You can’t fire everybody

There are occasions where you will feel an overwhelming urge to get rid of everybody and start again.

Maybe you are just in a bad mood.

Maybe your plans aren’t working out.

Maybe you are sick of employees who need so much guidance and handholding that you don’t have time to do anything yourself.

Maybe you have a management team who can’t do anything by themselves as while the excitement of a startup is good, they haven’t really had to make their own decisions before.

The list goes on.

From a business point of view it is hard to start from scratch. You will set yourself back months if not years. Instead work out how you can salvage the situation. Here are a few ideas:

1. Change your business model – if it relies on higher performance than you are getting from your employees or from a customer base that doesn’t exist yet, then change your model. 
2. Get rid of the worst performers only – the rest of your staff will recognise that you have done genuine housekeeping rather than the typically lazy approach of getting rid of 10% of all staff.
3. Keep your people focussed on what they are good at. E.g. a good operations manager may need to be kept away from anything commercial if that is not their forte.
4. Seek advisors/mentors to help you get through this stage of work.
5. If you find you need to work 15 hour days after 2 years in the business, then you definitely need to learn some delegation skills.

Resist the temptation to fire everyone who gets in the way, and use them and their good will to the company to do what they can.