Why Is He Not Doing This?
Earlier this year, Alex, a Chief Revenue Officer I coach, told me what her mornings sounded like.
"I drive in and I'm thinking, why is he not doing this? Why do I have to get involved in every little thing?"
She was beyond frustrated with one of her VPs, a long-tenured employee who insisted on staying in the weeds rather than focusing on the strategic work his role required.
Alex responded the way most leaders would.
She documented the gaps and had performance-management conversations.
She desperately tried to get her CEO and CHRO’s backing to create real consequences.
"It's a game of chess," she told me. "It's exhausting."
When she said that, I recognized it immediately. I’ve seen this pattern time and time again, and it inspired my new Harvard Business Review article, published on Friday: When a Team Member Underperforms but Has Organizational Capital.
I call a person like Alex’s VP “untouchable,” protected by a source of power you don't have.
Sometimes it's decades of tenure.
Other times it's a relationship with the CEO or the company's biggest client.
Whatever the source, removing them isn’t your decision, yet you’re still accountable for their results.
So Alex did what most leaders do next. She stepped in and covered the gap herself, which is how she ended up involved in every little thing. It feels like the “responsible” thing to do.
She's far from the only one. Since Friday, I've heard from a lot of readers who have lived this.
One wrote, "I saw myself in that revenue leader. I've been feeling like I'm the only one that just says OK, I guess I'll do this person's job."
Your hours go to someone else's job instead of the work only you can do. And your team watches one person play by different rules, which erodes morale. Every gap you absorb also hides the problem from the people above you. Your reliability becomes what makes the underperformer easy to keep.
Before you step in again, ask yourself:
What am I doing because this person isn’t?
If I stopped compensating for the gap, what would actually happen?
Sometimes that means telling your boss a goal has to change.
I said as much to Alex: if nobody above you will act, maybe your revenue goal needs to be reduced. Not as a threat, but to make the cost visible to the people who actually have the authority to fix it.
Then I told her if nothing changed, she would likely leave eventually. This gave her more reason to push for the change the organization keeps avoiding.
You may not be able to fix the person, but you can stop making the problem easier for everyone else to ignore.