January 5 – Otherwise known as Black Monday. The annual day after the end of the NFL regular season when a slew of losing coaches get fired. This year, a few NFL teams didn’t even wait for the final whistle of the regular season to move on from some key members of their staff. The Titans fired their coach in October and the Giants pulled the trigger in November.
Why didn’t Tennessee and NY wait until January 5? Because if you don’t have the right person in every chair, you will fail as an organization. As I say in Chapter One of my book (If Not You Who? Cracking the Code of Employee Disengagement), the most important thing you can do as a business leader is clean house in real time.
Waiting for a calendar date to take action is a mistake many organizations make. They confuse patience with discipline and loyalty with leadership. In the NFL, every week you delay a decision is another week you’re falling behind teams that are planning for the future. The Titans and Giants understood that reality. Once it became clear their direction wasn’t working, they stopped hoping for a turnaround and started building toward what’s next.
The same rule applies in business. When someone is in the wrong seat, the entire organization feels it—missed deadlines, lowered standards, resentment from high performers who are forced to compensate. Great leaders don’t ignore these signals. They address them early, clearly, and decisively. Cleaning house isn’t about being ruthless; it’s about protecting the culture and giving the organization a real chance to win.
Black Monday gets attention because it’s dramatic, but the lesson isn’t about firing people—it’s about accountability. Winning organizations constantly evaluate whether their people, systems, and strategies align with where they are going. If they don’t, changes are made. Not next quarter. Not next year. Now.
If you want sustained success, follow the NFL model. Be honest about performance. Act when the evidence is clear. And remember: momentum is built by making hard decisions early, not by waiting until failure becomes impossible to ignore.
