Stop Firing the Wrong People: Fix the Real Problem in Your Business
In this episode of Make Work Not Suck, hosts Daniel Steere and Ryan Hodges break down a common leadership pitfall: trying to “result” your way out of a problem. Too many organizations jump straight to firing people when the results don’t match expectations, but the real issue often lies in unclear vision and a missing journey.
Daniel and Ryan discuss how senior leaders, who are naturally results-oriented, can easily overlook the process and culture needed to achieve those results. Instead of holding people accountable without the right support, they show how to align your vision, journey, culture, and results for sustained success. If you’re tired of not hitting your goals quarter after quarter, this episode reveals how to stop blaming your team and start fixing the underlying issues.
Timestamps:
• [00:00] Results Without Vision: Why It’s Doomed to Fail
• [01:17] How Leaders Are Pushing Teams to Failure by Focusing Only on Results
• [03:34] Why Companies Are Quick to Fire Without Addressing the Real Problem
• [06:34] How to Tell If You Have a Process Problem or a People Problem
• [08:31] Daniel’s Personal Experience of Being Fired for Focusing on the Journey
• [11:15] The Blind Spot: Ignoring the Process and Culture Behind Results
• [14:21] The Vision-Journey-Culture-Results Model: How It All Connects
• [16:56] Why Documentation and Training Are Essential Before You Fire Anyone
• [20:33] Mistaking a Culture Problem for a Process Problem: Common Pitfalls
• [26:22] The Danger of Denying Reality in Business
Key Takeaways:
- If your company keeps chasing results but fails to hit them, you probably have a journey problem, not a people problem.
- Firing people without understanding how they were trained or supported is a recipe for repeated failure.
- A clear vision, well-aligned processes, and a healthy culture are necessary to hit your business goals consistently.
- Ignoring the journey will lead to frustration, poor results, and higher employee turnover.
Don’t let your blind spots derail your business! Learn how to assess whether your team’s struggles are rooted in journey or culture, and start making the shifts necessary to achieve real, sustainable results.
Does this resonate with your company’s struggles? Head over to MakeWorkNotSuck.com and take our journey assessment to see if you’ve been missing a critical piece in achieving your goals.
Make work not suck, starting with a clear vision and a defined journey!
Transcript
[00:17] Ryan Hodges:Welcome to the make work, not suck podcast.
[:Our vision's not clear, and it there were confusing vision and purpose. And then as soon as we got into, like, trying to solve it, it was like, well, that's that's results. And it's like, well, we have a vision vision culture alignment issue, but all of our strategy to solve it was entirely results. And we looked at all the activity over the last quarter. Everything was pushing for a result, and it's like you're trying to result your way into a health problem.
And this is where it got more interesting. It was, there was a lot of, like, well, the pea the team can't do this or they're not capable of that or they're not getting this. It's like, well, actually, what it is is we brought in a result expectation, and the gap between what they know and the expectation is so wide and there wasn't a journey to bridge it. I was like, so you're trying to result them to death. Like, you're basically saying, here's a result you need to achieve, and then it's like, well, nobody gets it.
There nobody's capable of doing it. And it's like, because you the vision didn't guide them to why they should know it. The core the culture and the core values weren't aligned to achieve that, and there was no journey to to guide the team there in alignment. It was just results compounded to a result compounded to a result compounded to a result. And then, like, well, this is why we didn't get anything done because we have the wrong people, the wrong team, the wrong things, wrong that, and it was a profound thought of, we have a vision problem.
And the assessment called it out. The assessment called out the vision problem. It says people don't don't understand the purpose, don't understand the impact of it.
[:[02:38] Speaker 3:You know, what's interesting is is I would say accountability wasn't in the topic of discussion to a bit to a degree because I think everybody know knew who's accountable to what. But where it came in where I would agree with your statement was ever there was a level of calling people out Okay. And and just saying, like, well, the team's not capable of getting it, or this group of people aren't capable of getting it. Or, you know, there was a lot of callouts on
[:[03:07] Speaker 3:yeah, just like people aren't worthy of doing it, so therefore we need to replace them. So I don't I wouldn't say it was like, well, people aren't being accountable. It was more like they're not worthy because they're not achieving the result we expect of them, which is essentially a gigantic red line. We have an expectation. We have a vision, and we expected a result, and we didn't get it.
We didn't give people the right vision, and we didn't give peep we don't have the right culture or an aligned culture
[:[03:34] Speaker 3:With a journey to drive the result. We just expected a result. And then so then the very next step was, okay. So how do we fire all the people and hire new people? Well, that's a result.
Right. And it's like but but the problem is is is you're lacking the journey. And the reason why you're lacking the journey is because you're lacking a clear vision that aligns with the destination you wanna get to. And so as soon as we're like, okay. We need to redefine the vision, and then it was directly back into, let's achieve the result.
It's like, no. This is a journey. This is a process. There's you've gotta have you have to you know, if if this was a tweak, then you can expect people to, you know, jump over, let's
we're gonna get there, and we haven't trained you how to do the things you need to do to be successful. We've just defined a result, and we've assumed you know how to get there. And when you don't, we fire you, we bring in somebody else. And I just I just think that that is unfair to most people. Uh-huh. And and yet I just see it over and over and over. I've been I've experienced it, I've been a victim of it, and I've seen my clients try to do it, and I'm working my best to to say, hey, before we fire that guy, can you show me where we define what he needed to do to be successful, and how we evaluated his ability to do that thing.
And I'm not talking about the results. I'm talking about the journey to get there. And it's it's amazing how many times they're just like, well, what does that have to do with it? Just one second.
[:[19:05] Daniel Steere:Give me an example. I think I'm following you. Give me an example.
[:So we had a health problem in alignment with journey, and we are measuring it with the result, but the solution wasn't to go back to journey and infuse the vision and the culture into it. The result was to to to modify to drive a process to a new result, not not to align it together. And so I think sometimes people take they confuse journey as a result because if you're if you're resulting a process to death, that's not journey. That's still results. Mhmm.
When you're going back through journey, you have to look at, does it fit the vision? Like, does this process guide towards the vision, and does the process in the vision with the core values, should that yield the result we want? And if you can't check all of those off, then you you're you're basically just pushing for a result.
[:[20:33] Ryan Hodges:Okay. I hope this one works. Is, you know, there's a 1,000,001 assessments out there.
[:[20:41] Ryan Hodges:This one organization has done 2 or 3 of them, and what they're doing is they're looking at rolling out another one, and it's like, why? Well, this one's gonna provide a better journey for the people to better connect the culture together. But you that that's just the same assessment with different wording. Like, what you're expecting a different result. And so you think you're changing the journey when all you're doing is just using a different tool to drive the same result.
Mhmm. So it's like, you know, these companies that run you know, first, they run Myers Briggs, then they run disc, then they run strength finders, then they run Kobe, then they run, you know, EDL or whatever that one is and and so forth and so forth. Expecting a different result when when all you're doing is you're using those to hope to drive a result as opposed to using each one of those tool, because all of those are phenomenal tools. You only need one of them. One of them will get you the results you want if If you use it if you use it correctly.
Yes. Right. And so I think that's where I would say, you know, in some cases, using that one as assessments is I think we do the same thing with processes. You know? This is our communication policy.
Oh, well, now we use, you know, Slack instead of Teams, and, well, Teams functions differently. So let's let's process the hell out of our communication policy in Teams. It's like, no. You you really have a culture problem. Like, people need to understand why they should care about certain channels, not how to use Teams versus Slack.
[:[22:15] Ryan Hodges:And when you keep trying to modify the how, you you end up pushing for a result.
[:It's it's about why should I care? I know how to do it. I just don't want to because you haven't given me a compelling reason, Jake. Well, you you you
[:[23:12] Daniel Steere:Any final thoughts on how to not result your way to a health problem?
[:But you gotta start to you gotta you gotta bounce over to journey first and then test the waters and then continue from there.
[:I think it was the it was the Cheshire cat that says, in in Alice in Wonderland, if you don't know where you're going, any path will get you there. And and I think that that's that's how a lot of it. That's how a lot of companies operate. It's like, well, our vision is to make lots of money. So anything that makes money is a is now a viable path.
It's like, no, we got to do way better than that. That journey needs to be much more exclusive So we can say no to many things and say yes to a few things. But if your vision isn't clear enough, I can't say no to anything. And so no wonder people are all over the place and we don't have any momentum. We don't have any wisdom.
Right? Sharpen the vision, then go to the journey and say, okay. If that's the vision we want to achieve, what are the paths that are most likely gonna be successful for us to get there? Make sure the people are bought into that right now. Now we're moving from journey to culture.
Are the people embracing those processes? Do they feel like it's coming at their expense? Or are they excited about it? And then what are the results that we would expect to see given this vision, to these processes, this group of people? Are the results in line?
And do those 4 pieces fit together? Or am I, you know, am I just kidding myself? And I've seen it and it's so funny but so sad because I've even tried to do it where it's like, here's the business plan. Here's how much money I need. Here's here's what the results are that you're going to get back.
Right? Here's the ROI. And they're like, can I give you half the money and get twice the ROI? It's like, no. It just it doesn't work like that.
No. They're like, well, how about this? I'll give you half the money and hold you to a 100% of the results. It's like, no. It doesn't it doesn't work that way either.
Those 4 pieces have to fit together and I saw this great quote, I posted it this week and maybe we can end here, the longer you deny reality, the more painful the reckoning will be.
[:[26:26] Daniel Steere:And and I I feel that's true for me and for so many other leaders of, okay. I have this vision. I have this result. I'll kinda half ass the journey, put a couple of boxes on an on a chart, but I haven't really dug into the journey. I'm gonna throw it at my people and then hold them accountable to these results.
And then it I we don't get there. And I yell at them, and I, you know, maybe fire a couple of people and bring in some other ones. And in reality what's happening is that I'm denying the reality of Vision, Journey, Culture, Results. You have an I'm ignoring the piece I don't like, I don't understand, maybe I don't value, ignoring that, denying reality. And I've seen people do this for years years years, and eventually you have to face reality.
And so I I love the way you frame that. If you and your team keep pounding your head against the same rocks, the same, revenue target that you've never hit, the same strategic objective that you've never achieved, I would suggest that there is some element of reality that you're ignoring, that you're avoiding. And the sooner you can face that reality, the more likely you are to achieve that goal. The longer you avoid reality, the more painful the reckoning will be.
[:[28:09] Daniel Steere:Go for it.
[:Go in and take it. I'll look at your results, average them together. And if your if your your results is the lowest, you have a journey problem. If you're an organization leader, executive, and you wanna know what your entire organization was or or what I read out on the screen earlier straight from the org core, and org analyzer. And so if you wanna know it across your organization, we can run the analyzer on your business, and it'll give you the exact results we're we're talking about.
Till next time.
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