Harare is a small town wearing a city’s clothes. So is Lusaka. So, for the people who matter to your venture, is Johannesburg.
This has a specific consequence that founders from larger markets never have to think about. The person you let go in March will be across the table from you in November, sitting on the other side of your biggest prospect’s procurement committee. Or they will be your supplier’s new operations manager. Or they will be at the wedding, telling the story of how it ended.
I have written before about the cost of the wrong hire, and about why founders wait too long to act on it. This is about the part that comes after the decision, which most founders get wrong in a different way. They do it late, and then they do it badly.
The decision and the conversation are different jobs
The decision is analytical. Is this person right for this role, at this stage, in this venture. You should have reached it slowly, with evidence, and you should be certain.
The conversation is not analytical. It is a human being learning that their income has ended, in a market where the next one may be months away. Founders who have agonised over the decision often arrive at the conversation having spent nothing on preparing for it, and it shows.
Separate the two. Make the decision with your head. Prepare the conversation with the same care you would give a major customer meeting, because it is one.
Five rules
No surprises. The exit conversation should be the third conversation, not the first. If the person learns for the first time that there is a problem on the day they are being let go, you have failed them twice: once by not telling them earlier, and once by taking away the chance to fix it. When it is done properly, the person walks in already knowing why they are there.
Do it yourself. Not through a manager, not through a letter, not through a message. You hired them. In a venture this size, you end it. Delegating this is the one delegation that costs you more than it saves.
Pay what you owe on the day. Everything. Notice, leave, whatever the contract or the law says, and if you can manage a little more, do that. The single most damaging story a former employee can tell about you in a small market is that you did not pay them. It is also the one they will be believed about.
One sentence to the team, and the same sentence to everyone. Do not explain. Do not defend. Do not allow a version to circulate that the departed person would not recognise. The team is watching how you handle this more closely than they watch anything else you do, because every one of them is imagining being on the other side of it.
Decide the reference before they ask. You will be called. Decide now what you will say, make it true, and make it something you could say to their face. A reference that damns them quietly will find its way back, and it will be a fair assessment of you rather than of them.
When the hire was a friend
Most early hires in a small venture are friends, relatives, or friends of relatives. That is not a mistake. It is how ventures get started in places where trust is the only capital you have.
It does make this harder. The temptation is to protect the friendship by avoiding the decision, and the result is that you lose both the role and the friend, slowly, over a year of resentment on both sides.
The friendship can survive the role ending. It cannot survive the role ending badly, and it cannot survive the role never ending when it should have. Be clear that it is the job that has stopped working, say so plainly, and then behave afterwards like someone who meant it.
The honest cost
You will be the villain in somebody’s story for a while, and in a small market you will hear the story back.
Doing this well does not change that. The person you let go will not thank you for the clean exit. They will be angry, and hurt, and they will say so to people you know. What doing it well changes is the version of the story that survives after the anger fades, and that version is the one that will be in the room when you meet again.
You will meet again. Everything above is written for that day.
