Jay Goltz kept his warehouse manager for three years past the obvious. The day after he finally let him go, his remaining team told him they'd been waiting. That gap between knowing and doing is where founders lose their companies.
Every day you delay a hard call, you're writing a check. The underperforming employee costs you the team's respect. The unprofitable customer costs you margin. The too-low prices cost you sustainability. Add it up. That's what your comfort is worth.
The obvious answer for hesitation is empathy. Losing a job carries the emotional weight of a death in the family. But dig deeper and you'll find less noble reasons hiding behind the compassion. Some founders keep people around because those people make them feel secure. Validated. Less alone in the isolation that comes with building something. Others are avoiding admitting failure. Hiring someone who doesn't work out means you got it wrong, and that's hard to face.
Then there's the devil you know. Finding a replacement takes time. Doing their work in the interim takes energy. So you make excuses on their behalf instead of making the call. That's not empathy. That's self-protection wearing empathy's clothes.
The conversation itself isn't complicated. It's just uncomfortable. Here's what you need: This is what we need from this role. This is how we measure it. These are your results. There's a gap. Are you happy failing at this? Most people aren't happy failing. They know something's wrong. The employee you're "giving one more chance" can feel the shift. Everyone deserves a clean ending more than a messy continuation.
Top performers want to work with other winners. When you let poor performers stick around, you're signaling what acceptable behavior looks like. Eventually the high performers leave because they don't want to carry the weight. You're left with a downward spiral because all you can keep are the people that don't do the work.
The moment you let a toxic person go, people will come up to you and say they'd been waiting. That organizational relief you feel afterward tells you something. You should have done it sooner. The inability to make hard decisions isn't kindness. It's a form of selfishness that protects your comfort while everyone else pays the price.
Watch the Full Episode on Making Hard Decisions below:
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