'You Two Should Be Fired'

G. Michael Maddock and Raphael Louis Vitón discuss the reader backlash to their "Three Types of People to Fire Immediately" column

By G. Michael Maddock and Raphael Louis Vitón

The response to our last article was fascinating and a bit unnerving.

The story, which discussed three types of people employers should fire now, was the most e-mailed on Businessweek.com for eight consecutive days, and has been in the Top 5 Most Read ever since our editor—whom some of you also thought should be fired—posted it two weeks ago. The piece received more than 1,100 comments (as of this writing) and readers have called and e-mailed us directly, tweeted constantly, and, we have been told, debated the column at industry conferences.

While hundreds of you supported what we consider the truthful simplicity of the ideas, the majority, as the above headline suggests, posted angry comments, on this site and elsewhere, noting the perceived untruthful simplicity of the ideas.

While no one likes criticism, of course, we are big boys and we don’t mind if people disagree with us on the merits or the timing of the article. But we’d like to explain a bit just the same.

First, an Apology

We can understand that we struck a nerve in part because we talked about firing people during a period of stubbornly high unemployment. Reader Tmwoodin said it was a “hateful article to print especially in this job market.” We sincerely apologize if we offended those suffering because of the economy or the missteps of others. We knew talking about pink slips during tough times might rankle folks a bit.

So why did we risk using the “F” word? Simply because we see so many companies reluctant to hire because their margins are being squeezed. We know that most successful new products produce higher margins. Higher margins produce jobs. This is good. People who hinder innovation by constantly acting like victims, refusing to believe the company can succeed, or resisting learning anything new, get in the way of the very breakthroughs that would create more jobs. This is bad. That’s why we suggested firing them.

And that brings us to the ultimate irony. When we talked about firing people, we were thinking about those higher on the org chart, not lower. We meant the boss and senior management team.

When a CEO signs on to hire our firm, she or he invariably asks, “Why would this innovation effort fail?”

Our answer is always the same: “If it fails, it will be because of the leaders you surround yourself with. If you have knowers, victims, or nonbelievers on your leadership team, you are doomed. This holds especially true when one of these labels describes the CEO.”

We thought we made this implicit in the article. Judging from the response, we didn’t. We should have made it clearer. As long as we’re talking about clarifications, let us underscore a few things that people heard that we did not say.

Things We Did Not Say

We did not say, as about 20 percent of the people who wrote in (Jseguban, Crypt0logic, and M51DX among them) believe, that companies should have only “yes men and yes women.” That is just silly. Innovation requires that you have people who know how to challenge the ways your company serves the needs of its customers. These people are curious and often skeptical. They feel comfortable asking “why” until it hurts. They don’t do it because they are nonbelievers. They challenge convention because they believe in their ability and the team’s ability to come up with ideas to change the world for the better. They are, as a famous Apple ad put it, “The Crazy Ones.”

And yes, of course, as Paganmegan, VN, and Irate-MBA, among others, wrote, the boss needs to understand specifically why people react negatively to an idea. There are almost always valid concerns about costs, timing, available resources, and the like. These very real issues should be challenged with the goal of creating differentiating solutions.