When I was a kid, I remember my dad coming home from work and telling my mom he’d had to fire someone.

I very vividly remember the image it conjured in my head. MY dad had set some poor man on fire! What about his family? What about MY family? Was my dad going to go to jail? Isn’t setting a person on fire murder?

At that very young and impressionable age (I might have been five or six), it became clear to me that you never wanted to be fired. Or have to fire anyone, for that matter. And, like so many of us, even though I grew to understand what it meant, it was still something you never wanted to happen.

Being fired. Closing your business. Going bankrupt. These are all things that are seen as huge failures in the business world. (more…)