Fire people who think they're entitled to run things

I recently had a conversation about how I would handle a situation where someone was not willing to comply with corporate policy or was unwilling to work as part of a team. My immediate reaction was to say "fire them" (which is rather brutal), and even during the conversation I had to explain that this would be the final resort.

Disruptive Influence

Having had time to think about the question I now believe there are stages before reaching the formal dismissal process. I feel the reason for getting to the point of firing someone should only be based upon the team and organisation as a whole. If the team can't get on with them, or the person(s) is disruptive to the success of a project or organisation. This is summarised really well in an article by Ben Leichtling "Fire people who think they're entitled to run things". A manager or senior professional in an organisation has a responsibility to deliver projects to a high standard, if someone makes that hard to achieve then there is a serious problem. The disruptive influence of some team members can make it really hard for a manager to deliver a successful project, or to feel in control of the project.

Personally I would try to work with the person by understanding what motivates them and explaining why it is important to work as a team and within the guidelines set out by the organisation. There is also the case that they may have valid arguments for doing things differently and are not communicating them effectively. In the end someone has to be in charge and people have to accept authority so if all else fails you have to embark upon the path of dismissal.

Luckily, I've never been in the position of working with really obstructive people and where issues have occurred it has been possible to resolve them through compromise or if necessary through being assertive. Although occasionally I'd love to say "Look if you don't like it then find a new job", but that is hardly professional. I'd prefer to maintain the moral high ground.

Constructive Influence

There is an alternative to the disruptive influence and I have used this successfully with like minded colleagues. This alternative is to use constructive and critical analysis. Putting a lot of clever and experienced IT people into a room can lead to a conflict of ego's. Each person is bound to have an opinion about how to design a solution or deliver a project, and may think theirs is the best solution. The challenge is to make use of all of the different ideas to perform critical analysis. Somone coming into a design meeting using critical analysis after it has started may believe the team is in conflict and not achieving anything because of some of the heated debates that can take place.

Critical analysis will only work well if everyone understands it is taking place and can be professional in accepting other peoples views and constructively analysing them. Eventually the best parts of each idea will start to come together until it is possible to arrive at a solution using the best of the ideas.

The key to success is that someone has to be in charge and have the authority to make the hard decision of intervening at the right moment to influence the design, and to stop the process when it is taking too long or the best possible solution in the time available has been delivered.

Team Success

I don't claim to be an expert on the psychology of teams but I do have a lot of experience of managing very capable IT teams. From my experience I can conclude team success can only be achieved if everyone works together and accepts that there is a structure. Sometimes managers have to earn respect and in the worst case they have to take firm action to ensure success.

The bottom line is that a manager can "fire" someone working for them, it never works the other way around. So even if a team member thinks the manager is wrong, it is down to a professional team member to influence the senior person so that the correct approach is used.