How to survive in the Organization where problem people fall under your management

In addition to the management responsibilities I held as a manager of other people under me I learned that it was absolutely essential to deal with problem employees swiftly and decisively before they undermined the efforts of the organization or made serious and costly mistakes. At the age 45 I was appointed to a senior executive position with an environmental company of about 2000 employees. The organization was highly organizationally decentralized and geographically dispersed most offices in this country and with an office overseas. My position was manager of corporate services reporting directly to the president. The organizational functions which I oversaw were information technology, accounting and finance, contracts, procurement, Human Resources and arranging for the final review/approval of all office leases around the country and the expenditure of major capital equipment utilized by the company in its activities. With a broad span of management and heavy workload a normal workload or workday would end at approximately 7 o’clock at night. In the fast-paced organization like this it was necessary that each manager carry his or her own load with a minimum need for direct supervision and direction. The problem in which I learned an important lesson arose from the contracts group in my organization. Ironically this function was the one with which I had the most technical and management experience but it seemed that the problems both in performance and behavior arose from this work group. The problem is limited to three senior contract administration personnel. One of them I come from a major aerospace company where he was laid off and came to this company In a recruiting effort. The second employee was also a senior contract person with a legal background. The most senior of the group who reviewed most of the commercial contracts for the organization (i.e. non-federal) was also a legal graduate and handled a great deal the workload for the company. All three employees exhibited behavioral problems of one type or another. The contracts person from the aerospace company never truly adapted to the immediate environment, and undermined the management my bad mouthing it. The second Senior contracts person who handled most of the federal contracts engaged in an affair with the secretary creating a disciplinary situation. The certain most senior contracts person who handled a wide range of commercial and also some federal contracts and was viewed as the most senior of the three was highly competent  technically , verbally abused the secretary which caused several complaints to the president of the company by the secretary who was affected. Regardless of my counseling this third contract administrator he continued to verbally abuse the secretaries who supported him. There was a fourth senior contracts person assigned to the immediate office area who was in charge of procurement. This procurement manager was of character and disposition where could step in and directly manage the three problem contracts administrators working in the same  general workspace nearby. At about this time I moved to a position in the parent corporation in charge of contracts of the infrastructure Division. Before I relocated the first two senior contracts administrators left the company one went to local engineering firm and the other one returned to the defense company who previously employed him. My next move at the environmental company would have been to put the procurement manager in direct charge of the three senior contracts people and promote him to the position of manager of contracts and procurement. I am confident this would’ve settled things down but did not have the chance to implement it before moving to a new position in the parent corporation.What I learned was that where a rotten immediate environment sets in more than one person can be affected. Where this occurs swift and decisive steps must be taken to rectify the environment by removing the problem personnel.