You must fire, train, or tolerate your people– those are your only 3 choices.

And the HUGE mistake I’ve made is that I’ve tolerated poor performance.

Many of us want to be “kind” to the under-performers– hoping they will improve over time, wanting to avoid conflict.

Often they have extenuating circumstances, so we make exceptions– over and over again.

We may like them and care for them– and they may have so much potential we see in them.

But the result of letting people continue to deliver low quality, ignore (or even openly flaunt) the rules, is that they get used to it.

They become overconfident, aggressive, and entitled– then infecting other people to be the dame. Brad Lea taught me this lesson about people management– because he doesn’t “tolerate”, the only options left are to train or fire. Hire slow and fire fast.

Put 80% of your effort on your high performers and only 20% on the low performers.

Most of us get this wrong, including me– by putting 80% of our attention on the squeaky wheels– the problem causers, understandably. But that means you’re not taking care of the people doing great work– you’re penalizing them and hurting your business, too.

What do you think about this– to fire, train, or tolerate?

Dennis Yu

Dennis Yu is co-author of the #1 best selling book on Amazon in social media, The Definitive Guide to TikTok Ads. He has spent a billion dollars on Facebook ads across his agencies and agencies he advises. Mr. Yu is the "million jobs" guy-- on a mission to create one million jobs via hands-on social media training, partnering with universities and professional organizations. You can find him quoted in major publications and on television such as CNN, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, NPR, and LA Times. Clients have included Nike, Red Bull, the Golden State Warriors, Ashley Furniture, Quiznos-- down to local service businesses like real estate agents and dentists. He's spoken at over 750 conferences in 20 countries, having flown over 6 million miles in the last 30 years to train up young adults and business owners. He speaks for free as long as the organization believes in the job-creation mission and covers business class travel. You can find him hiking tall mountains, eating chicken wings, and taking Kaqun oxygen baths-- likely in a city near you.

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