“The pen is mightier than the sword,” is a quote attributed to the English writer, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who lived in the first half of the nineteenth century.
The quote has been copied and altered many times in history, including my subject line above.
The pen is mightier than fear of dealing with a problem employee.
My alteration comes from a conversation I had with a VIP client this morning.
One employee, we’ll name him Jim, although that’s not his name, needs to go. He simply is not part of the culture.
Now Jim has been in his role for a long time. He has about 25 clients who work with him directly. They “seem” to like him and he reminds his supervisor continually about how good he is. He is not a team player and does little to move the organization forward, although he has been collecting a salary (in addition to his training fees) for several years. He does not show up at mandatory staff meetings and is counter-productive when he does put in an appearance.
I could go on, but you get the idea. He needs to go.
We become paralyzed to a degree. What if he takes everyone with him, and all that income? What will his clients think? How will we survive without that income.
Stop the presses. We are projecting the worse case scenario. We are making assumptions, HUGE assumptions.
Three things we must do immediately:
- Grab a pen and write down every client Jim works with. Put a checkmark by every name you are certain will actually leave. Things already look better, don’t they
- Calculate how much revenue is represented by the people whom you know for certain will actually leave. Smaller than you thought, isn’t it?
- Make a list of the way you can market the changes to this group of people. Write out your plan to control the conversation.
Keep in mind the following.
- It’s far easier to keep customers than to go get new ones.
- The current customers have a deeper relationship with the organization than they do with Jim. They write checks to the organization.
- You will be surprised that a number of Jim’s customers will celebrate the change.
Attitude is critical in this situation. Feeling defeated and afraid from the beginning insures a difficult outcome.
Preparing and putting things in writing so all sides are considered and key leadership can collaborate on the execution builds confidence, and turns discouragement into positive expectations.
Will things go perfectly, of course not, but you will be prepared and in my experience over decades of living through these situation, you get a much better outcome than you originally expected.
The pen, used properly to collect thoughts, condense ideas, and distill an action plan, overpowers bad attitudes and self centered employees every time.
It’s hard work requiring discipline to get it done the right way, but you’ll lose less business and feel great in the end.
Remember, you only get results if you take immediate action on your ideas!
