Good people don’t fail in good systems.

I watched a director spiral last year.
Call him “Marcus.”

Three people on his team underperforming.
Missing deadlines. Withdrawn in meetings.
Quality slipping.

His first instinct?
Performance improvement plans.
More check-ins.
“Accountability conversations.”

He was trying to fix the flowers.

But when we looked closer:

Competing priorities from above.
No clarity on what actually mattered.
Meetings that could’ve been emails.
And a culture where asking for help
meant you weren’t “leadership material.”

The soil was toxic.

Marcus thought he had a people problem.
He had an environment problem.

When someone’s struggling,
look past the person for a moment.

What’s the system doing to them?
What’s unclear, unfair, or unsustainable?
What are you tolerating that’s poisoning
the conditions they need to grow?

Sometimes the strongest thing a leader does
isn’t pushing people harder.

It’s fixing what’s breaking them.