If Life Hands You Lemons, Fire Them!
Lemons come in all sorts of shapes and sizes...
Last week, for some bizarre reason, I heard the phrase “If life hands you lemons, make lemonade” far too many times. Personally, I’ve always preferred “If life hands you lemons, have a tequila” but I digress.
The context in which I heard this phrase varied considerably. One poor chap crashed his motorcycle and is now limping rather lamely around the building. He’s now decided to commit some of his time to a road safety organisation, prompting a colleague to pat him on his bruised back with a “Hey, if life hands you lemons, go out and make lemonade!” Maybe he can take some of that lemonade for the other injured motorcyclists at the road safety meetings?
But our dented motorcyclist’s limp isn’t nearly as extravagant as the homeless guy who begs on the corner of William Nicol Drive and Montecasino Boulevard. This guy has turned limping into an art form. He’s clearly an ambi-limp, i.e. able to limp using either foot. I find his Thursday hunchback impression particularly impressive – full marks for difficulty and execution. A friend was equally amazed at his spontaneous contortions; she shrugged her shoulders and said “Hey, if life hands you lemons, make lemonade”.
The final situation where I heard the cliché was an HR person referring to her strategy on how to deal with a bad recruit. Why get rid of a poorly performing employee that you’ve just recruited when you can make proverbial lemonade with them? You can help them, train them or even mentor them. All in the vain hope that a job will come up that’s more suited to their lack of skill. Sadly, the call centre is fully resourced at this moment in time.
Which begs the question, what to do if you’ve recruited a lemon?
There are several traditional approaches, some of which I’ve already mentioned. You can send the lemon on a comprehensive and intensive training programme, hoping to address any knowledge gaps. In this case, fire the people who failed to pick up these knowledge gaps in the interviews (there may be more lemons in your organisation than you previously thought!). You could coach them along, with an emphasis on coaching them out the organisation. Coaches are always helping people find their true calling. What’s wrong with suggesting that the lemon’s true calling may be sorting post for a government department or President of Athletics South Africa? Alternatively, you could re-assign the person out of your team and onto another that may be more tolerant of failure. Organisationally, you haven’t solved the problem, but you have made your weekly team meetings a little less painful!
Thankfully though, there are a few more “non-traditional” methods that you may want to consider… Invoke the “The Peter Principle” – promote them! The Peter Principle states that people will rise to their highest level of incompetence. If you know someone’s incompetent, why wait? Promote them now and save in the long run. The second option requires a bit more effort: talking up your competitors. Everyday, at every opportunity, moan at just how much better your competitors are. They sell better products, they pay better, the work environment’s better, the parking spaces are wider; you name it. The hope is that this subliminal influence will encourage your lemon to apply for a plum position at your competitors. Of course, you will gladly give the lemon a glowing recommendation, whilst subverting your competitors at the same time!
Lastly, you may want to try reverse recruitment. The operation is very simple: get the lemon’s CV/resume, send it to a reliable and trustworthy recruitment agency (if you can find one…) and offer them half of their usual commission in exchange for recruiting your lemon out of your company and into another one far, far away from yours. With minimal effort, your lemon is whisked away! Trust me, it works, I’ve witnessed it! Basically, it’s win-win for everyone. The agency gets a commission, the lemon gets a new job, and you’re liberated of your lemon. You may have spent some money to achieve this end but it’s surely less than the untold damage the lemon could have inflicted on your organisation. And think of all the money you’ve saved on training and coaching! Now that I think about it, it’s like you’ve really made some lemonade out of a lemon!
