I Nearly Fired My Best Developer (Because I Didn't Understand His Brain)

Understanding mental architecture and how to adapt your approach with people

Let me tell you about Tom.

Brilliant coder. Could solve problems that left everyone else scratching their heads. But give him a simple two-week project? Six weeks later, we'd still be waiting.

He'd disappear into tasks for hours, surface with impressive work nobody asked for, whilst emails piled up and deadlines whooshed past like missed trains.

I tried everything. Reminders on his desk. Email alerts. Morning check-ins. The more systems I imposed, the more overwhelmed he became.

After one client pulled a follow-up project citing our "project management issues," I faced the hard question: Should Tom stay or go?

The $10,000 Mistake I Almost Made

Here's the maths that was keeping me awake.

Client pays $5,000 for a project. Tom's perfectionism turns it into a $15,000 project in time costs. We're not just unprofitable — we're paying to do work nobody requested.

Tom wasn't lazy or incompetent. But I was about to let him go because I couldn't figure out how to manage him.

Then a friend suggested something that sounded like complete nonsense: "Maybe you're speaking different mental languages."

The 30-Second Test That Changed Everything

I called in a favour from a friend.

He did separate sessions with both Tom and myself to understand our mental mapping. The exercise was simple: