炒魷魚：CEO的必修課

????美國共和黨總統候選人米特·羅姆尼自稱“喜歡炒人魷魚”。雖然最近很多人都當眾露出了馬腳，但羅姆尼這句話肯定是其中人們記得最清楚的情形之一。盡管有斷章取義之嫌，但他這句話還是強化了一個普遍存在的印象——“首席執行官都是不講情面的混蛋，更關心利潤而不是員工。”

????我不知道其他首席執行官怎么樣，但我本人非常不愿意解雇人。我曾經創立過六家初創企業，承擔過幾百項職責。但事實上，解雇人一直是其中最難的一項。

????需要說明的一點是，我談論的并不是事出有因的解雇。由于行為惡劣、能力欠缺等原因解雇員工，自然沒什么好說的。但如果早已清楚界定了崗位職責、進行了充分的面試以及背景調查，招到的人最終還是得卷鋪蓋走人，絕對屬于小概率事件。

????我要討論的也不是“減員”——大公司為了讓一個糟糕季度后的數據好看些而進行的大規模裁員，或者更常見的是，公司喪失了自身優勢，試圖遏制長期下滑態勢時所進行的大規模裁員。

????其實，真正難的是必須要解雇出色的員工，而解雇原因往往與他們本人無關，只怪他們在錯誤的時間處于錯誤的地方。

????下面三個常見的因素會讓人陷入上面所說的這種難堪境地：

????? 業務重心轉移 – 新公司起步之初，業務調整是常見的事。因此，除非每次的業務模式需要的都是同樣的專業技能，否則，12月份時還不可或缺的員工到了1月份可能就會突然變得無足輕重了。上周，我剛剛和一位首席執行官通了幾個小時的電話，他的公司正在將業務重心從消費者轉向B2B模式，導致在消費者營銷和內容領域具有專長的兩位核心成員突然間喪失了原來的重要地位。

????? 業務升級 – 公司剛成立時，除了一個好點子，其他什么都談不上，這時你聘請的員工自然是你請得起的最好的員工。如果一切順利，公司開始起步，突然之間，你得到了一大筆B輪（Series B）融資，準備要大干一場了。更令人激動的是，拜公司在知名科技博客TechCrunch上的曝光率所賜，你開始有能力吸引一流的人才。當初，你只有6名雇員，擠在閑置的臥室里辦公，費盡口舌才請來一個20出頭的毛頭小伙擔任營銷副總裁。突然之間，這個人可能顯然已不再適合擔任營銷主管。因為現在你已經有了100名員工，需要處理真正的營銷預算。

????? 人員調整 – 我們都說只想要A級員工，但大多數人都無法順利地實現這一點。事實是打造一支明顯高于平均水平的團隊絕不是在招聘環節就一步到位，而是做好準備，不斷修正自己的失誤。如果最終招到的是C級員工，那么解決這一問題的唯一辦法是解雇C，挪出地方，努力找A。

????Mitt Romney's remark that he "likes to fire people" will certainly end up being one of the best-remembered gaffes of a gotcha-laden primary season. Although the remark was taken out of context, it certainly reinforced the perception that CEOs are hard-nosed bastards more attuned to profits than to people.

????I don't want to speak for any other CEO, but I hate firing people. In fact, of the hundreds of responsibilities that fell to me in my six startups, letting someone go was always the most difficult.

????Just to be clear, I'm not talking about firing someone for cause. It's reasonably straightforward to fire someone for egregious misbehavior or obvious ineptitude, but if you've defined your position clearly, interviewed well and been reasonably diligent at checking references, a complete whiff should be the exception rather than the rule.

????I'm also not talking about "reductions in force," those bulk layoffs that larger companies use to shore up the numbers behind a bad quarter. Or more commonly, what they fall back on once they've lost their edge and are trying to check their long slow slide to irrelevance.

????No, the hard part is when you have to fire decent people for reasons that frequently have nothing at all to do with them, except perhaps being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

????There are a few common reasons to find yourself in these nasty situations:

????? The Pivot – It's unusual for young companies to get a hit with their very first swing, so unless each successive business model calls for the same expertise, an employee who was indispensible in December may be suddenly irrelevant in January. Just last week I spent hours on the phone with one CEO whose company was pivoting from consumer focus to a B2B approach; all of a sudden two of his key employees with domain expertise in consumer marketing and content were no longer as critical.

????? The Upgrade – As a new company with a big idea but not much else, you hire the best you can. But things go well, you get some traction, and before you know it you've got a big chunk of Series B money in the bank and you're ready for the big leagues. Even more exciting, you're finding that all that TechCrunch buzz has given you the ability to attract the corresponding big league talent. And It suddenly becomes clear that the 20-something guy you persuaded to be your VP of marketing when you were 6 employees and working out of your spare bedroom, may not be the right guy to run marketing now that you are 100 employees and dealing with a real marketing budget.

????? The Pruning – We all talk about how we only want to have A players, but most people don't have the stones to do what it takes to actually make that happen. The hard truth is that having a work force that is materially above average, is less a matter of hiring well than it is a matter of being prepared to deal with your mistakes. If you've ended up with a C player, than the only way to address that problem is to move out the C so that you can take another pass a trying to land an A.