It’s been a cost-cutting frenzy in the business world lately, hasn’t it?

As the leader of an organization, you may also be feeling immense pressure to scour your cash flow statements looking for opportunities to cut expenses. Remember, however, there are costs — things you can’t afford — that lurk all around you, but never show up on a spreadsheet:

• people in your organization who are unwilling or unable to work collaboratively
• people who are more concerned with turf-building than problem solving
• people who are unwilling to build themselves, or build others around them
• people who — because they’re nervous or jittery about the economy — are even more self-preserving or obsessed with their own personal agendas than usual

You really can’t afford them anymore, can you? No less than disappearing revenue or bloated expenses, these things destroy companies. Combined with today’s challenging economic environment, they’re deadly.

The best leaders in the world know that a spreadsheet or an income statement aren’t the only places to find the things his or her organization can’t afford.

He or she is relentlessly examining the organization’s culture and its people, looking for the really, really expensive things.

Ask people to change, and show them how to change. The ones that can’t, or won’t? Well, then show them the door.