If you’re familiar with Good to Great by Jim Collins, you’ll be well aware that the first step to building a high-performance business is having the right people on the bus in the right seats.

Having the right people in the right seats on the bus is a constant. It’s not a box that can be ticked, and your job is never done. If you’re compromising, you are compromised. Your team is compromised. Your business is compromised.

Unfortunately, I see this often when working with clients. There are so many good reasons not to address suboptimal performance. They’re a nice person, they’ve been here a long time, they do some things well, they will be hard to replace, I’ve invested in so much training, and I don’t know what I would do without them.

If someone does not seem to be the right person in the right seat on your bus, please ask yourself:

• Do I need to restate my expectations? If yes, provide clarity and check for understanding.
• Do I need to provide training or more training? If yes, train or retrain.
• Do I need to provide feedback and coach? If yes, provide feedback and coaching.
• Do you need to look at other options (another seat on the bus) for this person? If yes, look at those options or other seats.
• Do you need to have a difficult conversation? If yes, be brave and have that conversation. So many things can get sorted if you step into having that difficult conversation.

If you haven’t been clear on your expectations, provided training, re-training, and coaching, if you haven’t looked at other options or had difficult conversations, the issue is not the person in the seat on your bus. The issue is you and your leadership. You are the reason for the suboptimal performance in this equation.

But if you can honestly say that you’ve been clear with your expectations, provided training, provided the feedback and coaching, you’re retrained where necessary, you’ve looked at other options, and you’ve had the difficult conversation and the person is still not the right fit for a seat on your bus, then it’s time to make a call.

Obviously, you always need to comply with your local Industrial Relations laws (phone my friend Jen Bicknell if you need some assistance), but make a call. Your local laws and regulations are there to ensure any call you make is fair and reasonable; it is never the reason not to make the call.

Whatever way you look at it, you, the leader, are the variable in the suboptimal performance equation. When looking at the people sitting on your bus—if anyone is not quite right:

• Do you need to get clear on expectations, train, coach, and/or have tough conversations, or
• If you exhausted those options, do you need to make a call?