An incumbent's job description is rewritten around capabilities they lack, under cover of a strategy refresh, so poor reviews and a for-cause exit follow without anyone firing them outright.
An example
An auto parts supplier under pressure from its largest customer to digitize its plants had a plant general manager in Tennessee whom the chief executive wanted out and could not fire: the plant had the best safety record in the company, and two directors toured it every year. In February human resources released new job descriptions for all plant leadership roles as part of the smart factory strategy. His now required a record of deploying industrial data platforms and a background in software-defined manufacturing, which the other plant managers, all hired in the last three years, had and he did not. His midyear review rated him below expectations on four of the new criteria. A performance plan followed in September. Nothing in the plan mentioned safety.
Why it works
Under the new scorecard, staying looks worse: the parts of the job the incumbent excelled at are gone, the role is reweighted around what they lack, and their credibility, network, and knowledge count for almost nothing. Staying becomes costlier: bad reviews, a performance plan, peers watching the mismatch, and an eventual for-cause exit on paper. Its preconditions are a manager's authority to rewrite the role under a plausible business pretext, criteria framed as forward-looking needs, no outside support such as a board champion or a grievance route, and enough time for the disqualification to play out before the person can bring a claim.
The thinking behind it
Herbert A. Simon Simon's Administrative Behavior (1947) analyzes organizations as systems of decisions shaped by premises the organization supplies, such as goals and procedures, so whoever controls the premises influences the decisions. A rewritten job description is a premise, and every later review is decided against it. That is why arguing each criterion fails, and why the defense targets who was allowed to write them.
Lee Ross Ross's The Intuitive Psychologist and His Shortcomings: Distortions in the Attribution Process (1977) named the fundamental attribution error: observers explain behavior by personal traits and underestimate the situation. Once a role is reweighted around what the incumbent lacks, the poor reviews look like personal shortcomings, and few people ask how the criteria changed. Keeping the old description and the timeline in the record puts the situation back in view.
Warning signs
Shortly before a review, the incumbent's job description gains requirements that they lack and that the people around them, or a preferred successor, happen to have. The change arrives wrapped in language about modernization, transformation, or a new digital strategy. The criteria were written by one person, or by human resources at one person's request. Reviews against the new criteria follow fast.
How to defend yourself
Once the new description circulates, arguing criterion by criterion is a losing fight, because each one sounds reasonable alone.
- Bring in outside support early: a board champion, any relevant regulator relationship, or counsel on constructive dismissal.
- Ask in writing who wrote the new criteria, when, and why they apply to your role in particular.
- Compare your new description with those of peers in similar roles, and keep copies of the old one and your reviews under it.
- Decide quickly whether to contest, negotiate an exit, or bring in outside help. The tactic needs time to play out, and speed takes that away.
How a leader shuts it down
Never let a single manager set the criteria for a filled role alone. Have changes to a filled role's description reviewed by someone outside the reporting line, and tell the incumbent why. Changing a role for the business is legitimate, and the review should be able to tell it apart from a firing in disguise.