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Break Fix

I am not sure what to make of this HBR piece on what organizations should do with toxic senior leaders who are too critical for the business to just be fired when infact that is one and only right solution for the problem. The examples cited in the story connect the bad behavior to some unresolved psychological issues going back to the person's childhood. While that is mildly entertaining for all to know, it is entirely unclear how it helps resolve the issues the individual's behavior is causing company wide. How does it exactly help those who are impacted every day to learn that this person is the world's greatest jerk because his parents did an awful job of raising him - why does that need to become our collective cross to bear. 

Every place I have ever worked in since I graduated college has had a few of these hyper-toxic, absolutely insufferable leaders that contaminated everything they came into contact with. The higher their position in the food change, the more havoc they were able to wreak. Those higher up than this individual seem to stand idly by and let the mayhem continue no matter what the cost. The way I see it, unless the individual is God and can basically decide if the universe will exist or not tomorrow morning, no one is indispensable in the world never mind such a trivial thing as a business. 

What is more, if a company is structured so poorly that one jerk can drive it to its knees and into bankruptcy, then it speaks volumes for the quality of leadership all the way from the top.  Maybe a wholescale restructuring is in order to fully clean house because this degree of ineptness will manifest itself in a myriad of baleful ways even if the jerk issue is resolved by putting the person on a daily regimen of therapy (paid for by the company) for the rest of their life - because nothing less than that will work for issues that run that deep and go that far back. Maybe the recruiting process should include a psych evaluation to determine if there is any ROI to hiring the person given how broken and unfixable they are for whatever reason.

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