I was talking to a client recently about a member of his team who wasn't performing in the way he wanted.
There were a few things going on.
Working from home had become a bit inconsistent, deadlines were being missed and, when the person was working remotely, they didn't necessarily have everything they needed to do the job properly.
You can probably imagine where the conversation started.
What do we do about the person?
But the more we talked about it, the less convinced I was that this was really just a person problem. Or at least, not yet.
So I started asking some fairly basic questions.
What is the expectation when somebody works from home?
What expectations are made clear about their availability and communication responses?
What rules exist for how people show up and participate on Teams or Zoom calls?
What equipment should they have in order to work effectively?
What are they accountable for delivering?
How do we know whether it's working?
And had any of that actually been written down and agreed?
Not really.
Which makes the conversation about the individual quite difficult.
If you've never clearly defined what good looks like, you're relying on people to work it out for themselves.
One person's idea of acceptable will be different from somebody else's, and eventually you're disappointed because somebody hasn't met a standard they didn't necessarily know existed.
Something I said during the conversation was:
“The lowest standard you tolerate becomes your standard.”
I've thought about that quite a bit since.
Because standards in a business aren't really what you say they are.
They're what happens repeatedly without anybody challenging it.
If a deadline slips and nothing happens, you've learned something about the real standard around deadlines.
If one person works from home in a completely different way to everybody else and nobody addresses it, that starts to become part of the culture too.
This doesn't mean every business needs a 70-page employee handbook covering every possible eventuality.
I'm not sure anybody wants that.
But people do need to know what is expected of them.
The conversation eventually moved into something I see quite often with growing businesses.
Owners tend to think about the person first.
We've got Sarah. What should Sarah be doing?
We've got James. What can James take off my plate?
Actually, I think it's often more useful to start somewhere else.
What are the outcomes we want in the business? More sales, consistent delivery, robust finances, etc.
What are the critical functions and supporting processes to enable those outcomes?
What capabilities and skills do the team that operate those processes need?
Then you can decide who should own it.
Namely fit the person to the job. Not the job to the person.
That order matters, because otherwise roles have a habit of being designed around the people who happen to be sitting in the business today rather than around what the business actually needs.
We also talked about values.
Again, lots of businesses have them.
Far fewer actually use them.
If one of your values is accountability, for example, what does accountability look like when somebody misses a deadline?
If you say you value communication, what does good communication actually mean when half the team is in the office and half isn't?
That's when values start becoming useful.
Not when they're printed on the wall, but when they help you make decisions about recruitment, performance and whether somebody is genuinely right for the business.
None of this means you won't occasionally have a people problem.
Of course you will.
But before deciding that somebody isn't meeting the standard, it's probably worth asking yourself a slightly uncomfortable question.
Have we actually made the standard clear in the first place?
Because if we haven't, perhaps that's where the work needs to start.
If you’re dealing with performance issues in your team and you’re not sure whether the problem is the person, the role, or the standards around it, let’s talk.
Book a call with me and we can look at what’s really going on - and what needs to change to get the right people doing the right things, to the right standard.
P.S. One of my favourite reminders when it comes to managing people is Brené Brown’s phrase: “Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.”
If you’re expecting people to meet a standard, have you actually made that standard clear?
👉 It’s worth a read: 'Dare to Lead' by Brené Brown
