The air and light in my tropical hotel room this week reminded me of a morning long ago when I noticed a foot-wide, solid black stripe on the wall behind the bed that wasn’t there the night before. It was a stripe in horrifying motion. Like a rainbow, it traveled down the wall and into my little sister’s secret pot-o-gold on the nightstand – a three week supply of candy to protect her sweet tooth from anticipated deprivation while traveling with our ultra frugal and pragmatic parents in Mexico. I hurled the little leather purse into the bathtub and washed ten thousand ants down the drain, much to my sister’s distress over the candy and the purse.

Sometimes that is exactly what you need to do in your organization. Too often, people lack the resolve to throw the purse into the bathtub despite swarming evidence a foot wide and ten thousand deep.

The most common omission involves dealing with employees who are clearly in the wrong job, if not the wrong organization. The indicators are as easy to spot as an ant highway. The excuses for inaction inevitably involve kindness and fairness. But how kind is it to keep someone in a job where he has little or no chance of success? How fair is it to others to keep someone around who hinders progress, damages morale, or relies on others to pick up the slack? How smart is it to reward poor performance and undesirable behaviors with your time, energy, and compassion while ignoring those who are doing well and other priorities?

When the evidence is a foot wide leading to an individual who is more trouble than he or she is worth, do everyone a favor and make a change.