Stop The Firing Already
Welcome to the world. We all make mistakes. We all do and have done things that we wish we could take back. There is absolutely nothing different in business...except maybe when things get a little hot in the seat, we feel we need to let someone go. In recent news, you see someone making a mistake, and foregoing malicious intent by said person, we see them get cut from their employment. Why do we do this?
When dealing with Continuous Confidence, we need to look at the facts of how firing doesn't increase, but instead weakens, confidence in the business as a whole. Now. Don't get me wrong. There are times when firing makes the most sense, but that comes down, in my book, to the intent of the behavior of the one who is at fault. They were trying to hide something or do malicious things, then that is prime example when firing might be warranted. But we are not talking about that example. Let me further explain.
The Case Study
A highly successful SaaS company is very proud on how reliable their site is. One day, a developer makes a mistake in their code, and the code gets pushed to production and it results in many people not being able to login. Now...customers can become quite vocal in their frustrations. One company comes forth and demands that something be done to rectify the situation. Money reimbursement is not an option. They demand blood...so someone is fired.
Now What?
Now, his is a fictitious situation, but this type of thing happens often. So why is this bad? Well, I would much rather have someone who learned the lesson the developer just learned than to replace them with someone who hasn't made that same mistake and allow them to fail as well. Haven't we seen the same mistake made twice or more times and still wonder why it happened? It because we failed to gain the trust of the customer back, and instead we took the easy road.
How do we gain their trust back? Well, we focus on what the mistake was. What guard rails can be put in place to prevent this same issue in the future. We write automation to ensure hat this same issue can't happen in the same fashion. We regress the area of code. And we prove to the customer that we have take steps by being transparent in the process. People understand that we make mistake. People appreciate honesty and collaboration.
When there is firing and letting people go for mistakes made, we defeat the confidence we have gained with our customers and also our employees. We defeat the confidence in the organization as a whole and we begin to spiral out of control. Let's take a moment to consider all of our options and slowly aim at continuous confidence in our organization.
When dealing with Continuous Confidence, we need to look at the facts of how firing doesn't increase, but instead weakens, confidence in the business as a whole. Now. Don't get me wrong. There are times when firing makes the most sense, but that comes down, in my book, to the intent of the behavior of the one who is at fault. They were trying to hide something or do malicious things, then that is prime example when firing might be warranted. But we are not talking about that example. Let me further explain.
The Case Study
A highly successful SaaS company is very proud on how reliable their site is. One day, a developer makes a mistake in their code, and the code gets pushed to production and it results in many people not being able to login. Now...customers can become quite vocal in their frustrations. One company comes forth and demands that something be done to rectify the situation. Money reimbursement is not an option. They demand blood...so someone is fired.
Now What?
Now, his is a fictitious situation, but this type of thing happens often. So why is this bad? Well, I would much rather have someone who learned the lesson the developer just learned than to replace them with someone who hasn't made that same mistake and allow them to fail as well. Haven't we seen the same mistake made twice or more times and still wonder why it happened? It because we failed to gain the trust of the customer back, and instead we took the easy road.
How do we gain their trust back? Well, we focus on what the mistake was. What guard rails can be put in place to prevent this same issue in the future. We write automation to ensure hat this same issue can't happen in the same fashion. We regress the area of code. And we prove to the customer that we have take steps by being transparent in the process. People understand that we make mistake. People appreciate honesty and collaboration.
When there is firing and letting people go for mistakes made, we defeat the confidence we have gained with our customers and also our employees. We defeat the confidence in the organization as a whole and we begin to spiral out of control. Let's take a moment to consider all of our options and slowly aim at continuous confidence in our organization.
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