Bill Canady took over a manufacturing company and found its most brilliant employee was alienating coworkers by moving too fast and leaving them behind. Despite the genius's superior ideas, Canady fired him, explaining it as a gift since he'd never fit the culture. Morale shot up after he left.
Let me give you one here. I take over a company and the interim CEO walks me through the team. He gets to the one guy and says, that's the best guy in the building. And he was right. The man was a genius, genuinely best plans in the company. Then I did what I always do. I went location to location, shook hands, ran a town hall, took questions for about an hour. Then we cook hamburgers or play bags and have a Coke on the factory floor. And everywhere I went, they told me the same thing. They hated him. People were emotional about it. He wasn't a bad man. He was just so far ahead of everyone that he brought nobody with him. His pacing was wrong. I had to let him go and he was devastated, angry, couldn't believe it. And I told him, I think this is the greatest gift I could give you. You may be the most unhappiest person I ever met. It was kind of shocking, actually. Well, he did leave and the temperature of that entire company went down. People instantly felt better. The smartest guy in the building was at the wrong pace. That's a talent call and it's one nobody wants to make.
