Job cuts? Pink slips? Layoffs?
Firing an employee is never easy for the owner of a company. It doesn’t matter how the media portrays the evil business owners. What you read may be true very very few times. In cases where the business owner was backed into a corner where it was either fire a few and save the rest, or take a risk and gamble away every single employee.
Before you ask, no. I am not defending a GM, or even a Lehman. Definitely not an Enron.
I’m not talking of nameless, faceless, management types who know excel and little else. I’m defending the actual entrepreneurs. The men and women who have worked from the ground up and built a living, breathing, wonderful organisation.
A Company.
A Business.
A Store.
A Factory.
An Office.
A few weeks ago, I fired an employee.
Whatever be the reason.
Whoever be at fault.
It is not easy at all.
Maybe it’s not the best thing to do. No one has 20/20 hindsight. Maybe the person you fire tomorrow, given the right training, could have been employee of the year in a few years’ time. That is second guessing. That is being unfair to the person who had to make the decision.
When it comes down to it, the business owner has to decide. He doesn’t get points for putting it to vote.
It’s been a few weeks now. And I still think of what was done. What may have not been done. But thats not how businesses are run.
No turning back the clock.
Got to wake up tomorrow.
More customers to visit.
More sales to close.
A company to grow.
Destruction is so easy.
It takes balls to construct.