main difference between toned, fit companies and flabby, lazy companies is that the fit ones recognize the problem quickly, fix it, and move on, whereas the flabby ones allow the wrong fits to stay indefinitely, wreak havoc, and hurt all their best people.

Picking the wrong person is a common mistake. We’ve all made it. Don’t let your fear or your pride prevent you from dealing with the situation. Take action, learn from what happened, and then get over it and move on; give up all hope of having a brighter past.

I made my first important hire when I was a young executive in a growing business. I had to find a manager for a failing corporate store that was bleeding cash. The CEO of the company was absolutely manic to solve the problem, and I felt the pressure to find a solution—fast.

We had no hiring procedures, so I posted an ad and began interviewing candidates. On my second interview, I hit an absolute goldmine; the candidate was a gift straight from heaven—and on only my second try, too! Nobility forced me to keep it to myself, but I could see that I was really good—possibly a prodigy—at hiring.

He had (he said) run a group of retail stores out east in a turn-around situation and built them into a highly profitable chain. He’d been a gift to other businesses, too, tapping them gently with his golden wand, and transforming them from losers to gems of productivity and profit.

He was older now and looking for something fun to do. Obviously, he didn’t need to work, and hated to stoop to discuss anything so beneath his notice as a salary, but he thought that probably a high one would make sense as a matter of principle. I assumed he would probably give it to the homeless.

He was engaging and funny, and said everything I could possibly have hoped to hear. None of this raised a flag in my naïve, rosy-cheeked head, nor had I read Mark Twain deeply enough to know that this guy came straight out of Life on the Mississippi. If you’re playing poker and you don’t know who the patsy is, that’s because it’s you.

As he left the room, he coyly mentioned that he had some other interviews to go to and hinted he would probably take whatever was offered to him first. I thought about checking his references, but this was pre-Internet and the process seemed daunting. A moment’s reflection told me he would be offered a job at his next interview, so, on impulse, I hired him on the spot—and felt great, knowing that I had found the silver bullet that would fix the store and (secondarily) make me a legend in the process.

After he had been in the store for a few days, I began hearing strange stories from the staff. He wasn’t showing up; he was lying to customers. The assistant manager told me frankly that she “hated this guy.” How could she hate my 63-year-old bald Boy Wonder? I couldn’t sleep at night wondering if perhaps I had made a hiring mistake.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait long to find out. One night before closing, he left a deposit bag in his office, broke into his own store from an upper window, and attempted to walk across the T-bar ceiling to steal the store’s cash. He crashed through the ceiling tile onto the concrete floor 20 feet below, set off the store alarm, and was hauled away by ambulance after police investigated the alarm. Not only was he a criminal, he was a stupid criminal, and I was stupider yet: I had fallen for his outrageous story. I was furious at myself and embarrassed that I’d been played for a sucker by a conman.

The 7 Sure Signs a Wrong Fit Is on Board

Are you wondering if you might have someone who, for your company and culture, is just not going to work out? The following signs will make it plain to you:

1. She violates your company’s right attitudes.

2. He doesn’t care about his work.

3. She oozes negativity.

4. He receives bad reports from good people.

5. Her trajectory is all wrong.

6. He has no concept of time.

7. Your gut tells you something is wrong.

1. She Violates Your Company’s Right Attitudes

This is the most reliable and objective way of knowing you have a wrong fit on your hands. Lots of people can learn a new skill and become more productive, but not many can change fundamental values and beliefs that guide their actions through the day.

As we learned in Chapter 3, one of the criteria for finding right attitudes is that violations of them make you angry. Is the behaviour of your potential wrong fit making you mad? If you find yourself angry with her, and not over garden-variety mistakes that everyone makes from day to day, you should have a closer look. If she continues to violate your company’s right attitudes on a consistent basis and can’t (or won’t) change, there’s a good chance that you have a C player that needs attention.

2. He Doesn’t Care About His Work

This comes out in a variety of ways: spending inordinate amounts of time on social media, encountering “emergencies” that require time off during busy periods, getting afflicted with that peculiar and exotic ailment that flares up at odd times, repeatedly adding an extra day to a long weekend.

“That’s not my job” syndrome is an excellent diagnostic tool for sniffing out a C player as well. Doing things apart from his strict list of duties could take extra effort, which is an unacceptable breach of the principle of work/life balance to the C player; another possible reason for this malady is the risk of exposing his ineptitude to other people. Better not to help than to come out of the “incompetence closet” to your coworkers.

3. She Oozes Negativity

It’s a bad sign when people spew vitriol around the work-place, even if it isn’t related to your company or to their job. The woman who can’t stop slagging her previous boss, or the man who drones on and on about the imagined deficiencies of his wife are hard on everyone around them—not to mention that one day you’re going to be the past boss, and you’ll be talked about in exactly the same way.

The same goes for negativity about the weather, the government, gasoline taxes, the hypocritical and rigged nature of Academy Award voting procedures, personalities of customers, and a plethora of other things that she has no control over.

Negativity is a choice, and as the flu does, it spreads. You don’t want the rest of your staff catching this flu, because it’s one that they don’t get over once they’ve got a bad case of it, and it can quickly become an epidemic. Deal with the disease before it becomes a full-brown epidemic.

4. He Receives Bad Reports From Good People

On the face of it, “bad reports” seems like a subjective way to find out how a person is doing. But if you’re hearing negative reports about a staff member from people you trust, pay attention to the news. Don’t let yourself get too caught up in “process,” allowing the situation to play out on its own. Bad news travels fast, and if these bad reports are coming from credible people, insert yourself into the situation and monitor it closely to find out the truth for yourself.

As the boss, you’re the last to hear these things, so if it’s leaking back to you, you know it’s been around the mulberry bush multiple times already and everyone else is fully briefed on the situation.

5. Her Trajectory Is All Wrong

From personal experience, I know you can determine the trajectory of a new hire very quickly. Typically you can tell within the first week or two if she feels like a fit. It doesn’t take six months or a year to make that determination. You know you have a winner when things just “feel” right. She may not know much yet and she may not have solved any real problems, but you can tell that once she has some knowledge and experience under her belt, she’ll be just fine.

When assessing someone who isn’t a new hire, but has been in her role for a while, look again at her career trajectory. Is it moving upward, staying flat, or going downward? If it’s going up, she’s becoming better at what she does, she’s getting more engaged over time, and she’s becoming more valuable by contributing at a higher level.

If her trajectory is flat, she’s showing satisfactory results, but nothing more. She shows up and gets the work done, but you don’t see more in her future. But if she shows a downward trajectory and her performance and attitude is actually skidding downhill over time, you have a problem.

When I assess business leaders, it isn’t hard to predict with a high degree of accuracy where they’ll be in one, three, or five years’ time. I just look at their past trajectory, because usually that trajectory will continue into the future. Barring unforeseen disaster, the story of each person’s future is already written because of the habits he has developed that will keep him winning for a long time to come. Those moving upward will continue to get better and be more successful; those remaining flat will be in about the same place as they are today, and those moving downward will be worse off in five years than they are today. Given these three simple diagnostics, it’s not super-hard to be a consultant.

6. He Has No Concept of Time

If you’ve ever chosen the wrong line at the grocery store and watched while the cashier stops checking items through so that he could fully engage in conversation with the customer in front of you about whether or not he’s having a nice day—and then doesn’t begin productively moving his hands again until he’s through talking—you’ll be able to relate to the frustration of this C player sign.

“Hands and mouth must move at the same time,” I tell my kids as we load the dishwasher. “If this is not possible, mouth must cease moving.” (#lifeskills)

C players aren’t concerned about prosaic things like time and productivity. They live in their own fairy world where there are no deadlines—only rainbows and unicorns. In order to win on the horizontal (effectiveness) axis of the Star Chart, you must have at least some sense of time and urgency.

7. Your Gut Tells You Something Is Wrong

Why is it that you don’t have to perform an internal song and dance to convince yourself of your great hires? Because it’s self-evident that they’re working out and they don’t need a cheerleader to help lift their brand! Conversely, when you find that you’re trying to convince yourself and others that someone is going to work out in her role, you may be living in denial.

I’m a big believer in listening to your gut. A gut check isn’t some arbitrary, capricious feeling that you get when you wake up on the wrong side of the bed. It’s a finely tuned sense that you’ve developed over years that recalls similar situations that you’ve heard of, read about, or experienced personally. A gut check is your subconscious mind linking these hundreds or thousands of connections into a feeling that’s real, and one that you should listen to. It’s a way of helping you understand that you’ve “seen this movie before” and that you also know how it usually ends.

When your gut tells you something’s wrong, that’s because it is. Don’t ignore it.

Taking Action With Your Wrong Fits

Think of your wrong fit—the one who permanently lives in that box on the Star Chart. Now think back to your high school biology class and what you learned about parasites. The goal of a parasite is to latch on to a host that can supply its needs, and stay latched on—permanently. The parasite never wants to take so much that the host dies; that wouldn’t be effective. The parasite needs to keep its supply of nourishment flowing. The host might feel constantly tired, but that’s fine as so long as it doesn’t die, thus ending the relationship. The parasite doesn’t give anything, it’s only there to take.

In the same way, people who permanently live in the wrong fit box don’t care about you. They care about themselves and will not take action to sever themselves from you, their host. If anything’s going to change with your wrong fits, it will be because you initiate it.

Confront Them

Some wrong fits may not be parasites but have drifted into that box for other reasons. This is certainly the case if you’ve seen them perform better, and you know they can do it if they want to. These people need your help and your intervention if they’re ever going to get back on track and move into a better box.

Often wrong fits are never called out on their behavior. This dynamic, however, is not fair to the leader, the company, and especially the employee. If a wrong fit doesn’t know specifically why she’s in that box, she has no opportunity to address her issues and fix them.

I once worked with a client who had an employee that he felt was a wrong fit. When we discussed her, he was visibly upset and angry about her attitude and lack of performance. He listed her issues while I listened. She had been with the company, underperforming, for 10 years.

When he was done, I asked, “Have you ever said to her what you’re saying to me in kind, but clear, language?” He responded, “Not in so many words, but believe me, she gets it.” “How is she getting it?” I asked. “I glare at her every morning when she comes in” was his knowing response.

My sense was that she wasn’t picking up on the covert performance review too well.

Act as Their Reality Advisor

Wrong fits stay in a company for many reasons. Often, wrong fits think they’re doing great.

Harvard Business Review cites an interesting study that highlights the underperformer’s perception of his own performance: “People who lack the skill to perform well also tend to lack the ability to judge performance...because of this ‘dual curse,’ they fail to recognize how incompetent they truly are.... Teaching poor performers to solve logic problems causes them to see their own errors and reduce their previous estimates of their performance.”¹

A reality advisor is someone who helps a person see beyond his own perception of a situation, to what’s really going on. As leader, you need to get comfortable wearing this hat from time to time. When a person is unaware of what’s really going on, a crash is imminent, and a reality advisor can help him—and the company—avoid the wreckage that usually ensues.

The further reality moves from the perception of reality, the bigger the eventual crash is going to be.

Think of this reality gap in the context of marriage. Imagine a husband entering the marriage with a large amount of debt. He doesn’t want to turn off his potential wife, so he doesn’t mention anything about it. As time goes on, the debt grows, as does the incentive to keep it secret. However, one day, the wife is going to find out. She’s going to stumble across a bank balance, or get a letter from a creditor, or receive a notice that they have to sell their house to settle the debt. When she finally finds the truth, there’s going to be a crash.

Such gaps between reality and perception destroy marriages, and they also turn into major people problems at work. When you have an employee who thinks he’s amazing and people all around him disagree, eventually it will come to a sad end. This situation can go on for a long time, but it will end, and when it does, it’s going to be expensive, messy, and unpleasant for everyone involved. When the beginning is bad, the end is going to be worse.

Jack Welch famously said, “Protecting underperformers always backfires.” At some point, perception and reality are going to collide. It’s up to you to facilitate that collision and deal with it before it becomes a damaging, painful issue.

Strategize About Your Options

Sometimes replacing a wrong fit is about timing. It’s like a battle strategy. You know the battle is coming, but if you’re smart, you choose the time and place of the battle, and you don’t allow it to be forced on you by someone else, or by your own emotions that press you to act immediately.

Instead, map out a multi-pronged exit strategy. You should be thinking of strategic questions such as these:

• Have I received the best legal advice?

• Who is going to have a warning “reality talk” with this person?

• How are you going to tighten accountability so that underperformance is called out, giving this person every chance to change?

• What is the best time for him to be replaced, both for you and for him?

• Who do you know who could be a candidate to take over his job?

Start brainstorming to come up with names of people who could one day replace your wrong fit and become your new star.

Cut Your Losses

If you’ve engaged in multiple reality talks, have been clear in your warnings and you still don’t see any change happening, it’s time for you to act. Retaining wrong fits is not fair to you, to the company, to their coworkers, or to them.

You’ve been chosen as leader and coach to do what’s right for the team, and this is your moment to gain the respect of all your best people. Football coach Lou Holtz said it best: “Motivation is simple. You eliminate those who are not motivated.”

This is a critical part of your job. Let’s look for a moment at the far-reaching consequences of not acting when you’re certain you have a wrong fit.

The Cost of a Wrong Fit

Letting a wrong fit go is a sad decision—but not a hard one, because there are serious costs to keeping one. In fact, studies show that the cost is much higher than you think.

A sales representative can cost up to five times his annual base salary, a manager can cost up to 15 times his annual base salary, while an executive can cost up to 30 times his annual base salary.² Does this seem high to you? What if the true number was half of these statistics? Or a quarter? The expense is still massive. Think about some of the costs involved, small to large:

• Paying severance and the ensuing emotional costs in finally letting them go.

• Running ads.

• Vetting resumes and interviewing candidates.

• Training and orienting.

• Repelling your current stars or causing them to leave.

• Making mistakes, small and large.

• Missing sales through incompetence.

• Missing company-wide opportunities for growth.

• Turning off your best customers or losing them during transition.

• Draining your emotional resources and keeping you from focusing on opportunity.

• Repeating the cycle.

The longer a wrong fit stays, the higher these costs mount, and all that time, he’s still there underperforming—and taking a paycheck, too! Companies that have stars in every key seat can be up to 300 percent more profitable than those that don’t.

The Simple Difference Between a Bad Culture and a Great Culture

One of the biggest costs of letting your wrong fits stick around is in the damage this does to your work culture. At the end of the day, a great culture is one in which great people who perform well share right attitudes. A bad culture is one in which poor performers are tolerated and allowed to spread their bad attitudes to others.

When stars and potential stars work side-by-side with wrong fits and productive-but-difficults, the better workers come to a few conclusions. First, they see that there’s no justice in the world. People can get paid the same as them, have a bad attitude, and underperform at work without consequence. They see the futility of giving their all, because in the end, what does it really matter? Great performance, poor performance: it’s all tolerated. They conclude, perhaps correctly, that management doesn’t really care or notice.

Do you think that poor performers rise up to match the performance of better players around them? If your answer is yes, think again. The great majority of the time, it’s the reverse. The stars see that there’s no justice—that effort and attitude don’t matter—and they begin to sink on the Star Chart. Eventually some will sag to match the performance of the poorest players, and the stars who have other options (because everyone wants stars) will go to work for your competitors.

Here’s the HR recipe for your wrong fits:

• Have a reality talk with them.

• Take appropriate action.

People Action Steps

• Forget “chain of command” structures. Ask people at every level of the business how they’re doing and if they have any suggestions for company improvement.

• Benchmark your company’s performance against the best company in your industry, and ask yourself how their people compare to yours.

• Write the name of one person who you need to have a reality discussion with and set the date for it to happen.

• Develop a multipronged exit strategy for your wrong fits.

In Summary

Everyone makes hiring mistakes. Smart companies recognize and act on the problem quickly. The key indicators that you have a wrong fit on board are:

1. She violates your company’s right attitudes.

2. He doesn’t care about his work.

3. She oozes negativity.

4. He receives bad reports from good people.

5. Her trajectory is all wrong.

6. He has no concept of time.

7. Your gut tells you something is wrong.

In my work with hundreds of companies representing a huge variety of industries, I’ve found that a wrong fit can cost between two and 20 times the person’s annual salary, depending on their position. I’ve also found that companies with stars in every key seat are up to 300 percent more profitable than those without them.

A great culture is one that doesn’t tolerate C players, and a poor culture is one that does. Sometimes you have to put on your reality advisor hat, and be the person that kindly and firmly brings reality and perception of reality together, so that your underperformer sees the situation and has a chance to improve.

Letting wrong fits go is a sad decision, not a hard one.