People are very prickly when you start to decide who is a keeper and who is not.
There is obviously the immediate question that they are asking internally, am I on the list?
We are all on the list, all the time.
You see, people are valuable and they make your business run and they make great relationships with customers and create magical transactions that grow your business.
Sometime that all goes a bit wrong and it stops working. Now what do we do?
At that point it is essential to have the ability to decide that though all people are important and every person surely contributes in one way or another to the organization, if they are no longer adding value then they should be either repurposed or removed.
If they have the capacity and potential to be fixed and become contributors once more, then get on with it. If they cannot, let them go.
Expired dishes smell rotten. They may look okay at the beginning, however it is only a question of time before they will stink. Any person at any level who is in the business of either self-protectionism or personal empire building must go.
Companies that thrive are filled with quirky folk who have a passionate desire to see the business grow and have no clue about their own importance, they do not have time for it, they are on a mission. These are they who power your growth and these are the current leaders.
Remember, everything changes by time. You were once not where you are now, and you will not be there forever, prepare for that!
As long as we remember that everyone is important, and that no one is indispensable we are on the right path to creating an organization where every person that is on the team is focused on delivering value and the merits of the system reward such efforts.
