Favoured employees and their concrete contracts

[Cully]

Jocko.

I have adopted your (and others) advice regarding leadership, ownership, control of emotion, etc to great success and to the benefit of many teams that have served under my command.  I have been able to superimpose your ideals and advice to fit my operation and lead effectively, but in a lot of your situations as you describe, when a team member does not cut the mustard, he is cut from the team.  However, I work for a multi-national company that has a particular allegiance to a certain group of employees who can avail of a concrete contract and labour courts that pretty much favor the employee and therefore, these employees cannot be fired (upper management quote).  Do you have insight as to how to inspire those who cannot be fired, when they decide to do nothing?.  This also demoralizes those you are not in this favoured group.  How are the interested parties kept motivated when one doesn't pull his weight, yet be able to keep his paycheck? 

Best of luck with the new book,

Cully.

[mynewunit]

I just finished sometime as a contractor with a government agency. I couldn't do anything about who worked and who didn't, what they did, or how it was done. I could do a few things. First, you have lots of ability to reward and encourage the team members. Occasionally, I get a weird, temporary assignment that might take some support and I would get to give another team member a break from the normal grind, a little spot light and get to use a different portion of their brain/skill set. What happened was I got some reputation, praise, recognition and I tried to share it with the team who supported me. A few of the ones I though I would have to work around became jealous. I turned it on it's head by helping them do what I was doing better. One team member had to learn how to listen and speak more plainly. We met once a week to work on that skill.
There were other teams, departments, etc, that had control over us. They did things that forced us to do rework, to fix things they told us to do. I was as honest as I could be with the team. Everything I said with the team, I was ready to say to leadership or the people I was talking about. It means that I was good at the delicate dance of telling the truth without attacking anyone. I am also not afraid of conflict and I found a lot of it. With the others, I would sit and talk. I had them explain to me what they do, need, want from my work. Then I offer to give them what they need to do their job. Then I offer to do their job. If they wont even respond to that, then I shine the light on it every chance I get. Eventually I openly ask how to get around them.
The team needs to buy in on what you are selling. The others can sit there.