I get it. You've had that position open for two months and work isn't getting done. But bring in someone who isn't a team player, no matter how talented, and things will get worse. If you haven't before, read The No Asshole Rule. Or actually, just write "No Assholes" on a post-it note and keep it near your computer. Oh, and keep reading for more reassurances on why it's always a bad idea to hire a jerk.
Get the weekly newsletter to read more.
Carl: Gene, how long have we known each other?
Gene: About what? 12 years?
Carl: 12 years.
Gene: Something like that?
Carl: Yeah. There's something you don't know about me. I'm going to tell you now, if you want me to.
Gene: I would love to know.
Carl: In my early 20s, I was a talented asshole. I lost ... Yeah, I was a talented, Gene.
Gene: I don't believe it.
Carl: You know what changed? I'm not talented anymore.
Gene: That was a long setup.
Carl: No, but it's a true man that's the thing. It was like when I wrote that issue of the newsletter last week, I was like going, "Shit, all of these things on this checklist, it's kind of me."
Gene: So when did you realize in your professional career that you weren't really talented?
Carl: Hey, hey, whoa, whoa. That I was an asshole. I was always talented you jerk. Oh my God. Who's the asshole now?
Gene: I'm trying to play the part.
Carl: No, I was ...
Gene: I don't do subtlety as well as you.
Carl: You do pretty good.
Gene: Okay. Thank you.
Carl: You do pretty good. So figure I did the theater thing and all that shit going in and realizing that I wanted to have more of a career, that I wasn't going to be great at theater and decided I would just get good at presenting in business situations. So, I became really good at getting clients to say yes and getting approvals within about a round and a half of revisions. I could take a first round of something to a client and come back with some modifications, not changes, just like alter some stuff. And so I started sitting with art directors and writers and I was the only account service person who was back in the art department all the time because I would ask them, why does this work? Why did you do this? What do you think this is the impact of this will be right?
Carl: And then I would take that and know what I knew about the clients and what their goals were and I would marry them and I would say the reason why this is going to help you accomplish this increase in your closing rate is because it's going to make people understand that this is an emotional win for them. That they're going to be able to put their money here, still have access to it, whatever it might be, because we had a lot of banking clients so it was always about am I going to make money? Let's put pool water on the envelope and people will think, ooh, I'm going to build a pool, whatever it might be. But, what I didn't realize was I was only nice to the people in the company that I was working with and anybody else I was a jerk.
Carl: But you said, when did I find out? I found out when the company hired this group called Stop At Nothing, which we jokingly called Stop While There's Something Left. And Stop At Nothing was basically like an organizational consultant who we didn't really have an org chart, but they put one together. And then anybody who was considered, I was 24 considered at a certain level in the organization, regardless of title; they did in-depth interviews with everybody in the company. And I had the exclusive privilege of being considered the salvation of the advertising agency. I was the smartest person, the best person, the person who was going to take us to the highest of heights by half of the organization. By the other half, I was the devil incarnate. I was spineless. I had no talent. I was just kissing up. And I realized that day I may treat people differently. There you go. Talented asshole.
Gene: Do you still do that? Do you still treat people differently?
Carl: Just the people who deserve it.
Gene: I was waiting for that.
Carl: It was funny because my boss, I remember he came in and he goes, "Hey, we got this, I'm sure you've seen the report on how people feel about you."
Gene: Oh, shit. It's about 20 pages.
Carl: I was like, yeah, I saw it. I mean, you got to figure there were 40 people at this company and everybody had at least a few sentences to say. And what he said to me was, "Well, here's the good news. At least I know who to fire now."
Gene: Wow.
Carl: I was like you can't do that, man. I've got to talk to all these people, but you don't ... I think and I know we're diving right in here, but I think sometimes you don't realize that you're doing that to somebody, that you're being that way. But I remember somebody would come into my office say, hey, I need help with this. And I was like, yeah, and I need help finishing my job. So I'm going to do my thing and you go do your thing and then we'll see which one of us is able to do our job on our own. I do remember saying that to someone.
Gene: Well, you're not like that anymore.
Carl: No, that slap in the face of how people saw me when I was 24 ...
Gene: So that was humbling.
Carl: Oh my God. I think that was the biggest course correction on my whole life.
Gene: Wow. Yeah, that's cool.
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: That's good to go through that.
Carl: Yeah, so that was good. What about you? When was the time where you were a complete jerk and if you don't have one, I got a list brother. No, but have you ever been through that where you just like realized at one point, oh, I'm the asshole?
Gene: I have never in the moment like what it sounds like someone showing you or in a moment where there's enough time to make amends. Because it sounds like you were able to like, "Oh, let me go talk to these people," or whatever. For me, it's always months later and I think back, man, I was kind of shitty or I made some really ... the decisions I made were based on just me being a dick or whatever. Never with enough time to go back and correct it. So for me, it's always like, yes, those, those moments exist, but it's months later and I'm like, oh, shit. That's why they won't return my emails and texts anymore because they don't like me.
Carl: Because I treated them that way.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: And you know what? Here's the thing. When I went back and normally it was other people who did what I did, right? I was an account executive and it was the other account executives who I just did not have time for it. It was my boss actually, who a lot of times I did not have time. Well, the woman who was in charge of me, not the actual owner of the company. I only considered the owner of the company my boss. I never considered the person I reported to my boss. And this was a problem too. But I pretty much met with everybody and just apologized and said, look, I was so focused. I just thought what I was doing was so important. And obviously I'm hurting the company because I'm not sharing things that I find work and I'm not learning from others things that they've done that have worked. So, it was a big change.
Gene: Let me ask you this though. By your own definition, when you were like that, were you successful in your role or for the company?
Carl: I would say in my microcosm, I was wildly successful. I went in, I focused, I made sure that I understood exactly why something was right. I never hammered a client, but I always willed them into the right place. I played tennis with them on the weekends. I did whatever it took to be able to get that job done. But at the same time I was creating a cultural rift within the organization, within the company of people who liked me and people who hated me. And that, so in the microcosm, yeah, I probably did what I was hired to do.
Carl: I got courted by national firms, so I definitely had a reputation for being able to build budgets, for being able to get clients to say yes to all kinds of stuff, which was always in their interest too. I never took anybody down a bad path, even when I was an ass. But I hurt the rest of the company so I think the company overall probably didn't see a net increase, probably saw a net because I gave people bad days and you know what it is when you have a bad day. You don't do a good job.
Gene: Right. Right. But my point was that I-
Carl: You think I should still be an asshole. I see what you're saying.
Gene: You've got a ways to go, man. No, I think we tend to do these things and make these types of mistakes when we're experiencing success. Right?
Carl: Yeah. Cockiness.
Gene: Call it hubris, cockiness, whatever it is. That's when that comes out. That's when that monster comes out. When everything's going right and then all of a sudden, bam, something happens or whatever, and your shit falls apart and then you're all down and whatever. But, but yeah, you tend to make the most of these mistakes and stuff whenever things are going well, you're closing deals or whatever. And you're like, "I don't got time for you."
Carl: Exactly. Yeah. I've got to close this. I got to do this. And you even get to a point where you start punching up.
Gene: Oh yeah.
Carl: Like people have been at the organization for a long time who are responsible for why the company exists. And yet you convince yourself you're why the company exists and you've been there for 18 months.
Gene: Right.
Carl: Simmer down sunshine.
Gene: Yeah. This guy, this lady built this company like 12 years ago but I'm more important than you.
Carl: Yeah. We didn't say Carl will be here next year. Let's go ahead and move into the big tower and rent out the 38th floor because Carl is coming and it will be okay.
Gene: Yeah, sign the lease, man, we got Carl. That's awesome.
Carl: But you know at that time you kind of believe it. So, one of the things when I was looking at that episode or that issue last week of the newsletter ... Sign up for the newsletter kids, it's fantabulous. Thanks. Bennett Tapper, I think Bennett Tapper ... Bonnette sounds cool but I think Bennett's probably his name. He did all this research on, it was more on managers that were jerks. And he coined this term abusive supervision. And basically he said this is the impact. And I think it goes beyond that. I think what he was doing was researching what you could if you have an employee who is abusive.
Gene: Well, yeah, right.
Carl: You might not be able to define it as easily or whatever. But to me it was the exact same so I kind of looked at what he had researched, what other people said about what he did and then just my own experiences. But I think when you start to look at it, just like you asked, when you have somebody who is a complete jerk, even if they're really good at their job, it just derails everybody else.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: You worked with a jerk before? You had a jerk in the mix?
Gene: Yes. Yes. Talented people. Yeah, it can run the gamut between super talented people who their opinion can never be wrong, to the people that their ideas are always the best, to the people that they've had success for a long time. And then like, "We're never doing anything any different than the way I do it. And if you think your way is better than mine, then screw you. I'll just ignore you or make you feel stupid or whatever."
Carl: Because they were threatened, right?
Gene: Probably is the case. But downright grouchy ass individuals, but those are easier to spot.
Carl: Yeah. And then if you've got that cranky person and that's the thing. Sometimes they're super personable and two faced as hell. And that's the other one, right? It's like you get this person who's ... We've had developers that we worked with, that whoever they reported to, they were the nicest, basically following kindergarten rules, always great. But refuse to work with anybody else.
Gene: Right. Or just lorded over everybody with the keys to the kingdom or whatever.
Carl: Yeah. "Oh, I'm going to get it done." Or they always tell you it's going to take twice as long. And then they miraculously figured it out, how to do it. You know what I mean? It's like there's always-
Gene: I've actually coached people to utilize the Scotty principle. You're familiar with this, right? Like Scotty from Star Trek.
Carl: I didn't think it was the dog.
Gene: It's the Scotty from Star Trek where Kirk's always like, "I need more," and Scotty's like, "Dude, this is all she's got," whatever.
Carl: "I can't do it Captain. I think she's going to blow."
Gene: He's like, give me a sec-
Carl: "I shoved a wiener in the warp drive. Everything's fine."
Gene: And then suddenly 30 seconds later, it's like ready to go and he could do it at any time.
Carl: He could. He just needed that pressure. But when you've got that person who does that, and I remember we had a developer that everybody's like, "We've got to knock down the silos." Some people like silos.
Gene: Yes.
Carl: And while you're trying to break them down, they're all Cask of Amontillado building them back up around themselves so that you ... they just don't want to work with a team. And it's funny because now this article came out in the ... it was shared in the Bureau Slack channels. I think it was a Wall Street Journal article about people that were holding down two full-time jobs.
Gene: You know, I just saw, yeah. It was in the Slack Channel I saw that. And I was like bullshit. That's why.
Carl: Okay, so somebody said, well, it's really two 15 hour a week jobs. Is it and is it really happening as much as The Wall Street Journal is saying or did that just seem like a really sexy article to put up there? Lots of clicks. But when I looked at it, I remember people who ... this is a different kind of asshole. But, they just, they lie. Right? They say it's going to take longer and then they just don't, it doesn't or whatever.
Carl: But this is the thing. Then it had this list of 15 things to determine if somebody is abusive or not. And all of them are pretty straightforward obvious. Ridicules others. Tells teammates their thoughts or feelings are stupid. Oh, lots of hard research in this one, Mr. Tapper, well done. But the thing is, I don't think anybody realized his real research wasn't the list. The list gets put out there all the time. It was the overall impact in the company that one person can cause up to 20% of the team to leave.
Gene: I believe it.
Carl: Yeah.
Gene: Yeah. I believe I've seen it.
Carl: Yeah. When bad people stay, good people leave.
Gene: And the cranky client's thing, yeah, it's weird when someone's left your company and then you make the rounds back with your clients and they're like, "Oh, they're gone? We did not like that person. I'm so glad. We were going to fire you guys." And you're like ...
Carl: And sometimes it's that person, so sometimes that person because of who they are, they get elevated externally. Right?
Gene: Oh, yeah.
Carl: So they may have blogs at the writing or they may be speaking at events or they may be publishing videos or they may be the number one this type of developer in the world. Or they may be publishing this kind of content that all the other developers are just crazy about. And clients go, "We want to work with that person." And then they meet that person. And they're like, "I don't want to work with that person." Well that's the person who can do the thing that you wanted. So you feel like you're on the hook. But I'm going to tell you, there is a type of asshole worse than the untalented. "Ooh, I blew it." Rewind that. There's another type of asshole worse than the talented asshole. Do you know what kind, Gene?
Gene: Talented asshole.
Carl: Talented asshole. Man, I just blew that. But you know those exist too. The people who everybody's just like, I'll deal with it tomorrow. They don't ... for whatever reason they just hang out.
Gene: That's probably me, honestly.
Carl: No, you're not an asshole. Wait what?
Gene: Yeah, I get you, man. Yeah, I've had some of those too that just can't really do the things that they claim they could do. I will say this too about the other maybe unintentional asshole. You were referencing industry famous people or whatever. They shall remain nameless but I've ... yeah, they'll remain nameless.
Carl: You and I not famous by the way.
Gene: No, no, never was.
Carl: Just acknowledge that.
Gene: So I had this client reach out to us, sing this person's praises. "We've been working with this person, everything they've done is golden. It is awesome. But it just doesn't work. Could you guys just take a look at it and fix this little bit?" So we're like, cool. If we take a look, we're like, man, I'd like to come behind this person, take a look at it. And we're like, "The reason it doesn't work is because there's nothing here. It's all fake." And just having to tell that client that well, you know all the ... when you build an app and there's all the stuff, all the programming that should exist, you don't have any of that stuff.
Carl: So we're going to coin a new term. That's the untalented sweetheart.
Gene: Yeah, exactly.
Carl: They couldn't do it and just built a prototype and said, "Yeah, we just have to hook up the data now. I'm going to take six weeks and head out to Mexico. I'll see you later." Right? Oh my goodness. So what did you do? How did you respond to that person that asked you to check up on them?
Gene: Well, I called the person in question and just said, hey, what's the real deal here?
Carl: What's going on?
Gene: And they fessed up and then we helped them.
Carl: When they fessed up did they say, I don't know what I'm doing.
Gene: Yeah, pretty much.
Carl: Oh my God.
Gene: Yeah. And then we didn't throw him under the bus and we worked with them and it all worked out. But we were like-
Carl: Did you just think how hard could it be?
Gene: Yeah. We were like you're an asshole. You took this ... and that's what I mean by the unintentional asshole.
Carl: Was there any money left for you? That's the worst.
Gene: Not as much as we wanted.
Carl: "Oh, well, we already gave the person who didn't do anything all of our money, so could you do this kind of as a favor and actually build the thing we paid them to do?"
Gene: Yeah, I've done that too. But it's the person and you were working in a larger organization, you'll probably see this where there's this person and maybe they're in charge, maybe they're a manager or whatever, and they don't know what they're doing. You know what I mean? But you are sort of under them or you come behind them or you work on the things that they then go take credit for whatever. And they're not bad people. Like this person, this was a great, a friendly person, somebody you'd love to hang out with. Couldn't say really anything bad about them other than they just couldn't do what they signed up for.
Gene: And there's a fine line between like I came up as a graphic designer, self-taught web designer or whatever. There's a level of like, yeah, I don't know how to do that, but I know how to figure out how to do that. So yeah I can take this on. You know what I mean? And you'll just get it done. If you have to stay up all night and learn something new or whatever, but you get it done. There's part of that, but then there's a level of that that's just too far where it's like, yeah, but you can't learn Python in 24 hours. You know what I mean? It's just too much for you. And you got to know when you're outclassed or just should not be doing the job or whatever.
Carl: I can figure out how to build heat resistant tiles.
Gene: Yeah, exactly.
Carl: This isn't going to be an issue.
Gene: Yeah. Those astronauts will be okay.
Carl: They'll be fine.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: We worked with somebody who I would say was a talented misfit.
Gene: Yeah, there you go. Not necessarily an asshole, but the end result is asshole.
Carl: Who learned Pearl overnight.
Gene: Ooh.
Carl: He was like, "I think Pearl would be a better solution to this." And I walked in the next morning and he's asleep with his hand on a keyboard, a working model of the product and a Pearl book that's just been demolished. I was like, okay, well go get you a change of clothes, sunshine. What's with me and the sunshine all of a sudden? I'm all about sunshine.
Gene: It's been raining in Florida hasn't it?
Carl: So much. Oh my God. So much. Thank you. That's exactly what it was. So, there's another type of, I would say dangerous person in an organization.
Gene: That's a good term.
Carl: You know who it is? The mascot. This is the person who's been there forever who does the caricatures for everybody on their birthday, but can't do their job. And everybody just works around them and doesn't have the heart to say anything about it. Or if they do, they do it in closed circles because well, they've been here forever and who's going to do the caricatures at everybody's birthday if it's not them?
Gene: I just realized that I'm the mascot.
Carl: And they make like 85 grand a year or whatever. And that could be a great front end developer or something. But no. We've got to make sure that we have the mascot because they're the ones that always when we get together and we do our tell us about yourself thing, they always are the ones that wrote the song and we love it. Which is great and they get it from a culture perspective, but what does that do to everybody else's like-
Gene: Who's actually working every day.
Carl: And figures it out. Have you ever had, this is a good one. Have you ever had anybody in an accounting department or in some other level of-
Gene: An accountant department.
Carl: ... understanding the internal workings of the shop that tells other people what everybody's salaries are?
Gene: No, I've never had that, but that sounds fun.
Carl: Did I ever tell you about the time I quit?
Gene: Oh man.
Carl: It's because I found out they hired somebody making three times what I was using the money that I had earned for the company. I just remember going, wait, they're hiring somebody to come in to manage this client that I grew from a $300,000 to almost one and a half million dollars in two years. And now they're going to give the money to that person to tell me how to do my job. Maybe I wasn't an asshole. Maybe I was upset for a reason.
Gene: The Bob and Bob. That's crazy, man.
Carl: I wouldn't say I'm missing it. Bob and Bob.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: You've been missing a lot of work lately?
Gene: Office Space. Yeah.
Carl: That's what we were doing.
Gene: Yeah, I got you. I'm sorry, man.
Carl: Roll back the tape.
Gene: Yeah. So don't hire assholes.
Carl: Which also was the number one link, No Asshole Rule, that book. I think 30% of the people who opened the newsletter went to look at that. And the thing is the No Asshole Rule, you would think you just look at the cover and you go, "Oh, got it. Don't hire an asshole." But I haven't read the book, Gene, I'm not going to lie to you. I don't want to be that person. But I hear there's good stuff in there about why you shouldn't hire people who aren't nice. What do you think?
Gene: I agree. Yeah, but the basic list here you started rolling off of that. Yeah. A lot of this is obvious. Invade other people's privacy, would that be up there with telling everybody what everybody makes or where's that going?
Carl: I would think so. Invades everybody's privacy is like telling somebody somebody's probably getting a divorce.
Gene: Yeah.
Carl: Anything like that and again, this list is more, this doesn't necessarily have the talented side to it. This is just the jerks. Right? One of my favorites is when they break promises and it's your fault. Right? Anything that involves a blame game I think is classic.
Gene: Yeah, and there's a definite difference between managers/project managers and production people like designers, developers, writers. There's a definite difference in the level or type of assholery that you can get out of these people from my experience.
Carl: I'll agree with you there. And I think there's something else you need to ... I got another category here. The unexpected asshole. Why did that person suddenly become an asshole? They've been great for five years.
Gene: Right. Right.
Carl: What happened? Where did they go? We had a writer that we worked with for a long time and what was amazing was all of a sudden, they weren't really good at their work anymore and they were upset with everyone. We kind of switched the type of writing they were doing and we didn't realize that there were different categories. It sounds really silly now, but we took them from being more of a advertising like a print piece or a broadcast piece and put them into direct mail. Long form versus more creative. Not that direct mail's not creative and they just hated their life all of a sudden. And we were like, I don't know, might be time to go.
Gene: What's wrong with you?
Carl: Might be time to go. What about the quiet person, right? Have you ever, no, besides period three, what's the largest, I mean, period three is not huge, but what's the biggest group you've ever been a part of? With iron yard.
Gene: Yeah. That'd be the biggest. They had like, I don't know, 200, 250 employees.
Carl: Hundreds. Yeah. Did you have people in there that you were just like, I don't want to sit down and be in a meeting with that person?
Gene: Yes. Most of them.
Carl: Were you looking in the mirror when you said that? I don't want to have a meeting that I'm in.
Gene: Yeah. That's definitely one of those scenarios I was talking about earlier where like a year later I was like, "I was a Dick." And I shouldn't have been. Yeah, I was very aloof and not right and it caused problems. Yeah, some of those people probably won't be friendly to me ever again. They're all very nice people so they probably would be, but in general, probably not really going to be my friend.
Carl: Well, you've got enough friends Gene.
Gene: Thank you. I only need one. But yeah, there were definitely people that ... all the things on the list, the manager type, doing those things that I was like, I don't want to be part of that culture. But it's different. There's also like you're talking about an established agency that's been around for a while that you're part of and you're doing things in, versus a start-up that's only been around for like a year or so. There's lots of stuff that can ... people just being in a hurry and making mistakes and then how they deal with those things. It's a different types of assholes maybe.
Carl: Well and even agitators versus assholes because anytime you have a start-up you have to have ... I'm trying to remember the terms that I saw for this. Volatiles and stables. So you have to have, otherwise you have no reaction. If you only have stables, you have no reaction. You have to have a volatile in there to make things happen, but eventually things get to a point where you need the stables take over and the volatiles got to take a hike because you got there. You're at the point where things are established now and they're going to work. So that's a good point, right?
Carl: And again, take Steve Jobs. He's probably the most famous asshole. If you ever read about working with him, holy crap, that guy. Right? But, he kind of accomplished a few things.
Gene: A few things.
Carl: But that's the volatile. And then you get him out and you get Cook in. Cook's definitely more of a stable. He's not going to be bouncing all over the place, yelling at people, telling them they're doing it wrong before he even looks at what they did. So that's, yeah, it's kind of crazy.
Gene: They haven't exactly invented anything new since Jobs has been gone. It happens. But to your point, there's definitely a difference between starting something and maintaining something, right?
Carl: Oh yeah.
Gene: I think ... I don't know. In terms of design shop or a shop or whatever we're calling them in the Bureau, I think there's a difference between maybe the people that start the project versus the people that maintain and finish the project. That type of person is very different. And that's a tough area, I think, to manage between maybe the BizDev account rep person and then the people that take it to the finish line. And how you keep those two types of people in the mix throughout the process so that the BizDev people are aware of what's going on so they can do more BizDev, but then the people can actually get it done and build it, those temperaments are different.
Carl: Yeah. Very different. It's interesting too because what you're saying there about building something versus maintaining it, we're in a creative space so people are going to have their ego involved if they mean to or not. And that can elevate it. Another thing now that people are working more remotely, sometimes people think, "Well, I get that that person's not the nicest, but we don't have to hang out with them." You know what? They're still going to be there. Yeah, maybe you're not going to hear them munching chips at their desk, but they're still going to be on the call. They're still going to be involved with the client. They're still going to say things. You can throw somebody under the bus from 100 miles away. It's not tough. I do it all the time.
Gene: I do it too.
Carl: I will show you my technique at some point. Gene, we're coming up on time I don't know how that happened. There's nothing more fun-
Gene: Talking about assholes.
Carl: ... talking about assholes. Everybody's got one.
Gene: Nobody wants to be it.
Carl: And if you can guess how many times we've said the word asshole, you get to sign up to be a member at the Bureau. I'm going to give you a free month. Whoever says the right number of times we said asshole in this episode, asshole, that one counts. Yeah. Whatever. I'm going to give you free month membership. How do you like that on Gene Crawford?
Gene: Give them a free newsletter.
Carl: It's not something a jerk would do I'll tell you that.
Gene: It isn't. That's pretty awesome of you. Sign up for the newsletter. Count the assholes.
Carl: Yeah. You won't believe the number of assholes it takes to become a member at the Bureau of Digital.
Gene: All of those count too, by the way.
Carl: They do.
