BusinessNZ's grinch guide on who to fire

Business New Zealand has injected a little spirit of the grinch into the Christmas edition of its ManufacturingNZ newsletter, which highlights "three types of people to fire immediately". Photo / Th

Employers' and manufacturers' lobby group Business New Zealand has injected a little spirit of the Grinch into the Christmas edition of its ManufacturingNZ newsletter, which highlights "three types of people to fire immediately."

Taken from the financial news agency Bloomberg's Business Week publication, the article suggests that "victims", "non-believers" and "know-it-alls" are the three types of people that businesses should show the door to.

"Victims are people who see problems as occasions for persecution rather than challenges to overcome," says G Michael Maddock and Raphael Louis Viton from Maddock Douglas, an American innovation consultancy.

"Note to the HR department, victims are the most likely to feel the company has maliciously terminated them regardless of cause," they advise.

Also for the high-jump should be those they call the "non-believers", who lack the willpower to back "industry-changing innovation."

"We've found the link between believing and succeeding incredibly powerful and real," say Maddock and Viton, who say the non-believers in a firm have a "cancerous effect" on success.

The last unwanted group, the Know-It-Alls have seen it all before and know why it can't work.

"The best innovators are learners, not knowers," they argue. "Unfortunately, it is often the smartest, most-seasoned employee who eventually becomes expert in using his or her knowledge to explain why things are impossible rather than possible."