one of my employees who I hired from my previous company uh that I had worked at before I formed the economy of communion company. One of those employees I had put in charge of a particular area of the company. I thought I'd known him for a long time and uh he was a good person to kind of elevate to uh this new position and it began going well. He was doing a good job and then at some point it didn't things began to unravel.
Things were missed. You know, deadlines were missed. um projects were not being managed correctly and it was difficult because the economy of communion always kind of I thought taught well you have to be loving to this employee. The loving thing to do is to try to coach them which I was trying to do um and just keep giving them break after break. At one point I realized that the loving thing to do was to demote him because he needed to understand that he couldn't be in charge if he couldn't deliver what I expected him to deliver.
And so I I demoted I kind of said, "I'm taking you out of this responsibility area and putting you in charge of another lesser thing." What I didn't realize is that that employee was having some severe problems uh that he was dealing with with uh with alcohol and other things. And I didn't know it at the time. I suspected, but I didn't really confront that person. And so when I demoted him, I didn't tell the rest of the employees what it was about.
I felt like, you know, one of the things to do is to try to deal with it, to try to keep it more closed. And uh and so a couple of those employees didn't like what I had done, and one of them left the company thought thinking why did you treat this person uh like this, you know? And so that was difficult because that that um viewpoint was kind of on me personally like oh you're not doing your job as a president to to deal with that person and um eventually that employee not right away but in the next year or two left the company and he was the first employee I had hired to to work and I always felt bad because we were good friends.
I knew his family, uh, all kinds of good things. And so, but he left and okay, well, that happens, you know. In fact, before he left, he left after like 11 or 12 years of working with the company. And I up until he left, no one had ever left the company. So, I had in my mind this vision. I was the best manager in the whole world. This company, this EOC business, it's so good. No one's ever going to leave.
You know, people ask me, "How what's your in turnover like?" And I say, "What do you what turnover? I have zero turnover." You know, and I realized it's not the magic of an EOC business to create this company that has zero turnover. It's it doesn't mean you're any better or worse. But I up until he left, I was like, you know, I was like that. So when he left, it's like, okay, well, this is what happens.
A few years later, he called me and he said, "Um, can we have lunch? It's been a while since we saw each other." And we were good friends and still are good friends to this day. And I said, "Sure." So, we had a lunch and he during the lunch he confessed everything I had assumed that had happened was going on. Uh uh and that he thanked me for doing that and that now in this new position he's in, he's doing better.
His life is together. has a lot of good things happening. In fact, now he's a senior person at another company and he's doing well. And so, um I'm I'm not sure exactly that's a good experience to share that says you everything was wrapped in in a nice bow. But sometimes you make a decision out of love that's difficult. And again, things don't happen in your time sometimes. And you come to understand that that was a good decision and that was the best thing for that situation.
