Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things." - Peter Drucker

My brother read my mind. He sent me this lovely subject line.

I'm going to terminate an employee. I've only been a manager for six weeks at this job, and I already have to fire somebody.

He has a history of corrective actions taken against him. He made some improvement, but recently has been backsliding. Today he took a very rash action that went from the ears of the person who heard his words to the area director, and from there to the regional director. And the regional director looked to see who supervised him, and that person was me.

My boss and I spent a large chunk of the day teaming this issue. He finally sent me away armed with the corrective actions already taken (back when my boss was the immediate supervisor) and told me to find my own e-mail trail on this for the past few weeks, and make a recommendation to him regarding what action we should take toward this employee.

At the end of reviewing the information, I had come to the conclusion that today's incident was just the capstone. Metaphorically, he slit his own throat with it. I went to my boss and told him that I could not, in conscience, recommend that this individual continue working for our company.

The timing is really bad. We're in the middle of the corporate offices moving, in which we really needed this guy. But we can't make the decision based on that. So life will be crazier even than I thought in the next few weeks, but ultimately, we'll be better off for it. And because I came to the decision independently of my boss's evaluation of the same situation, I feel pretty good that I am making the right decision.

I wore my coyote earrings for the first time today, just on a lark. Or maybe it was an omen.