This post was derived from a message I delivered at a regular company all hands meeting after I let an employee go due to under performance.

As a company focused on fostering trust between organizations and their customers, a core part of DataGrail’s m.o. revolves around transparency both within and without.

I was asked to say a few words at the meeting about the circumstances surrounding this departure. It was a humbling experience because I wanted to honor the employee while being transparent and true to the circumstances. Here’s what I said.

Thanks, Daniel. Lee’s (not their real name) last full day with the company was on Thursday.

I want to say two things about this departure.

First, Daniel has made the analogy before that the demands of a startup of DataGrail’s stage and trajectory are akin in many ways to being a professional athlete.

We are in an intense period and the expectations for everyone in an organization like this are incredibly high. Maintaining our current trajectory means that they will only increase.

These demands may not be for everyone across every season of life. If that’s true for someone we’re interviewing or someone who exits the organization, it’s not an indictment of their character, their intelligence, or them as a person.

There was simply an impedance mismatch between our stage as an organization and their stage.

We desire to be a high performing organization. As we go, there’s a ratcheting effect to our talent and the expectations for each of us.

Second, this was not a sudden event.

The idea of “win as a team” is incredibly pertinent here. We don’t trade people off the team for a missed play, a bum game, or even a poor season here at DataGrail. We rally around them and attempt to support them.

If over a period of multiple seasons we’re still not seeing the contributions that are fair to the whole team, only then do we move toward what we might describe as formal performance management.

We “win as a team” and have “empathy always”.