Is your CEO flying this month? The business story in USAirway’s inflight mag Attache this month is about how getting fired can be a really great thing. (Click on the header called “The Brief.”) It cites celebrity victims like Michael Bloomberg, Joe Torre and Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus, who may not be your run-of-the-mill execs, even if lesser known when fired. Though neither are they Carly Fiorina, whose celebrity rise and fall Chris Koch nicely excoriates in his IT Strategy blog.
Sarbanes-Oxley presents an area of vulnerability for the top dogs to get fired, as witnessed by the recent dismissal of Wal-Mart’s second in command for violation of section 404. And as CIO of course you’re needed to comply with SOX.
The Attache piece, however, is cheerful and hopeful (come to think of it, when did you last read something gloomy and depressing in an in-flight magazine?), so if you are feeling in danger of getting fired yourself, it might be worth checking out the story. Then, too, if you have to do the firing, it may dull the edge of feeling terrible about it.
Here are some more CIO stories about the F word.
- How to Hire so You Don’t Have to Fire In which we show you how to identify the candidates with the right attitude.
- How to Find, Fix or Fire Poor Performers In which it is acknowledged: Bad employees drain your IT organization and the company. Forced ranking can help you get tough—but at what cost?
- Ready, Aim, Fire! In which Michael Schrage says having the courage to fire the right person at the right time can be the most cost-effective way to improve an IT implementation.
