Episode 106 | The Goldilocks Test (a.k.a. When to Fire Someone)

Question

Hey, Work Wives, my name is Terry. I'm in a bind. I'm the executive admin for an organization, and as such, I can see a bit of everything that goes on with the teams who report to my executive. All teams know they can rely on me to fill in gaps or help things along when they're in a bind, but there's a couple of teams that, I swear, work just stops when one of their team members is out of town.

Just last week, I found myself presenting for one of these teams to my executive, which is not my job whatsoever. Even she was confused as to why I was running this presentation. We had a brief conversation about it, but my executive is a busy woman, and I really don't want to burden her with solving this problem for me. Frankly, it's not a problem I should be solving, but I want to help my co workers any way I can. I just don't know how, and I've not really worked in a position like this before. My entire career has been in the admin space. Any ideas what's happening with these couple of teams who just don't seem to have it together?

Summary

There’s a very simple way to tell when it’s time to fire someone — which also shows you whether or not a team is functioning effectively. Here’s the test, and what to do about the results.

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