Recently I was on a coaching call with a leader of an early stage organization (they’ve been around for less than 10 years) discussing performance management.  The pressing issue: they’d already cycled through three executive directors.  What gives?  Why the high turnover in leadership for such a young company?  

The answer lay in their board management practices.  The board had neglected its one true job: managing its only direct employee, the executive director. Unfortunately, this is not unusual. Across nonprofits and startups, boards and leaders often get so caught up in growth that they skip building the people systems needed to sustain it.

Companies get really busy growing that they forget (or perhaps don’t know how) to establish the people infrastructure necessary to support and sustain their growth.  That’s when they start to experience the type of breakage I witness, usually on the backend.  

By the time I’m called in, the damage is often done—leaders burned out, staff turnover high, culture frayed. The good news is it’s never too late to put the right systems in place. What matters is creating a real management framework, owned by leadership and implemented with fidelity.  

I left the leader with three questions to reset their approach:  

• How are you defining success?  Success should be tied to clear outcomes and defined competencies (knowledge, skills, and mindsets) aligned to the role. Many organizations set goals, but fewer communicate them clearly, and fewer still spell out the competencies that drive them.
• How are you measuring success? Without tracking outcomes, you can’t know if someone is thriving or floundering. Remember: people do what you inspect, not just what you expect.  
• How are you coaching for success? It’s your job as a manager to ensure your people have the tools and skills they need to be successful.  Coaching isn’t optional, it’s core to building capacity.

While it can be frustrating to find yourself far down the road without the right people systems to sustain your growth, it’s never to late to build as you go.  

You can’t afford to wait until it’s a full-blown dumpster fire.

Let’s talk about how ManagerEQ helps organizations put the right management strategy in place, before the damage is done.