HOLY KRISTAPS: All Things Porzingis | TRADED to WAS

[Scott41theMavs]

I think this view is headed in the right direction. The main point is that any discussions like this have to be conducted with great sensitivity to avoid introducing new problems and not necessarily solving the one you might have. I don't know if they have it in them. I also don't know that they don't, of course. 

I think my addition to the view would mainly be that the above scenario is not really how stuff like this takes place. Suppose Employee A has a serious complaint about Employee B. Employee A does not have supervisory responsibilities over B. (If he did, it would be his job to evaluate B and report up the chain, if necessary.)

Employee A almost never comes in and says, "Fire B. Let me know when it's done." A presents specific complaints about B, and it is up to the organization to decide what, if any response the organization should make. If the management sides with A, in many cases they just take whatever action they take and usually do not get back with A about any disciplinary action taken against B. 

I know of one system where, in situations where the organization sided with B occurred, a supervisory employee would sit down with A and say, "Ideally, we would prefer that there were no animosities between employees. But at the end of the day, we really don't care, as long as everyone conducts themselves professionally and it doesn't affect the work. But there is something you should know. B is more important to us than you are. So, if it's you or B, it's B." B was never informed about the conversation, but A either adjusted his attitude or left the company. 

Of course, if it's a matter that A is reporting sexual harassment, embezzlement, drunkenness on the job, or other scandalous/illegal matters, you can't just decide on the basis of which employee would be more problematic to let go. 

Rarely, a case occurs where A comes in, reports the complaints, and says, "It's him or me." Usually, that is a case where A does not have the authority to fire B, but knows that he has the upper hand as the more important employee. In that case, the organization may let B go. 

But the overall point is that, if the organization has not already decided to let B go, they need to be very careful about the optics of appearing to stir up trouble if they are seen as encouraging employees to carry tales and undercut their co-workers. And indeed, if they allow A to dictate the firing of B, or even go on a firing spree at A's request, when that is not the normal authority of a guy in A's position, that creates its own can of worms, which may be worse than the original problem. 

tl;dr    This situation needs to be addressed with a scalpel, not a sledgehammer. It would be best to shield Luka from direct involvement, to the extent possible. (May not be possible.) Does the front office have what it takes to navigate this situation delicately? Possibly.

In this situation, A is the most single coveted worker in the entire industry, with the promise of years of near-monopoly and stratospheric success for your company for years to come. All the sharks of your competitors in the industry are swimming around the boat, waiting for you to piss off A badly enough for him to leave the company. 

Meanwhile, B was a promising worker that you sank many company assets into acquiring from a competitor and then signed to an extremely lavish salary to prevent him from moving to different competitors. Since then, he frequently calls in sick, to the extent that he might be a guy whose health might be so poor that he eventually ends up on disability, but the rules of your particular industry is that he will almost certainly still suck up the company's vital financial resources in a way that will prevent you for a few precious years from assembling the team of workers that you need to put around A in order for him to establish the industry domination of which he is so capable. When he is available to work, the one area in which B was once believed to be so dominant in the industry has in fact tanked company productivity and the ability to succeed to an absolutely ruinous extent. There is some hope that his problems in this area are due to a particularly bad illness a year ago, and that he might improve with some rehabilitation and training during the industry's dormant season, but that's extremely speculative; most believe that the damage done by the illness simply destroyed his abilities in this one-time strength to such an extent that he will always be a drain on company success for the length of his employment. 

Meanwhile, B has been limited by management to areas in which he can succeed for the company as much as possible, but constantly complains that his strengths are in areas he was never known to be good at, and that A simply doesn't appreciate his abilities and works to undercut his personal (as opposed to the company's) ability to succeed. B is by far the company's most serious problem to middle term success with A. A is fed up with B's grousing and annoyed at his drain on the company's success. It is obvious that B undercuts A's happiness working for the company and causes many human resource problems with the working staff as a whole, working significantly against corporate unity and worker morale. 

Basically, B resents A but knows he has no leverage against him. There is the opportunity to send B to one of the company's 29 competitors. There is some hope around the industry that B could once again become a valuable worker in the field, but everyone everywhere knows that the risks are high. The return on B in negotiating with another competitor will likely not be as wonderful as the promise of B once looked, but the health issues associated with B, the dramatic drag he represents on worker morale, and the hard work which it would take for A and B to be made to work well (or at least not damagingly) together could slow down future success that A is ready to produce right now with the correct team of workers around him. Negotiating B to a competitor, while not having completely ideal results, could at least speed the process of allowing A to bring the company tremendous success.

If A quietly reports to HR that he wants B to be moved to one of the company's competitors, it's crucial to the company's future to pull the trigger. Waiting too long to do so may lead to A valuing the huge contributions he could begin to make to the field today over the tremendous cash earnings he can only make with your company - or, lead him to be contracted to those earnings and then insist, even publicly, to be negotiated away to a competitor who will still have to pay him the same amount. That has indeed happened in the industry before, but never has there been a worker as transcendent and promising as A who has threatened to do it. In short, if A wants B gone, even politely so, the company would be cataclysmically foolish to fart around with the situation.