The Problem Solver

“I’m here to help. If my help’s not appreciated, lots of luck, gentlemen.”

HR, do you ever feel like The Wolf in Pulp Fiction? You know, the guy who comes in to clean up the mess?

In case you haven’t seen the movie in a while, John Travolta, Samuel L Jackson, and Quentin Tarantino have a big, crimey mess to clean up and an unsuspecting wife coming back to the scene in less than an hour. 

Then Harvey Keitel, “the Wolf” shows up, looks at the gory spatter, and clinically, matter-of-factly comes up with a plan to clean up. 

“That give use forty minutes to get the [fiddlesticks] outta Dodge, which, if you do what I say when I say it, should by plenty. Now you got a [human remains] in a car, minus a head, in a garage. Take me to it.”

That’s what it feels like when I get pulled in to clean things up when someone’s been sloppy. 

The damage has already been done. Nothing I can do about that. 

But someone’s got to manage the fallout.

Luckily, in my case, the victim is still alive and the blood spatter is metaphorical. 

Instead of a cover-up, my job is to make it right. For everyone. Hopefully, including the victim.

But the clinical precision is right. There are constraints.

The Wolf starts with the car. “About the car, is there anything I need to know? Does it stall, make a lot of noise...”

So do I. “About the victim, is there anything I need to know? Are they a member of an underrepresented group? Any complaints?” 

You need to know what vulnerabilities can make the plan fall apart. 

In the movies, the cops find out. In real life, goodwill is lost.

Next, The Wolf moves on to clean-up. “Now Jimmie," (that's Tarantino) "this looks to be a pretty domesticated house. That would lead me to believe that... under the sink, you got a bunch of cleaners and [doo-doo] like that, am I correct?”

When you have to act quickly, you need to know what resources are available. In my case, it sounds more like, “You got a handbook? What payroll provider do you use? Org chart? Budget for severance?”

Then we execute. It’s not ideal, but we work with what we have. “What I need you two fellas to do is take those cleaning products and clean the inside of the car. And I'm talkin' fast, fast, fast.”

It’s not about avoiding accountability. The person who did the dirty deed often has to do the worst part of the clean-up, they just need direction.

It’s about diffusing the situation and meeting any immediate deadlines to give yourself time to do a more thorough clean-up later. 

The goal isn’t to help someone get off scott-free. It’s to mitigate the fallout once the damage is done.

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