Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward

by Henry Cloud

Chapter 1 Endings: The Good Cannot Begin Until the Bad Ends

Necessary endings by their very nature are real and relevant and, when implemented, can bring incredible results. When needed endings are done well, people succeed. When they’re done poorly or not at all, people don’t.

Whether we like it or not, endings are a part of life.

Life has seasons, stages, and phases.

Without the ability to end things, people stay stuck, never becoming who they are meant to be, never accomplishing all that their talents and abilities should afford them.

In many contexts, until we let go of what is not good, we will never find something that is good. The lesson: good cannot begin until bad ends.

• We hang on too long when we should end something now. • We do not know if an ending is actually necessary, or if “it” or “he” is fixable. • We are afraid of the unknown. • We fear confrontation. • We are afraid of hurting someone. • We are afraid of letting go and the sadness associated with an ending. • We do not possess the skills to execute the ending. • We do not even know the right words

We have had too many and too painful endings in our personal history, so we avoid another one. • When they are forced upon us, we do not know how to process them, and we sink or flounder. • We do not learn from them, so we repeat the same mistakes over and over.

there are times when potential collateral damage to other aspects of the business or other strategic issues makes it prudent not to execute an ending, but that is the exception not the rule.

The real reason is this: Something about the leaders’ personal makeup gets in their way.

Think of the now ubiquitous “failure to launch” syndrome of those twenty- or thirty-somethings still living with their parents.

When we fail to end things well, we are destined to repeat the mistakes that keep us from moving on.

We do not have to keep repeating the same patterns.

Chapter 2 Pruning: Growth Depends on Getting Rid of the Unwanted or the Superfluous

Pruning is a process of proactive endings.

1. Healthy buds or branches that are not the best ones, 2. Sick branches that are not going to get well, and 3. Dead branches that are taking up space needed for the healthy ones to thrive.

Necessary Ending Type 1

Rosebushes and other plants produce more buds than the plant can sustain.

Necessary Ending Type 2

Some branches are sick or diseased and are not ever going to make it.

Necessary Ending Type 3

Then there are the branches and buds that are dead and taking up space.

In the simple word pruning is the central theme of what a necessary ending is all about: Removing whatever it is in our business or life whose reach is unwanted or superfluous.

Just like an unpruned rosebush, your endeavors will be merely average without pruning.

“There is a big difference between hurt and harm,” I said. “We all hurt sometimes in facing hard truths, but it makes us grow. It can be the source of huge growth. That is not harmful. Harm is when you damage someone. Facing reality is usually not a damaging experience, even though it can hurt.”

Positive is doing what is best and right for the business and for the people.

letting someone know that they are not right for a position is one of the biggest favors that you can do for them.

“First, if they find out that they were not performing, they may get better at their performance and turn into someone who can achieve.

“Second, it may be that they are just miscast. And they need to find that out.

“The third possible result—and the one that is diagnostic—is that they do not see that they need to improve or that they are trying to do something they are not cut out for, and they blame you or the company for their failure and go away bitter.

you have to know the standard you are pruning toward.

So step one for yourself or your business is naming the “rose”—in other words, defining the standard or goal you’re pruning toward.

1. If a GE business could not be number one or number two in its market, it would be cut. 2. Any business that was struggling (sick) would be “fixed, closed, or sold.” 3. Every year, GE would fire the bottom 10 percent of the work force. 4. Welch would get rid of the layers of bureaucracy in the company that slowed down communication, productivity, and ideas.

It is in complete alignment with the reality that both businesses and individuals will begin, gather, and have more activities than they can reasonably sustain.

Some of those activities may be good, but they are taking up resources that your best ones need.

Sometimes, the best thing a leader or anyone else can do is to give up hope in what they are currently trying.

So if no one ever leaves your organization or your life, then you are in some sort of denial and enabling some really sick stuff all over the place.

If you are not firing someone at some time, something is probably wrong.

“If you don’t know where you are heading, you’ll get there” applies to pruning as well.

Pruning is strategic.

All of your precious resources—time, energy, talent, passion, money—should only go to the buds of your life or your business that are the best, are fixable, and are indispensable.

Chapter 3 Normalizing Necessary Endings: Welcome the Seasons of Life into Your Worldview

Make the endings a normal occurrence and a normal part of business and life, instead of seeing it as a problem.

Put into the context of endings, if you see them as normal, expected, and even a good thing, you will embrace them and take action to execute them. You will see them as a painful gift. But if you see an ending as meaning “something is wrong if this has to happen,” you will resist them or fight them long past when they should be fought.

That is the moment, when someone really gets it and knows that something is over.

organizing principles that will help you make endings both necessary and normal: first, accept life cycles and seasons; second, accept that life produces too much life, and third, accept that incurable illness and sometimes evil are part of life too.

Gates quit Facebook because he had too many friends. He was quoted as saying he had “trouble figuring out whether he ‘knew this person, did I not know this person.’ It was just way too much trouble so I gave it up” (news.ninemsn.com,

seem to have a capacity to really manage about 140 to 150 relationships.

Chapter 4 When Stuck Is the New Normal: The Difference Between Pain with a Purpose and Pain for No Good Reason