John Hope Bryant wrote a post on LinkedIn, “Ride or Die“. It talks about a manifestation of the Pareto Principle where 20% of your workforce does 80% of the heavy-lift work. That looks very alarming to me, don’t know how you feel. Yes, having ADHD workers is not a very good thing. ADHD – Actively Disengaged, Highly Disruptive.

It set me thinking. Maybe you don’t have the same percentages as what the worldwide Gallup Workplace Report for 2013 says, but then, isn’t having even half of 24% actively disengaged workers terrible enough? Can you imagine if even one out of ten of your staff are there in your premises, not just not actively working for you, but actually engaged in behaviour destructive to your business? Have we forgotten the old saying that even one bad apple will spoil the entire barrel? Now, I am not advocating that we simply fire anyone and everyone who isn’t actively engaged with us, as “Ride or Die” might seem to suggest, but I really do think we don’t fire people enough! Yes, I do know it’s hard, but we also need to remember that “It’s not the people you fire who give you heartaches. It’s the people you don’t.” Of course, we must be sure that we have done all we could have in encouraging them to grow, listened to their concerns, engineered conditions to ensure their success at their jobs and other projects, made sure they had access to good mentors, coaches and the like, and, by the way, ensured that we have paid them as well as we possibly could. However, if we have done all that and people still wallow in disengagement, then we need to ease them out of our company or actively fire them. If you don’t want to work, why should you eat?

Are you able to identify your top 20%, or 13%, as Gallup seems to indicate? Does everyone in the company know that you do? Does everyone know that you have the bottom 24% in your gunsights, and the safety is off? That especially includes managers, by the way. In fact, the managers are top of the target list if they insist on being disengaged after all is said and done. Have you got the gumption to do that? After all, have you not done all that you could have for their sakes already?

Have Gun, Will Level. Especially ADHD personnel.