> What was in it for the foundation to get rid of her sooner?
It just occured to me just now that this has some similarities to technical debt:
- The costs to the individual employees are a lot more obvious to those individuals than the costs to the organization as a whole are to the leadership.
- The costs to the organization are both real but hard to quantify: Higher turnover, missed opportunities because staff don't have breathing space to think about seizing them, decreased ability to execute on goals. The costs to the organization of solving it are much more tangible: an immediate and sharp hit to the ability to execute on some things right now. Its easy for someone to argue that it is too costly to solve and hard to push back on that.
- Requires leadership to be able to recognize the symptoms of the problem, to keep open communication channels that would let diagnostic information bubble up, to acknowledge that there is a tangible cost to taking action but agree that its worth it to avoid the larger hidden costs, and to actually take that action.
I suspect there is probably a good essay to be written (or which has been written) which defines this category of organizational rot and fleshes out the specific leadership habits that are needed to notice and fix it.
As long as there was no actual expensive lawsuits and publicity wasn't too bad, it sounds like she was a major net contributor. What was in it for the foundation to get rid of her sooner?
From an ethical standpoint, the well-being of their other employees? From a business standpoint, missing out on great hires or exactly the situation they find themselves in now?
I am not sure why the above comment is getting downvotes but seems like a valid question to ask.
Extraordinary people need extraordinary compensation. Maybe pissing off a few people is part of compensation and company has no problem with that as she is worth 100 such people she is gonna piss off.
The reason this is problematic is that it downplays the risk associated with the behavior. It's a form of short-term thinking that emphasizes the immediate gains over the longer term losses.
This article may possibly impact the business longer-term and the hidden opportunity costs they have already experienced are both harder to quantify and also really costly.
It also assumes that you couldn't find someone just as effective with good people management skills as well. I personally think it is a myth that someone is irreplaceable unless you make them irreplaceable. If you do that then you deserve the fallout for when that irreplaceable person becomes a liability.
This foundation is likely now opened up to lawsuites, a reputational hit, and potential loss of business. Can they weather it? Probably. Did they have to weather it? No.
It just occured to me just now that this has some similarities to technical debt:
- The costs to the individual employees are a lot more obvious to those individuals than the costs to the organization as a whole are to the leadership.
- The costs to the organization are both real but hard to quantify: Higher turnover, missed opportunities because staff don't have breathing space to think about seizing them, decreased ability to execute on goals. The costs to the organization of solving it are much more tangible: an immediate and sharp hit to the ability to execute on some things right now. Its easy for someone to argue that it is too costly to solve and hard to push back on that.
- Requires leadership to be able to recognize the symptoms of the problem, to keep open communication channels that would let diagnostic information bubble up, to acknowledge that there is a tangible cost to taking action but agree that its worth it to avoid the larger hidden costs, and to actually take that action.
I suspect there is probably a good essay to be written (or which has been written) which defines this category of organizational rot and fleshes out the specific leadership habits that are needed to notice and fix it.