Jenny Kitchen | Co-founder | Yoyo Design

What steps does Jenny Kitchen go through before deciding someone is ‘wrong’ for her company?

I haven't found a single process or something that can be applied to all situations. But broadly speaking, you firstly need to identify whether the individual is 'wrong' for the company using one or more of the criteria below:

1. Probably the simplest one to discern is whether the person is performing to the standard set out in the job description and/or set by other people in similar positions. If there are numerical targets, this can be more objective, but each role should at least lay out the required technical skills to judge whether or not the person is performing.
   
   
2. The attitude. You can teach skills; it's much more difficult to teach attitude. This can be tricky to measure, but a set of agency values can help guide. We have 4 key values. These are then underpinned with 9 principles (with longer descriptions to clarify further what is meant) and 9 paragraphs about what we care about as an organisation (e.g. Flexibility, doing our best work, etc..) These were created as a group several years ago and have served us well. People sometimes dismiss things like likeability (would I enjoy having a coffee with this person?), but these elements are really important. The business is so much healthier and functions better if people respect and like each other. 
   
3. The person may have the right skills and the right attitude, but the business or the person may have changed or simply, the person just isn't quite fitting. It can be a challenge to get to the root cause of this one, but it's worth spending time getting there. It may be that the person isn't happy, or that the business has moved on and the person hasn't adapted with it. There can be so many reasons why it doesn't work and it needs time, and honest conversations together to understand what is happening.Once an individual is identified as potentially not the right person for the agency, to combat unconscious bias, open up the discussion to several people. Not too many that it's a committee, not too little that you don't hear voices from different areas of the business. 3-5 people is typically the number involved in these decisions for yoyo. 

Then, talk to the person. Communication in these circumstances is everything, and this is certainly a skill that I've honed over the years. I wasn't great at it in the early years, as I'd stumbled my way through several redundancy processes. Over the years I've realised that the best course of action is getting the person involved sooner (can they change? do they want to?) and making decisions quicker. Always less painful and time-consuming for all involved.

Ultimately, as an agency leader, you need to make tough calls - keeping someone on that isn't right for the business is a waste of money, it's demotivating for the team and the individual acts as a blocker to getting the right people in the agency. It is difficult as emotions and empathy come into the mix, but I always take security in the knowledge that tough decisions do need to be made to protect the business. As a CEO, I'm responsible for 25 people, and I have to focus on them, not on the 1 person that is (or potentially is) the wrong person for the agency.

The way you do each of the steps is so important. You need to show fairness, kindness, empathy and objectivity at each stage. You need to communicate as clearly as possible with everyone concerned. And personally, keep your sanity and cool....it's not an easy route, but it's often the best one for the business.