Claudio Ranieri was the Manager of Leicester City Football Club – a lesser-known football club but nevertheless, one that enjoyed a position in England’s Premier League, however low. Claudio joined the club in 2015 and managed to take the club from a standing start to win the Premier League. Everyone was surprised except for Claudio and, I’m guessing, his team. At the time it was hugely celebrated because the same three clubs had been winning the league and basically passing the trophy between them. It had all got a bit boring.
Six months into the next season though, Leicester dropped Claudio. The other clubs in the league had wised up to Claudio’s tactics and Claudio had failed to change his game, so Leicester City were nowhere near the top of the league. There were some who decried this move by the club as ungrateful and disloyal. But was it? The English premier League is one of the most competitive in the world. You don’t get to win unless you’re at the top of your game as Claudio was in 2015. Who knows what happened to him? Maybe he was just exhausted after that first season? It certainly wasn’t his first team, but perhaps he only had one League trophy in him, unlike Alex Ferguson’s 30.
Having worked in startups for the past few years, I’ve seen the same thing. Inevitably, founders have a tendency to hire friends in the early days. Trust is an issue and those early hires are devastating to a startup if they’re wrong, much less a large enterprise who tend to be structured to insulate themselves form just one or a few bad apples.
Sometimes, an early hire can be right for a specific period in a startup’s life, and then, like Claudio, they lose the plot. It could be fatigue, or skills or even culture, but whatever the reason, the founder needs to grit their teeth and fire Claudio, however much of a friend they might be. If they don’t they put their company at risk and every other member of the team. If they’re professional and have some level of insight into their own behaviour, they will understand and the friendship will survive. If on the other hand, they have a fragile ego or few alternatives, its likely to toast the relationship.