Fire me if you have to

Photo by Johannes Plenio.

Ontario is a mess. And while the particulars of the mess matter an awful lot if you live here, the shape of it will be familiar even if you don't.

The net of it is that we find ourselves in dire need of leadership. Real leadership. Holy shit the wheels are about to come off, sure do hope some grown ups will appear. Any day now.

And the thing we've been talking about nonstop as we sit in all this is the difference between junior and senior leaders.

What got you here is woefully insufficient for what comes next

Unlearning bad advice is hard. But unlearning the good advice that no longer applies is much harder.

Maybe someone told you early in your career. Or maybe you figured it out for yourself. That it helps to remember who cuts your paycheque. That it isn't enough to be smart or to do good work in isolation. For most junior to mid-level folks, the career velocity you'll experience at work is a direct function of your relationship with your boss.

That might feel slimy and political. And it's definitely prone to all manner of bias and prejudice. But it also has the unfortunate attribute of being true. And from that place, the good advice is to jump jobs if need be, until you find a boss you can work with. And then shine in the specific ways that that person can see and recognize.

This approach will carry some of you a long way. You will find stretch for yourself and your team, and build a rep as someone who gets shit done. You'll make your boss look good often enough that you get pulled up. Again and again – given more context, more access, and more authority.

Not all of you, though. Others of you will have bosses who steal the credit for your work. Whose insecurity about their own mediocrity drives them to keep you out of the spotlight. Where your best hope will be to get out from under them as quickly as possible. Where job-hopping will be yet another strike against you, and might not even get you to a better spot anyhow. The deck is stacked. And for you, it might mean you don't need to unlearn this advice because it never helped you in the first place.

But a lot of the people walking around with executive titles got there on this program. Shine without overshadowing. Say yes to impossible things and then deliver them ahead of schedule. Be the kind of rising star that someone wants to call their protegé.

And, as executives, those people are really fucking ineffective. Because they haven't learned how to say one of the most important sentences any leader can say. In fact, the very idea of it terrifies them.

Fire me if you have to

There's a bunch of heavy lifting happening in these six words.

They usually come immediately after a hard and unpopular call. Firing a toxic client. Delaying a launch that is burning out your people. Shutting down casinos and malls during an airborne pandemic. "I'm doing this thing because it's the right thing to do. Fire me if you have to, but until you do, this is my plan."

This short sentence says the quiet part out loud. Reminding your own boss that they can fire you. Which was always true in most labor markets, by the way. But feels deeply confrontational to bring it into a discussion unprompted.

Like, why would you ever? And if you wouldn't, well let's sit with that for a second. You wouldn't because it would be risking your job. You wouldn't because your boss may say, "OK, champ. You're right and you're fired. Pack up your things."

You wouldn't because you don't have another job lined up. Because you have bills to pay. And mouths to feed. And a family who is relying on you. And entire aspects of your self worth that are wound up in your work and your status within the organization.

You wouldn't because you are fighting twice as hard for your spot at the table. Because you don't look like the rest of the executive team. Because someone will call you angry or difficult. Or whisper in backchannel discussions that you are hard to work with. And you wouldn't because when that happens, it won't be a one-off. It will be the same weapon that they reach for every damn time.

There may be a million reasons why you wouldn't. Let's talk about why some folks do it anyway.

The opposite of rage quitting

Fire me if you have to is a power move because it simplifies the board. In a normal structure, you have your boss and what they want you to do. Their approval, your work, your decision-making, and your eventual advancement within the organization. Those are all interconnected.

In this version, you simplify. You say, here's this thing and it's worth doing. Even if I get fired for it. Even if my own boss disapproves. Even if it's scary and uncomfortable. This thing is worth it.

There's a distinction between "fire me if you have to" and "fuck it, I quit." Rage quitting is fundamentally about you and your needs. It can be motivated by similar frustration. But the end result is that you're leaving the organization. "Fire me if you have to" may end in the same place, with you leaving the organization. But it holds an intention to stay, a desire to make things better, and clarity about what's important. It elevates the needs of the organization or the team above the needs of the individual.

When people write the bumper stickers about management versus leadership, this is what they mean. The willingness to make the hard call, to do the unpopular thing, not from a place of taking big swings. But from a place of seeing what needs to happen, and doing it, even when it may have consequences for you personally.

Tools you don't use aren't useful

What's been so striking lately –so frustrating and disappointing– is to watch people not say it. Not put their own job on the line to do what needs doing. Not put the needs of the people they serve ahead of their own.

What hurts is to see these these leaders called into the arena. To watch them step up to the microphone. Solemnly take off their mask. And dodge the fucking question.

And it's not just politicians. We're seeing this from CEOs. From VPs and Directors. People with so much control over how work feels for their teams. Leaders who could relieve the pressure and reverse the constant burnout machine. But only by taking a risk with their own job.

We just finished listing all the reasons why you wouldn't put your own job on the line. It's not that we can't find empathy for the leaders in this spot. But if you ask us to point to effective executives, this is the marker.

"Fire me if you have to" is one of the most important tools in a leader's toolkit. If you break it out weekly, you dilute it down to useless. But if you never use it, it's the same as not having it in the toolbox in the first place.

There is shit in most orgs that badly needs fixing. More specifically, there is shit in your org, right now, that needs fixing. Whether that org is the government of Ontario. Or a company somewhere far away. There are people desperate for leadership, hoping that someone will do the hard thing. And if you do it, you might get yourself fired.

But, like. If the only way to keep your leadership is not to use it, then what's it for?

- Melissa and Johnathan