Loyalty to individuals is fine, but what about the team?

``It's not the president's nature to throw his old shoes away. He actually likes to wear old shoes, because they're comfortable." -- An adviser commenting on George Bush's unwillingness to change his staff

If you happen to run into President Bush, I wish you'd pass along one word: De-hiring.

I'm not a highly political guy, but hey, it's the season, and that got me thinking about how the Bush presidency makes an interesting case study of executive loyalty. Bush the Loyal has gotten some pretty terrible advice, leading to historic lows in his stock price . . . er, approval ratings. (Ironically, one of the insiders Bush did replace was Andy Card, who made the ``old shoes" comment.)

We all learned in the `90s that loyalty was dead. I recall from that time a conversation with an executive who had just decided to close a division. I said, ``Was there talk of what to do with the employees?" He said, ``Oh yeah -- the president's son works in that division. The others will just get laid off." Naturally, those employees responded in kind. I eventually was able to offer a new working definition for ``employee loyalty": those who have yet to receive a better offer. So is loyalty making a comeback? I don't think so. Corporate loyalty rests undisturbed in its tomb; but individual loyalty survived all along.

Loyalty can be a mark of determination, respect, and compassion; or, it can be inertia or stubbornness and an unwillingness to admit a mistake. Which is it in the case of President Bush? I suspect you've already decided. However, we can agree, I think, that if you run a company and your rating/stock has been falling for years, you'd know you'd have to make changes. Your choice is to ask your people to change or to change people. The problem with the former strategy is that you're asking those most invested in the current policies to toss them aside. The alternative is ``housecleaning," which suggests blaming and scapegoating.

However, there is a third way -- neither blind loyalty nor rapid firing -- a way I've come to call ``de-hiring." This is an alternative practiced by those who are loyal to people in a higher sense -- loyal to the notion of helping every employee find a place to succeed. If you have people who are failing and you keep them in place out of ``loyalty," then you have married them to failure. What kind of favor is that?

Let's take the example of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. It's looking like he will go down in history as a failure. If Bush fired him, that would make his failure official -- a tough thing to do to a friend. So that brings us to a third way. What if Bush said to him and the world: ``Rumsfeld is my pal and a loyal part of this team. He has worked diligently in his role, and he deserves a chance to do something new."

Then you announce some wonderful new job that would appeal to him, perhaps heading the efforts to help the people of Africa. Now he has a chance to end his career as a success instead of a failure, and if things do work out in the Middle East, he remains part of the winning team, able to take part of the credit.

(Have a better idea for a new job for Rumsfeld? Maybe we can get a ``New Job for Old Rummy" campaign going. Send me your ideas, and I'll pass them on.)

OK, so maybe Rumsfeld doesn't want a different job. That's where de-hiring comes in. You set quantifiable standards for success and get agreement that if they aren't reached, the person will move on. No blaming, no resentments. It would work with Rumsfeld, and it works even better in situations away from the media's second-guessing.

In any group, what works is to refuse to let anyone languish in mediocrity; you are loyal to the team and to helping everyone on it succeed, whether in the current job or a new one. That's the third way.

I believe de-hiring is so important that I put together a video explaining it. It's free and it's not copyrighted, so you can pass it along. You can see a low-quality version at YouTube.com (keywords: Dale, Dale Dauten and De-Hiring) -- yes, I might be the oldest guy on YouTube -- or a high-quality version at dauten.com.

Dale Dauten is a syndicated columnist. He can be reached at dale@dauten.com.