June 24, 2008
Willie Randolph and the Art of Firing
By Tom Ryan
The firing of Willie Randolph by the New York Mets has been widely seen as a colossal human resources disaster. Yet it also provided lessons across corporate America on the right and wrong way to fire someone.
The dismissal, according to HR experts, seemed especially callous since it came in the middle of the night (12:00 Pacific time) and was done away from Mr. Randolph’s home, his family and support network. In the second game of a western road trip, the firing came after a 9-6 win against the Anaheim Angels. Speaking to Newsday, Bill Heather, senior vice president of Right Management, says that apart from a firing for some unethical breach, you do it “as conveniently for the person as possible.”
The timing was also poor since the Mets had just won their third victory in four games. The organization appeared to have made up its mind for days, if not weeks, yet Mr. Randolph faced scrutiny from the public and his own players. “It’s bad form,” said Mr. Heather. The organization appeared to be saying, “It looks like you’re coming back right now, so we’re firing you.”
Another fault was having other employees hear about the dismissal from outsiders rather than from the organization. While the firing sent a bad message to consumers (e.g., Mets fans), the more harmful message was sent to other employees in the organization and Mr. Randolph’s replacement about how management treats employees.
Doug Silverman, a senior human resources manager at Nikon, told Newsday that Mr. Randolph’s firing showed “poor communication and poor judgment. They didn’t think about perception.”
Bruce Dingman, founder and president of the recruiter, Dingman Co., Westlake Village, Calif., told the Star-Ledger that owners, typically entrepreneurs, are often concerned about the end result instead of following a logical process when firing someone.
“The right way is to sit down in private and when you make the announcement, make the announcement with him,” says Mr. Dingman. “It’s an amicable parting. Otherwise, it’s sort of tacky. It’s like you’ve been dating a woman and considering marriage and you walk away without saying anything. It’s tacky, and it should be a red flag for the next person.”
“Firing people is such a sensitive thing,” adds David Weissman, labor lawyer at Reed Smith New York, to the Star-Ledger. “You want to treat people with respect. You want them to feel dignified. You don’t want to demoralize them. The more positive the experience, the less likely you’d end up in some type of litigation.”
Discussion Questions: What are some common mistakes companies make when firing someone, whether at retail or the corporate level? What have you learned from having to fire someone, or being fired yourself?
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Obviously a very touchy subject. My experiences in HR revolve around California and Ontario, probably the 2 most pro labor state/provinces in North America. Firing people, even low level retail jobs, requires a huge paperwork trail and concrete and bullet proof cause. Even in some cases, you still have to pay the employee off. So there is a process involved and it is really in place to protect the worker. Companies add their own policies and procedures to protect the brand. The Mets? I guess public perception is not a priority for this Major League team.
To touch (again) on the Zappos example: the first mistake most companies make when firing people, is hiring the wrong person in the first place…or perhaps they have the right person, and they don’t know it; but either way, you can rest assured there have been many miscues and missed opportunities along the way. Why would anyone expect the “goodbye” to be any better handled?
A few added notes. If you are an employee, just assume that you are going to be fired tomorrow. Don’t keep anything in the office that you can’t bear to part with. Also never sign a severance agreement on the spot. It won’t be in your favor.
For employers, fire the employee immediately. Don’t wait for projects to get done or replacements to get hired. There is a good chance the information will get leaked to the fired employee. Especially if he/she has a good friend in IT. Have the employee meet with company officials at an off-site location. This way the employee is not embarrassed in front of co-workers, there is no chance of the employee making a difficult scene, no tearful goodbyes, and the employee has no opportunity to remove items from their office.
One of the common mistakes companies make when firing someone is the mis-identification of the right person to be fired. Too frequently firings are cover-ups for mistakes or failings of the “deciders” up north.
This may sound simple but a couple of things:
When you have to let someone go, try to do it as discreetly as possible. Public executions, while they happen, shouldn’t. Never call someone in from vacation to let them go. Never wait until 10 days before Christmas to let someone go, after they have purchased Christmas gifts. Always be respectful but firm about expectations and deadlines before dismissal, and make those expectations realistic.
So many times people have been dismissed for not meeting objectives, such as increased sales, when you are responsible for making the product, not selling it. In Willie Randolph’s case, I think the writing was on the wall and he knew it was coming. I could be wrong.
I have never been a part of professional sports–no talent–so I can only offer observations from the business world. I would offer these thoughts: 1. Many companies seem to go out of their way to hire “outsiders” to fill middle management positions. The explanation often is they are gaining perspective–other views–which may be correct. 2. These outsiders often spend 80% of their time trying to change the organization they joined to the organization they left–if it was so good there then why did they leave? 3. They only listen to the people who hired them and never to the people who actually do the work. 4. Often, they discourage producers who know the customers, the system and the actual capabilities of the organization (what they actually can do verses what the new guy has been told they can do). 5. Organizations seldom to be better off going outside.
Now let me tell you how this connects with the “Art of Firing.” First of all, firing is not an art it is an admission of error. If management has to fire someone then that means management made a mistake. They did not take enough into consideration, they didn’t know what they needed to begin with and made a bad decision and someone now has to pay for their mistake. All this said the real “Art” of firing is having enough smarts to make those effected by the firing actually believe it was justified. That way the people who actually made the mistake are allowed to continue to make these mistakes over and over again and perfect their “Art”!
No matter what the laws are, companies can still release employees in any matter that they want and skirt around legalities if necessary. My brother’s company (who I shall not name) recently had a layoff. They put all the potential dismissees in a room and whoever got a text message on their phone saying they were let go had to leave the room. Yes, it’s true and unacceptable but what can be done?
What a fun topic! (kidding, of course)
The biggest mistakes companies make in this regard are two fold:
— not firing non-performers fast enough
— giving execs huge parachutes
The first mistake has the most correlation with the lowly Mets (as us Cub fans say, “what’s a Met anyway?”)…if leadership lost faith in their manager, go ahead and make the change. The team and everyone else will respect you for it. Be decisive. (You don’t have to look further than cross-town NYC to find a good emulator, ahem.) In general, there’s just too many wishy-washy/PC management techniques in the business world today. Be honest, be decisive, be swift…always the best methodology.
Bad move even if the fans did not like Willie Randolph he is now the underdog.
Just a couple of key points when it comes to firing.
1. It should never be a surprise when it happens. If it is a surprise then management did not do it job of giving the employee feedback about their job performance.
2. Firing is a process not an single act.
3. Do it with respect.
4. Ask yourself what is the consequence of me firing this person and the way I am going to do it.
Just remember, one question you need to ask yourself is “how will my action read on the front page of the New York Times?” In the above case, that is actually what happened.
You know, I realized something as I read the setup for this discussion. In all my experience with hourly employees, the retailers I worked for never really fired anyone. Want to get rid of someone? Firing, as noted earlier, takes too much paperwork and creates too many opportunities for liability or penalties if you screw it up. So none of the companies I worked for ever really fired anyone – they just scheduled them out and wore them down until they quit. “You wanted 30 hours this week? Oh well, we don’t like you and we want you to leave so we gave you 15. And you’ll be lucky to get 10 next week. Don’t like it? So quit!”
At RSR, we’ve been mulling over the question of how retailers and front-line employees got into such a vicious cycle of apathy and antagonism. This helps explain a lot.
If a person or company has any class at all, they will treat a fired employee with respect, even if they don’t think they deserve it. There are some offenses that indicate an instant discharge but they are few. Stealing is the one that comes to mind first but there are others. All other performance related discharges should be able to be made at a scheduled and appropriate time and place.
The Mets incident is an example of why labor unions are so strong and in many cases necessary to protect employees from employers.
Firing someone is never easy. It requires tact, yet a firm hand. Being one of the ultimate power plays, care needs to be given to the person being let go. They should be told specific reasons for the decision and those reasons should be documented from the time they began, along with proposed remedies and efforts to right them.
One of the biggest mistakes is dragging out the firing. If you give workers too much notice it gives them time to prepare which often means time to do harm to their employer. Taking home files, interviewing with competitors, stealing corporate secrets. It’s best to remove the fired worker immediately once the decision is made.
I found out I was going to be fired when I saw on my boss’s email calender…he was meeting with the person who did my job at a competitor’s business. It was easy to do the math.
Clearly Mets management wanted to punish Mr. Randolph and took no pity, empathy or–it would seem–much forethought. They relished firing him. I doubt they did this without worrying about the potential PR.
The owner wanted to send a clear, quick and decisive message. Instead of looking at their part in it, they tried to make Mr. Randolph a scapegoat–even telling the media in advance that they didn’t like him. There’s class and then there’s the Mets; second only to RadioShack’s dismissing people by email.
Employers shouldn’t tell obvious lies. When someone is fired, and the announcement says that it was “a mutual decision” or “it was the employee’s decision,” yet everyone knows the person doesn’t have a new job lined up, the survivors know there was a firing. So telling an obvious lie just makes the survivors lose more respect for the organization. How about, “Elvis has left the building” instead of “Elvis decided to pursue other interests”?
The most relevant learning for our industry is simply that the long term implications of a firing decision cannot be overstated. An abrupt and fairly unprofessional firing breeds mistrust within the organization to begin with. However, given that it is such a small professional universe, the repercussions of letting someone go in this manner can be manifold.
This person could tomorrow be in a position to make decisions that directly affect you and your company. And while we all like to believe that we are perfectly professional, we all also know that personal preferences and experiences play at least a sub-conscious role in our decisions. It is needless to add that someone who has been mistreated is far less likely to take a benevolent approach to the whole thing just because a couple of months have passed.
As professionals, I am sure we all understand the compulsions of a business decision to let someone go. But when the execution is paltry, the principal suffers sooner or later.
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Obviously a very touchy subject. My experiences in HR revolve around California and Ontario, probably the 2 most pro labor state/provinces in North America. Firing people, even low level retail jobs, requires a huge paperwork trail and concrete and bullet proof cause. Even in some cases, you still have to pay the employee off. So there is a process involved and it is really in place to protect the worker. Companies add their own policies and procedures to protect the brand. The Mets? I guess public perception is not a priority for this Major League team.
To touch (again) on the Zappos example: the first mistake most companies make when firing people, is hiring the wrong person in the first place…or perhaps they have the right person, and they don’t know it; but either way, you can rest assured there have been many miscues and missed opportunities along the way. Why would anyone expect the “goodbye” to be any better handled?
A few added notes. If you are an employee, just assume that you are going to be fired tomorrow. Don’t keep anything in the office that you can’t bear to part with. Also never sign a severance agreement on the spot. It won’t be in your favor.
For employers, fire the employee immediately. Don’t wait for projects to get done or replacements to get hired. There is a good chance the information will get leaked to the fired employee. Especially if he/she has a good friend in IT. Have the employee meet with company officials at an off-site location. This way the employee is not embarrassed in front of co-workers, there is no chance of the employee making a difficult scene, no tearful goodbyes, and the employee has no opportunity to remove items from their office.
One of the common mistakes companies make when firing someone is the mis-identification of the right person to be fired. Too frequently firings are cover-ups for mistakes or failings of the “deciders” up north.
This may sound simple but a couple of things:
When you have to let someone go, try to do it as discreetly as possible. Public executions, while they happen, shouldn’t. Never call someone in from vacation to let them go. Never wait until 10 days before Christmas to let someone go, after they have purchased Christmas gifts. Always be respectful but firm about expectations and deadlines before dismissal, and make those expectations realistic.
So many times people have been dismissed for not meeting objectives, such as increased sales, when you are responsible for making the product, not selling it. In Willie Randolph’s case, I think the writing was on the wall and he knew it was coming. I could be wrong.
I have never been a part of professional sports–no talent–so I can only offer observations from the business world. I would offer these thoughts: 1. Many companies seem to go out of their way to hire “outsiders” to fill middle management positions. The explanation often is they are gaining perspective–other views–which may be correct. 2. These outsiders often spend 80% of their time trying to change the organization they joined to the organization they left–if it was so good there then why did they leave? 3. They only listen to the people who hired them and never to the people who actually do the work. 4. Often, they discourage producers who know the customers, the system and the actual capabilities of the organization (what they actually can do verses what the new guy has been told they can do). 5. Organizations seldom to be better off going outside.
Now let me tell you how this connects with the “Art of Firing.” First of all, firing is not an art it is an admission of error. If management has to fire someone then that means management made a mistake. They did not take enough into consideration, they didn’t know what they needed to begin with and made a bad decision and someone now has to pay for their mistake. All this said the real “Art” of firing is having enough smarts to make those effected by the firing actually believe it was justified. That way the people who actually made the mistake are allowed to continue to make these mistakes over and over again and perfect their “Art”!
No matter what the laws are, companies can still release employees in any matter that they want and skirt around legalities if necessary. My brother’s company (who I shall not name) recently had a layoff. They put all the potential dismissees in a room and whoever got a text message on their phone saying they were let go had to leave the room. Yes, it’s true and unacceptable but what can be done?
What a fun topic! (kidding, of course)
The biggest mistakes companies make in this regard are two fold:
— not firing non-performers fast enough
— giving execs huge parachutes
The first mistake has the most correlation with the lowly Mets (as us Cub fans say, “what’s a Met anyway?”)…if leadership lost faith in their manager, go ahead and make the change. The team and everyone else will respect you for it. Be decisive. (You don’t have to look further than cross-town NYC to find a good emulator, ahem.) In general, there’s just too many wishy-washy/PC management techniques in the business world today. Be honest, be decisive, be swift…always the best methodology.
Bad move even if the fans did not like Willie Randolph he is now the underdog.
Just a couple of key points when it comes to firing.
1. It should never be a surprise when it happens. If it is a surprise then management did not do it job of giving the employee feedback about their job performance.
2. Firing is a process not an single act.
3. Do it with respect.
4. Ask yourself what is the consequence of me firing this person and the way I am going to do it.
Just remember, one question you need to ask yourself is “how will my action read on the front page of the New York Times?” In the above case, that is actually what happened.
You know, I realized something as I read the setup for this discussion. In all my experience with hourly employees, the retailers I worked for never really fired anyone. Want to get rid of someone? Firing, as noted earlier, takes too much paperwork and creates too many opportunities for liability or penalties if you screw it up. So none of the companies I worked for ever really fired anyone – they just scheduled them out and wore them down until they quit. “You wanted 30 hours this week? Oh well, we don’t like you and we want you to leave so we gave you 15. And you’ll be lucky to get 10 next week. Don’t like it? So quit!”
At RSR, we’ve been mulling over the question of how retailers and front-line employees got into such a vicious cycle of apathy and antagonism. This helps explain a lot.
If a person or company has any class at all, they will treat a fired employee with respect, even if they don’t think they deserve it. There are some offenses that indicate an instant discharge but they are few. Stealing is the one that comes to mind first but there are others. All other performance related discharges should be able to be made at a scheduled and appropriate time and place.
The Mets incident is an example of why labor unions are so strong and in many cases necessary to protect employees from employers.
Firing someone is never easy. It requires tact, yet a firm hand. Being one of the ultimate power plays, care needs to be given to the person being let go. They should be told specific reasons for the decision and those reasons should be documented from the time they began, along with proposed remedies and efforts to right them.
One of the biggest mistakes is dragging out the firing. If you give workers too much notice it gives them time to prepare which often means time to do harm to their employer. Taking home files, interviewing with competitors, stealing corporate secrets. It’s best to remove the fired worker immediately once the decision is made.
I found out I was going to be fired when I saw on my boss’s email calender…he was meeting with the person who did my job at a competitor’s business. It was easy to do the math.
Clearly Mets management wanted to punish Mr. Randolph and took no pity, empathy or–it would seem–much forethought. They relished firing him. I doubt they did this without worrying about the potential PR.
The owner wanted to send a clear, quick and decisive message. Instead of looking at their part in it, they tried to make Mr. Randolph a scapegoat–even telling the media in advance that they didn’t like him. There’s class and then there’s the Mets; second only to RadioShack’s dismissing people by email.
Employers shouldn’t tell obvious lies. When someone is fired, and the announcement says that it was “a mutual decision” or “it was the employee’s decision,” yet everyone knows the person doesn’t have a new job lined up, the survivors know there was a firing. So telling an obvious lie just makes the survivors lose more respect for the organization. How about, “Elvis has left the building” instead of “Elvis decided to pursue other interests”?
The most relevant learning for our industry is simply that the long term implications of a firing decision cannot be overstated. An abrupt and fairly unprofessional firing breeds mistrust within the organization to begin with. However, given that it is such a small professional universe, the repercussions of letting someone go in this manner can be manifold.
This person could tomorrow be in a position to make decisions that directly affect you and your company. And while we all like to believe that we are perfectly professional, we all also know that personal preferences and experiences play at least a sub-conscious role in our decisions. It is needless to add that someone who has been mistreated is far less likely to take a benevolent approach to the whole thing just because a couple of months have passed.
As professionals, I am sure we all understand the compulsions of a business decision to let someone go. But when the execution is paltry, the principal suffers sooner or later.