Fire Faster. Promote Faster.

One of the hardest things about running a company?
Letting go of the “human” part — just enough to keep the business alive.

We’re not saying be a robot.
We’re saying:
if you care about your team, you need to protect the team.
Even if that means making decisions that hurt in the short term.

Let’s break it down:

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1. Promote Faster — When You’ve Got a Star, Don’t Make Them Wait

Good people are rare.
Great people? Practically endangered.

So if someone inside your team consistently delivers, drives value, and lifts others up —
do not bench them behind red tape and “you need 3 more years” logic.

Promote them.
Back them.
Build a seat around them if one doesn’t exist yet.

Because when great people don’t feel seen, they leave.
And trust us — they don’t come back.

“You can’t overpay a great team member. You can only lose them.”
– Every founder who’s lost one

At Nexubis, we’ve made some of our biggest internal moves by doing just that.
Promoting earlier. Trusting quicker.
Our COO? Came up through the chaos with us.
Our team leads? Were teammates not long ago.

We didn’t wait for “perfect timing.”
We saw what they were capable of and got out of their way.

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2. Fire Faster — Hope Is Not a Retention Strategy

Here’s the part no one wants to talk about:

Bad fits don’t get better with time.
If anything, they get more expensive.

A teammate who misses deadlines, dodges accountability, or slows everyone else down?
That’s not a people problem — that’s a leadership problem. Yours.

And here’s the worst part:
Everyone else knows it.
And the longer you let it slide, the more the rest of your team loses trust —
not just in that person, but in you.

“You can’t build a high-performance culture if your team sees you tolerate low performance.”
– Harsh, but true

We’ve had to let people go.
It sucks.
But you know what sucks more?
Watching a great team burn out covering for someone who shouldn’t still be there.

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3. The Morality Maze

Let’s be real:
Firing someone isn’t just a business decision.
It’s a human one.
And if it doesn’t feel uncomfortable — you’re probably doing it wrong.

But here’s the mindset shift that helped us:

You’re not making a decision about one person.
You’re making a decision for the whole company.

You’re protecting the culture.
You’re keeping the bar high.
You’re making sure that the people who do go all-in don’t feel like suckers.

And sometimes? That means cutting ties with the wrong fit sooner, not later.

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4. Stop Dragging Your Feet

Dragging your feet on promotions = demotivated top performers.
Dragging your feet on firings = demoralized everyone.

If someone’s ready to lead, let them.
If someone’s dragging the team down, let them go.

That’s not harsh. That’s honest.
And it’s how great teams stay great.

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TL;DR for Founders in the Trenches

– Fire fast — protect the culture
– Promote faster — reward the drive
– Don’t wait for “enough time” — look for enough proof
– Your job is the big picture — play to the majority

We don’t build companies to hand out participation trophies.
We build companies to drive impact — and that starts with the right people in the right seats.

So make the hard calls.
Because in the end,
the only thing riskier than making a bold decision… is not making one at all.