Hippocrates lived around four centuries before Christ, and originated the Hippocratic oath. He was a Greek doctor, and, like most “great men” of his time, many things were attributed to him that he probably didn’t do. They did this to make things seem more official.

After all, if you said that your coffee brand was loved by Einstein, wouldn’t that help you?

Anyways, there was a disease back then that we still struggle with today. It presented in Hippocrates' time as hard, immobile lumps of flesh pushing outward on the skin. It’d often make the skin hard and grow tendrilous veins around it that appeared to reach out like claws. Attempts to remove it surgically often made things worse, as it seemed to “grab on” to the surrounding tissue and not let go.

It reminded Hippocrates, or at least the doctors at the time, of a crab. The hard flesh, the claw-like tendrils, the way it “grabbed on” to things. They called the process of this disease “carcinogenesis” — basically, the making of a crab.

The disease’s name? Cancer. Which is a Latinization of the Greek word for crab.

The Emperor of All Org Dysfunction

The same thing can happen inside our companies.

Hard lumps of intractable process, people, or culture form. They grow outward, putting pressure on other teams and resources. They send tendrils into the rest of the organization as they spread, taking valuable supplies of nutrients and oxygen.

Attempts at removal are difficult, but not impossible. After all, surgery has advanced quite a bit since Hippocrates time.

Left alone, these lumps of incompetent, toxic people can metastasize or spread through other departments. They do this by installing loyalists or hiring people like them over time until you push the good out. They can, and will, eventually spread to vital organs such as the C-suite.

They are behind most companies' failures. They often kill their hosts.

Unlike normal cancer, though, they don’t die with the host. Instead, they go on to infect other organizations. They’re insidious.

Early Screening

Does this sound familiar to you? Either at your current organization or at a prior organization that failed?

There are ways to stop this. But ignoring that dull nagging pain in your belly isn’t one of them. You’ve gotta see a doctor. You’ve gotta get scanned. And you’ve gotta cut it out, as soon as possible.

Firing toxic performers isn’t about improving productivity—although it does, by a great deal, improve productivity!

It’s about saving the organization from an early death.

If you need help with this, respond to this email. While I can’t offer pro bono work here due to my daughter’s need to eat and go to school, eliminating toxicity from organizations is work I’d do for free if I could.