People People People (Issues)
Too many. Too few.
Not enough of the right people.
Too many of the wrong people.
Someone’s always in my office talking about somebody.
Sound familiar?
Too often I hear from entrepreneurs, “People issues take up way too much of my time, it’s driving me crazy!”
Good news! There’s only ever been and only ever will be two people issues. Just two…
You’ve got the wrong person in the right seat
You’ve got the right person in the wrong seat
When you have the wrong person in the right seat, it means you got the roles and responsibilities right, you’ve just got someone in that seat who doesn’t align with your values. What to do about it? If your core values have been established and communicated, then it’s a matter of sitting down with the person and discussing their performance against those values. They should be responsible for setting a 30-day action plan to improve their performance. If they can’t or won’t, it’s time to make that tough call that you probably already know you should have made a long time ago.
When you have the right person in the wrong seat, it means the person really does live your values, they embody them. They’ve probably been with you for a very long time. They’re just in the wrong job. If you’re large enough, maybe you can find a seat somewhere else in the organization where the person fits. Otherwise, if you’re a for-profit company, you’re going to have to make the difficult choice of letting them go.
Of course, this is a lot more straight-forward when you’ve established the best and right structure for your company, and you’ve established and communicated your company’s core values on a regular basis. If you’ve not done one or both of those things, we have to start with fixing that first.
Don’t surrender the future of your business to the chaos of today!
Let’s talk about your people issues and dig down to the root of the problem together.
