Principles

When an employee fails to deliver the expected result, the cause is usually sought in the person.

They lack the necessary competence.

They do not take responsibility.

They are not independent enough.

They do not fit the company culture.

Sometimes the person really is the problem.

But no one works in a vacuum.

Their performance is influenced by their role, manager, objectives, decision-making authority, work processes, access to essential information, tools, and the other people their work depends on.

A very good person can deliver mediocre results in a bad system.

The wrong person can appear strong for a while because others compensate for their shortcomings.

That is why a person's suitability cannot be assessed solely on whether the result was achieved.

First, you need to understand the system in which they were expected to achieve it.

The right person is not universally right

Companies sometimes talk about the right people as if there were universally good employees who achieve excellent results in every role and organisation.

In reality, the same person can be very strong in one environment and struggle constantly in another.

In one company, they are given a clear objective, the information they need, and the authority to make decisions.

In another, priorities conflict, responsibilities are unclear, and every important decision requires the manager's approval.

In one role, the person can use their natural strengths.

In another, they must spend much of their day doing work that requires a completely different way of thinking, pace, or communication style.

Being the right person means being suited to the specific work, responsibility, stage of development, and the company's way of working.

A good salesperson may not be a good sales manager.

A strong specialist may not be suited to a role in which most results are achieved through other people.

A problem-solver who succeeds in an early-stage company may not be suited to managing a standardised, high-volume operation.

This does not mean the person has become worse.

The system, the role, or the company's needs have changed.

You cannot expect a result that the company has not defined

Many roles are described in terms of activities rather than results.

The person must:

• communicate with customers;
• manage projects;
• support sales;
• develop the team;
• improve processes;
• do marketing;
• perform other ongoing tasks.

But what specific result should their work produce?

How quickly?

To what standard?

With what resources?

What are they responsible for, and what is someone else responsible for?

Without these answers, the person begins to interpret the role for themselves.

Their interpretation may be reasonable, but it may differ from the expectation in their manager's head.

A few months later, the manager says the person could not handle the role.

At the same time, the person may sincerely believe they did exactly what was asked of them.

An unclear expectation does not give an employee freedom.

It makes their performance depend on how well they can guess their manager's unspoken thoughts.

Responsibility without decision-making authority is a recipe for failure

A company may give someone responsibility for sales results, a project deadline, customer satisfaction, or team performance.

But if the person cannot make the decisions needed to achieve that result, they do not truly have responsibility.

They are obliged to answer for a result controlled by others.

A project manager is responsible for the deadline but cannot change the scope, priorities, or team resources.

A sales manager is responsible for revenue but cannot influence pricing, the target audience, or the offer.

A customer support manager is responsible for satisfaction but cannot change the product or the promises made to customers.

A team manager is responsible for people's performance, but the CEO still makes the employees' most important decisions.

In a system like this, it is possible to pressure someone and measure their performance for a long time.

Improving that performance is much harder.

When responsibility and decision-making authority do not sit in the same place, the company itself creates conditions in which even a strong person can fail.

Conflicting priorities make good work impossible

A person may be given several individually reasonable objectives that cannot all be achieved at the same time.

Sell as much as possible, but do not offer discounts.

Provide personalised customer service, but reduce the time spent on each customer.

Develop new solutions, but do not slow down existing work.

Make decisions independently, but coordinate everything important with your manager.

Maintain quality, but complete every project faster.

If management does not make the choice, the employee must make it themselves every day.

In one situation, they prioritise speed; in another, quality. Later, the manager may assess the result according to the opposite priority.

This makes it possible to declare almost any decision wrong in hindsight.

A strong person will initially try to resolve the conflict.

They ask questions, offer options, and highlight the risks.

If management does not decide, they eventually learn to do whatever causes the least immediate conflict.

The company later calls this a lack of initiative.

In reality, the system taught the person that the clear choice was not theirs to make.

Bad inputs produce bad results

An employee's performance is often assessed only on their own stage of the work.

But their output depends on the input they received.

If sales hands incomplete information over to a project, the delivery team cannot do good work straight away.

If a manager changes the objective while work is underway, the employee cannot be held fully responsible for the original deadline.

If customer data differs across systems, the finance department cannot always issue the correct invoice.

If a candidate was given a different picture of the role during recruitment from the reality, the employment relationship begins on a false premise.

In a bad system, before beginning the actual work, a person must:

• search for missing information;
• verify the accuracy of data;
• resolve errors from the previous stage;
• clarify the objective again;
• wait for decisions;
• correct conflicting agreements.

They are then assessed on why the work took too long.

A good person may be able to conceal poor input quality through their own effort for a while.

That does not mean the system works.

It means the company is using the person's competence to compensate for its own shortcomings.

A broken process can turn a strong person into a constant firefighter

Strong people quickly become known within an organisation as the ones who resolve difficult situations.

Exceptions, delayed projects, dissatisfied customers, and mistakes made by others all end up with them.

To management, this looks like a good use of the person's strengths.

In reality, the company may be spending its best person's time on problems the system should not create in the first place.

The person is not building new capability.

They are keeping a broken system running.

The better they do it, the less pressure management feels to improve the process.

After a while, the person is constantly overloaded. Their own core responsibility recedes into the background, and their results begin to decline.

Management may then conclude that they can no longer handle their role.

In reality, the organisation has invisibly turned their role into something else.

Burnout among good people is not always caused by too much core work.

It can come from being responsible not only for their own work but also for all the missing parts of the system.

The wrong manager can diminish the right person's capability

A good employee does not necessarily need less management.

They need a different kind of management.

A strong specialist needs a clear result, context, room to make decisions, and high-quality feedback.

If a manager controls every step, constantly corrects the working method, and later reverses the person's decisions, the employee quickly learns to avoid acting independently.

Why take responsibility if the final choice belongs to the manager anyway?

At the other extreme, a manager may give the person complete freedom but not the direction, information, or support they need.

This is called trust.

In reality, the person is left alone to solve problems that belong to management as well.

Signs of poor management include:

• the expectation changes after the work is completed;
• feedback is given only when something is wrong;
• the person is given responsibility but not the information they need;
• the manager interferes in details but does not make strategic choices;
• results are assessed according to the manager's personal method rather than the agreed objective;
• the manager applies different standards depending on the person;
• raising problems is treated as negativity;
• strong people must constantly guess what decisions their manager will make.

The right person may not be able to overcome the wrong management system.

They may endure it for a while, but the quality of their work and their motivation will eventually begin to decline.

Metrics can steer good people towards doing the wrong things

People adapt their behaviour according to what the company actually measures and rewards.

If a sales team is assessed solely on revenue, it may bring in customers who create a great deal of work and little profit.

If customer support is assessed on response time, replies may be fast but superficial.

If development is assessed on the number of tasks completed, the number of tasks will grow, but the value of the product may not.

If a project manager is assessed solely on deadlines, they may hide quality problems or quietly reduce the scope of the work.

A person can perform exceptionally well against a metric while still destroying value for the company.

This does not mean the person is manipulating the system.

They are doing what the organisation has told them matters.

A good system does not measure activity alone.

It connects a person's results to the value the company actually creates and also accounts for the consequences that one result produces elsewhere.

A team can make the right person ineffective

An individual's performance often depends on several other people.

A salesperson needs demand generated by marketing and an effective offer.

A developer needs a clearly defined problem and decisions from the product manager.

A project manager needs realistic information from the team.

A manager needs honest feedback from their people.

If one critical dependency does not work, the strong person's performance will also decline.

That is why it is not enough to ask, “Is this person right for us?”

You must also ask:

• Are the people essential to their work fulfilling their own responsibilities?
• Are the boundaries between roles clear?
• Is the team missing a critical competence?
• Are people optimising for the same result or for opposing objectives?
• Does information move quickly enough?
• Are conflicts resolved or left between employees?
• Does the result depend on someone who has no interest in it?

The right person in the wrong team configuration may spend much of their energy compensating for shortcomings in other people's work.

Culture can teach good people to stay silent

A company may say it values openness and initiative.

Its true culture becomes clear when an employee tells a manager something uncomfortable.

What happens to someone who points out that a project is not working, a customer is the wrong fit, or a manager's decision is creating a problem?

Are they listened to?

Or do they come to be seen as negative, disloyal, and uncooperative?

A strong person may initially raise problems directly.

If their feedback changes nothing or causes them harm, they will eventually stop speaking up.

They do their part, document the risks, and disengage emotionally.

Management may see this as a loss of motivation.

In reality, the person has lost faith that their professional judgement is wanted.

Hiring the right people is pointless if the system rewards silent agreement more than speaking an uncomfortable truth.

Poor onboarding wastes the strength found through recruitment

A company may run a very thorough recruitment process and find the right person.

The person is then given a computer, a list of meetings, and the suggestion that they ask colleagues if they need anything.

It is assumed that a strong person will manage on their own.

A few months later, there is disappointment because the results did not come quickly enough.

But the person may not even have received clear answers to fundamental questions:

• Why was this role created?
• What result is expected in the first three or six months?
• Which problems are already known?
• Who are their main collaborators?
• Which decisions can they make independently?
• Which previous agreements still apply?
• Where can they find the information they need?
• Which metrics will be used to assess success?
• When and from whom will they receive feedback?

A strong person can discover a great deal for themselves during poor onboarding.

But they do so at the company's expense.

If their first months are spent reconstructing the organisation's hidden logic, the company is not using their competence. It is making the person solve for the absence of an onboarding process.

How can you distinguish a people problem from a system problem?

Not every poor result can be blamed on the system.

The individual is responsible for learning, communicating, honouring agreements, and achieving the result required by their role.

But before reaching a final conclusion about the person, it is worth checking a few things.

Does the same problem recur with different people?

If several people in succession fail in the same role, the problem may not be the quality of the candidates.

The fault may lie in the role, the expectations, the manager, or the system.

Has the person succeeded in similar work elsewhere?

Past success does not automatically prove suitability for a new company.

But it provides a reason to investigate which important condition is different in the new environment.

Was the expected result clearly documented?

If the manager and employee describe the purpose of the role differently, the result cannot be assessed fairly until the expectation has been corrected.

Did the person have the decision-making authority needed to achieve the result?

Responsibility without influence is not real responsibility.

Did the necessary inputs and dependencies work?

If the person's results were constantly dependent on late or incomplete work from others, the entire workflow must be assessed.

Was feedback given at the right time?

A person cannot adjust their behaviour if the difference in expectations is revealed only at the end of their probationary period.

Do strong employees achieve results because of the system or despite it?

If the best people use workarounds, personal spreadsheets, and constant extra effort, their success does not prove that the system works.

They may simply be strong enough to overpower the system.

Improving the system does not mean removing individual accountability

The existence of a bad system does not release a person from accountability for results.

If the expectation is clear, the person has decision-making authority, the necessary support has been provided, and problems have been discussed honestly, they must be able to fulfil their role.

A good system makes accountability even clearer.

In such a system, results cannot be obscured by unclear expectations, missing data, or endless approvals.

It is visible:

• what the person was expected to achieve;
• which resources they had;
• which decisions they could make;
• which dependencies affected them;
• what support they were given;
• what result was actually achieved.

Only in this kind of environment can you fairly assess whether someone is in the right role.

The purpose of improving the system is not to find excuses for the person.

The purpose is to remove the obstacles created by the company itself so that the person's true capability becomes visible.

What should a manager check before replacing someone?

If a person is not delivering results, the manager should answer at least eight questions before making a final decision.

1. Is the result expected from the role unambiguously clear?
2. Does the person understand why this result matters to the company?
3. Do they have the competence required to achieve the result?
4. Do they have the necessary decision-making authority and access to resources?
5. Do the work inputs, processes, and tools support the result?
6. Are the other people on whom the result depends fulfilling their own responsibilities?
7. Have feedback, the necessary support, and a reasonable amount of time for change been provided?
8. After these improvements, is the person willing and able to take genuine responsibility?

If the answer to the first seven questions is yes but the result still does not come, the person may indeed be in the wrong role.

If several of the answers are no, the company has not created fair conditions for assessing the person's capability.

How can you build a system in which the right people can succeed?

Finding the right people is only half the work.

The company must create an environment in which their capability translates into results.

This requires:

• a clear company objective;
• a small number of genuine priorities;
• roles described in terms of results;
• decision-making authority that accompanies responsibility;
• high-quality inputs;
• effective processes;
• suitable tools;
• fast and honest feedback;
• metrics that support the overall result;
• management that creates clarity and does not take responsibility back;
• a culture in which raising problems early is valued.

You do not need to remove every difficulty from people's work.

Good work inherently requires effort, learning, and resolving difficult situations.

What must be removed are the obstacles created by the organisation itself that produce no value for the customer or the company.

The right people do not automatically fix the wrong system

Companies often hope that hiring a very strong person will solve an unclear role, a broken process, or weak management.

Sometimes a strong person really can improve the system.

But only if they are given clear responsibility, decision-making authority, and the support of management.

If they are expected to save the system but are not permitted to change the existing rules, roles, and power relationships, they simply become the next person trying to deliver results despite the confusion.

Highly capable people do not necessarily tolerate a bad system longer than others.

They often notice its flaws sooner and leave earlier because they realise their energy is being used in the wrong place.

The right person is not someone who can compensate for a broken company indefinitely.

The right person creates value in a system that gives them a clear objective, a suitable role, and genuine responsibility.

When a good person fails, a manager's first question should not only be, “What is wrong with them?”

They must also ask, “What kind of company did we build around them?”

Mikk OrglaanChalleng.ist