Some of the most useful performance conversations I’ve been part of started with a change of question, from what’s going on with this person to what’s going on with this role. When something isn’t being delivered, many organisations reach for training to lift capability or a performance process to lift accountability, and both start with the individual. Starting with the role instead brings out what the person has been working around, and it gives leaders something concrete they can change.

The idea that performance depends on the system around someone has been around for decades. Geary Rummler was making the argument in the early 1980s, yet in the organisations I work with it rarely changes the default. Part of the reason, I think, is that “the system” feels too big and too abstract to act on when a CEO is looking at one person who isn’t delivering. The other part is that an individual problem is easier to solve. Exiting someone feels like action, and leaders under pressure want action, so when I play back that the person is carrying the symptom of an organisational issue, the response I get is often a pause, because that’s a much harder problem to fix. That’s why I start with something smaller and more concrete than the system, which is the role. Many leaders know skill, will and hill as a way of reading performance, and I use it with one change to the order, checking the hill before the skill or the will, because the hill is the part the organisation controls. I describe the principle behind it as people over person, looking at everyone involved in the problem before settling on one individual as its cause.

My first tell comes from listening to the different people around the problem, the founder, the leader, the individual and their teammates, each of whom sees it from a different angle. When I put those perspectives side by side, a thread often runs through them that has very little to do with the person. Nobody is quite sure what the function is for, or priorities change faster than anyone can deliver against them, or mistakes get attached to a name before anyone examines how they happened. When a thread like that appears, I treat it as a hypothesis and test it against how the work moves day to day, including who signs off and where the rework comes from. If it holds up, I’m looking at an organisational issue that happens to be showing up in one person.

From there I ask three questions. Does the role have clarity, meaning clear outcomes and priorities, and a clear answer to who makes the decisions it depends on? Does it have capacity, or are we asking for more than the hours and resourcing allow? And does the person have the capability the role needs right now?

Clarity is where I see roles break most often in my practice, and it usually comes down to decisions. When a role is accountable for an outcome but several senior leaders each have a say in how it gets delivered, and each of them reshapes the brief, there is effectively no decision-maker. The person in the role can’t push back on all of them without personal risk, so they follow whoever spoke last, the work gets redone, and from the outside it looks like they can’t deliver. Expecting someone to cut through that because of their seniority or salary hands leadership’s alignment problem down a level.

Capacity is harder to spot, and I often find the problem in roles with predictable peaks, where the quieter periods get filled with other tasks, so there’s no time to prepare and the peak arrives with high stakes and plenty of eyes on the output. Someone in that role can have every capability the job requires and still fall short because there aren’t enough hours to use it.

Capability needs the most care, because sometimes the person does lack what the role needs, so I ask where the gap came from. They may not have had the capability when they were appointed, the role may have changed faster than anyone could reasonably develop, or the organisation may never have given them the context that lets their skills work within the organisation. That last one is the one I see leaders underestimate most. I’ve watched people with the right answer be dismissed because they framed it in language the organisation doesn’t use. Many organisations expect new people to plug and play, and good work rarely plugs in without context, so the organisation has to meet people where they are when they join if it wants to take them where the business needs to go.

The three questions also interact, and understanding those relationships is essential to an accurate diagnosis. Someone who spends half their week reworking decisions that should have been settled upstream will look like they lack capacity, and someone whose role was reshaped without the knowledge or support to match will look like they lack capability. In both cases the problem started with clarity, and treating the symptom won’t solve it.

What misdiagnosis costs

The most expensive consequence I see is when performance problems keep getting attributed to individuals, an organisation can carry the same unclear priorities and decision rights for years while it trains and replaces the people sitting inside them. It looks as though performance is being addressed, and the money goes into interventions that can’t solve the cause.

It also wears down the motivation the organisation hired for. In my experience many people arrive keen and capable, and when they keep running into moving goalposts and conflicting direction, they stop pushing back, offer their view less often and say yes to things they don’t agree with. Someone who has stopped challenging decisions may have learned that initiative carries more risk than compliance, and by the time it reaches a performance plan, the organisation is often treating a symptom it helped create.

The effect doesn’t stay with that one person either. I’ve watched what happens to the colleagues who sit beside them every day, see the rework and the conflicting instructions, and form their own judgement about whether the organisation is being fair. When they decide it isn’t, they speak up less, they’re slower to put their hand up for difficult work, and some will turn down the next promotion because they’ve seen what it costs. A decision about one person ends up changing how a whole team approaches its work.

None of this removes individual accountability, and sometimes the issue does sit with the individual, so I ask the next questions in a set order. First, is the role the right size for what the business needs? If it isn’t, that’s a structure question. If it is, do we have the right person in the seat, and if we don’t, is there a seat that would suit them better? Sometimes the answer is that the organisation put someone in a role they couldn’t do and they also aren’t right for it. Both can be true, and naming both lets you act fairly.

This is where people over person cuts both ways. Organisations make it about the person when they hold one individual responsible for a collective problem, and also when they protect someone who’s loyal or well liked while that person holds everyone else back. Either way, the question about the collective goes unasked.

Once the diagnosis points to the organisation, the fix I work through with leadership teams is usually specific, whether that’s naming one decision-owner with a clear escalation path, settling conflicting priorities at the leadership table before they reach the role, protecting time ahead of predictable peaks, or giving someone the context and development they need, or a different seat. I’ve found those changes only hold if the leadership team acknowledges the issue together and then changes what it rewards, tolerates, gives feedback on and follows up, because that’s how people can tell whether anything has changed. You can still replace the person if that’s the right call, but if the role around them hasn’t changed, what makes you think the next person will succeed?

Rummler, G. A., & Brache, A. P. (1990). Improving Performance: How to Manage the White Space on the Organization Chart. Jossey-Bass.

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