Friday Forward - How & What (#511)
Performance might get someone in the door, but values must be the first test of whether they should stay
Last week, I was leading a webinar with Mark Abbott, the founder and CEO of Ninety.io, a tech platform that helps businesses manage the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS). This was the second session of two: the first session, focused on personal core values and how they shape individual leadership, and the second discussed how those personal values connect to company culture.
It was an engaging conversation filled with useful examples and great questions from the audience of hundreds. One question in particular stuck with me: How do you differentiate between performance issues and values issues when evaluating employees?
As Mark answered and I thought through my own response, something clicked for me. The difference between performance issues and values issues is the distinction is between what problems and how problems.
Performance issues are usually what problems. These are the measurable outcomes of someone’s work: sales results, customer satisfaction scores, deadlines hit or missed, deliverables completed. The results are tangible, and if key metrics are known and tracked effectively, it is easy to determine success or failure.
Values issues, on the other hand, how problems. are about how someone shows up in their role. How a person treats their peers. How they handle conflict. How they take ownership (or don’t) for their mistakes. How they follow through, communicate, and live the values of the team. These aren’t skills or KPIs. They are behavioral fingerprints.
What problems tend to be obvious and often simple to address, as long as leaders are willing to see the writing on the wall. They usually involve a relatively straightforward conversation about an objective that isn’t being met and why it matters to the role or the business. The person is given a timeline by which they must improve the metric or face a difficult conversation.
How problems are much harder to find and solve and to remediate. They also often go unaddressed for far too long, showing up in subtle but corrosive ways: undermining teammates, dodging responsibility, creating drama, resisting feedback, or refusing to embrace the culture. These behaviors quietly chip away at trust, cohesion, and morale. And while performance issues can be isolated to a single area of the business, values problems can poison the entire organization.
As Mark and I discussed on the webinar, great cultures choose not to tolerate the brilliant jerks: the people who hit their numbers but are toxic to the culture. As with most core values decisions, this rejection of the brilliant jerk prioritizes the long-term over the short-term. It’s easy and expedient to look the other way and let the brilliant jerk deliver great results. But eventually these individuals cause far more harm than their performance is worth. Their presence sends a message that results matter more than values.
That is how culture erodes. You can’t always find these effects on a spreadsheet, but everyone at the company can feel it and the damage shows up in the form of turnover, burnout or disengagement. This is especially true when the toxic person is in a leadership role. I have a colleague who worked for a brilliant jerk CFO; the company never addressed the values issue, and eventually the CFO’s entire team quit before the company took action.
I understand why leaders delay addressing these issues. I’ve been there. I’ve made the same excuses, leaving the problem for my future self. I’ve heard every line over the years. “That’s just how they are. They mean well.” We’ve all done it.
But the truth is, great leadership is often defined by how many hard conversations you’re willing to have.
The next time someone isn’t performing, ask yourself: Is this a what problem or a how problem?
If it’s a what issue, the solution might be clearer expectations, better tools, or more training.
But if it’s a how problem, no amount of training will fix it. You can’t really coach someone to have your company’s values when they don’t. And looking the other way is a leadership failure.
Almost all toxic culture problems trace back to how, not what. Leaders need the judgment to make that distinction and the courage to act when they know the how is not acceptable, regardless of the what.
It’s something many of us have had to learn the hard way. Performance might get someone in the door, but values must be the first test of whether they should stay.
Quote of the Week
“Culture is what you tolerate.” – Craig Groeschel
Have A Great Weekend!
-Bob
New From Premium