More than half of the stuff written on LinkedIn by aspiring “thought leaders” are frankly nonsensical ramblings, but “Your Company’s Culture is Who You Hire, Fire, & Promote – Part 1: The Performance-Values Matrix“, written by Dr. Cameron Sepah really makes a lot of sense, and he’s not even a HR practitioner! He is, however, a trained psychologist and executive coach, which could explain some of his spot-on insights.

“Your company’s employees practice the behaviors that are valued,
not the values you believe.”

In the article, he discusses the performance-values matrix, and my eye immediately zoomed into the high performance, low values-congruent behaviour quadrant. These competent assholes cause the biggest issues for HR. They exceed their KPIs, but get there by any means necessary which could range from backstabbing a peer to bulldozing their way through a project at another’s expense. For any results-focused company, it’s hard to penalise these assholes, so even though they leave a trail of wreckage behind, they continue to be rewarded.

More damaging than that wreckage though, is when other employees see and imitate the behaviour to get the same rewards, and over time, the company culture evolves into a political nightmare. I’m fully aligned with Dr. Sepah on the action for these guys – rehabilitate, and fire them if they don’t change. Yes, have the balls to fire a high performer! Enough of spoilers here – this article gets my stamp of approval so click on that link and have a read.