This was a hard week. The normal stresses of a very busy life and many responsibilities were certainly felt. In addition, I made a significant decision in my work place that will have long term implications for both myself and others. I decided to sell a division of my small company that has never been profitable and has been a frequent source of considerable frustration. I decided to sell, rather than close down, because it gave better opportunity to some of the employees most affected by the sale.
This issue has been under consideration for many months while I tried to develop a plan to redeem the problems involved. Several interested parties had been advising me to prune this branch off the company tree and I have stubbornly resisted, hoping to find a more productive solution to the problem. I felt that closing or selling this division of our company would be an admission of failure on my part as an owner. I kept searching for ways to motivate key employees that also happened to be problem employees. I considered it my task to find a way to modify work conditions so that even problem employees could become productive contributors. I also hoped to maintain the division long enough so sufficient marketing and time would allow the business to grow. Unfortunately, after almost five years of subsidizing, adjusting, marketing, encouraging, and managing, it still does not seem to be probable. I consider this a failure of my business sense and management ability.
However, I realize that I can’t be responsible for the behavior of the problem employee, who has been given plenty of freedom, resources, opportunity, and accommodation and still can’t manage to work as a team player and can’t earn enough fees to offset the cost of employing him. In addition, I realized my extended tolerance of underperformance not only hurt me financially, but it was hurting the other employees financially when the absence of profit translated into absence of bonus to them. That is what finally motivated me to take serious action to stop the financial drain on the company.
Why am I writing these thoughts in a blog? Perhaps someone like me might read and recognize that their stubborn resistance to give up on a losing activity may be hurting some of the people they are trying to protect. I finally realized that I had to disrupt one employee’s work life so that another six employees might suffer less. I am hoping that I might read this in the future to help me not make similar mistakes……
