Hire Slow, Fire Fast

The title of a chapter in Jeffrey J. Fox’s How to Become a Great Boss: The Rules for Getting and Keeping the Best Employees (Hyperion, 2002), a book structured as a series of short, one-rule chapters. The chapter title is attested via the publisher’s marketing page at Hachette Book Group, which lists it as the third principle in the book’s success formula; the chapter body has not been independently verified here. The phrase predates the book and has been attributed to others over the years (Chuck Sekeres and Jack Welch are the recurring names); Fox’s contribution is the four-word imperative as a chapter title.

The phrase circulates well beyond Fox’s chapter. Greg McKeown’s March 2014 Harvard Business Review piece under the same title is what pushed it into wide startup currency, framed there as the inverse of the hire-fast-fire-slow pattern McKeown said most startups actually run. McKeown cites no origin, and etymological hunts produce only unsourced attributions to Chuck Sekeres and Jack Welch. The fast-fire half draws explicit pushback: Tom Deierlein’s May 2017 LinkedIn essay “Hire Slow, Fire Fast is LAZY Leadership” proposes “Hire slow, fire fair” as a replacement, arguing that the four-word version lets managers skip the documented improvement plans and coaching conversations that should precede a termination.