He hit every number. Beloved by clients. And he was quietly poisoning the team for two years.
I told myself the revenue was worth it. It wasn't.
The day I finally fired him, three things happened that I didn't expect. My head of engineering. who hadn't spoken in a strategy meeting in eight months. said in our 1:1: "thank god." The other salespeople, who I'd assumed were jealous of his numbers, started picking up the deals he'd been hoarding. And our customer NPS, which I'd been blaming on product, jumped 14 points in a quarter.
Here is what I learned, and what I wish someone had told me two years earlier:
Top performers who damage the team are net-negative, even when the spreadsheet says they are net-positive. The numbers you see are the deals they closed. The numbers you do not see are the deals your other salespeople did not close because he poisoned the well, the engineers who left because of him, the strategy you didn't pursue because his loud opinion drowned out the room.
If you are sitting on a person like this right now. and you are asking yourself the question. you already know the answer. The cost of waiting is always higher than the cost of acting.
, Marija
Be the first to reply.