How many of you are guilty of this? I have a lot of flaws as a manager, but some events this week make me realize that this is probably my biggest.
There’s been several times that I kept an employee (or worse, manager) much longer than I should have. I think I’ve done this mainly out of fear: fear of having to find a replacement, of having to train somebody else, of unemployment claims, of having to put in extra hours, of hurting feelings… the list goes on.
I just had a manager resign. This person has never been a great asset to our company, but I’ve kept him around because I could really trust him when I wasn’t there. Never mind that he didn’t do things how I wanted them done, or that it often took weeks to get results from simple tasks. I could take a two week vacation and not have to worry! But the other 50 weeks were all frustration on my part. What’s worse, he was by far the highest earner in the store. He didn’t do much more than an employee making half of what he did. But because he was so trusted and allowed me to get away worry-free, I kept giving him raises to make sure he stayed. Talk about not seeing the forest through the trees!
Him resigning was a big wake up call, because it’s not the end of the world. I have a replacement lined up that wants to slide into his schedule. I’ll save a bunch of money, and I can get somebody in there that does things the right way. I’ll have to put in a lot of extra hours for probably 3 or 4 weeks. So what?
Even my wife said “I can’t believe you kept him around this long; he didn’t do the business any favors.” Thanks hun! You could’ve shared those feelings with me a year ago!
There’s been several times that I kept an employee (or worse, manager) much longer than I should have. I think I’ve done this mainly out of fear: fear of having to find a replacement, of having to train somebody else, of unemployment claims, of having to put in extra hours, of hurting feelings… the list goes on.
I just had a manager resign. This person has never been a great asset to our company, but I’ve kept him around because I could really trust him when I wasn’t there. Never mind that he didn’t do things how I wanted them done, or that it often took weeks to get results from simple tasks. I could take a two week vacation and not have to worry! But the other 50 weeks were all frustration on my part. What’s worse, he was by far the highest earner in the store. He didn’t do much more than an employee making half of what he did. But because he was so trusted and allowed me to get away worry-free, I kept giving him raises to make sure he stayed. Talk about not seeing the forest through the trees!
Him resigning was a big wake up call, because it’s not the end of the world. I have a replacement lined up that wants to slide into his schedule. I’ll save a bunch of money, and I can get somebody in there that does things the right way. I’ll have to put in a lot of extra hours for probably 3 or 4 weeks. So what?
Even my wife said “I can’t believe you kept him around this long; he didn’t do the business any favors.” Thanks hun! You could’ve shared those feelings with me a year ago!
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