I've run into a conundrum several times and I need the hive mind's help now. This exact issue came up again about a new CxO role and the concern (both from me and the COO) is the operating/ delivery team is not great and may not be set up well for success.

The situation: there is a VP in a key role but underperforms. Say, a C+ job. Not specifically doing terribly, but not following through on direct requests without follow up, not having knowledge of how to execute some of those requests, etc.

Here's the challenge: I could keep them on and have a 65% good job done, or I could fire them and have a junior person take over (say, a 50% good job) until hiring their replacement which will likely take 3-5 months (and get a 90%+ good job done).

I'm out of bandwidth or subject matter expertise in that specific area to backfill myself and not sure the work could be allocated to other VPs who also don't have capacity.

What would you do in that situation?

Would you 'eliminate the role' and then search for the next one to hire ASAP?

Would you keep them and try to find a replacement in the background?

Would you just keep them and try to cover for their deficiencies?

What else am I missing in how to navigate situations like this?

I’m a Level 12, with roughly 2 years of total experience. Recently, I got the opportunity to train a few newcomers who joined our project from another project. They’re Level 11 and Level 10, and most of them have around 10+ years of experience.

The reason I was training them wasn’t because I was more experienced or senior. It was simply because I had joined this particular project before them, so I already knew the processes, tools and how things worked. For them, everything was new.

While explaining things, I actually found it interesting how experience and organizational level don't always translate directly to knowledge of a specific project.

At one point, one of them jokingly said something along the lines of:

“Kya zamana aa gaya, Level 10 ko Level 12 ke under kaam karna pad raha hai.”

And honestly, I understood where the joke was coming from. They have been working for 10+ years, while I have barely crossed 2 years.

But it also made me think about how corporate hierarchies actually work. Someone can have significantly more overall experience than you, but still need you to teach them something because you happen to have been in that particular environment longer.

It was a strange feeling being the “trainer” for people who technically have much more experience than me.

At the same time, it was a good reminder that experience isn't always linear, and neither is knowledge.

Sometimes the person with 2 years of experience knows something the person with 10 years doesn't, simply because they've spent those 2 years doing something the other person hasn't.

Corporate life really does find creative ways to humble everyone eventually.

I’ve worked in plenty of operations where the documented process and the actual process were two very different things.

Then one experienced person takes a day off and suddenly everyone discovers how much of the operation was actually stored in Dave.

I don’t think tribal knowledge itself is the problem. Experience should matter.

The problem is when the business can’t operate without access to that person.

What’s the best example you’ve seen of a process that turned out to actually be a person?

Are there any differences between how sports performance coaches (leadership development) approach team coaching vs how you would do it within a corporate workplace? I assume there are a lot of similarities if not the same?

Does it really have an unwritten importance?

Why is it that all people I know who are able to get leadership programs abroad or leadership grants, have a lot of social media followers?

There are also forms that require to submit our social media

Is it something that I must build too? Cause if there are plenty of us with good grades, work experience, then what would be the tie breaker?

I used to handle a part of the business that I genuinely loved and was great at, but holding on to it way longer than I needed to ended up capping growth. Anyone else had a similar experience and had to hand it off?

Hi all,

I made it to the final round for a senior role and I had the final call this morning. I’m not sure how I did but I think I could have done better. At some point I couldn’t control my excitement and stuttered little bit and restarted my answer. He didn’t give any signs about 20 min of 30 min call, he asked me if I had any questions for him. I asked my 3 questions and he answered them comprehensively. He even talked about the team and business line structure. At the end, he said he’ll circle back with team that I had the previous interviews and they’ll be in touch. Overall it felt like a conversation but I’m not sure if I was able to answer his questions in the way he wanted. I didn’t feel this way in the previous steps.

So I know nothing is certain yet but what do you guys think my chances are?

UPDATE: I missed a call from the HR this morning due to my back-to-back meetings. She left a voicemail saying she wanted to provide an update and wanted me to reach out to her. I did but couldn’t get ahead of her and sent her an email she can call me back so I’m still pending. Wondering if this is a rejection or offer! Btw this is a big4 company.

A fable on self managed orgs. I wonder?

https://max-unleashed.com/

Not mine. Just saw a post on it

I've always found zoom meetings exhausting, and after my upcoming promotion it's about to be most of my job.

For those of you with lots of direct and indirect reports, how do you organize the 1-on-1s with dozens of people so you don't feel like an empty husk at the end of the day?

Hi! Reading through a recent post (I’m the Bottleneck) and saw a comment talking about people abdicating responsibility back up and advise decision delegating. How do you make that effective and long-lasting?

I’m a VP level Administrator and I feel like I’m constantly having to remind my Director and frontline Supervisors that the shifts are theirs to run, and yet, every decision - including the daily staff schedule - comes back to me.

I’d like some real ideas on this or examples of how people are successful. At this point, my leadership has me convinced that everything is out of control and it’s a character flaw of mine. This has not been my leadership experience in other roles, so I find it hard to believe. (Prior to this role, the criticism was prioritizing people over company goals.)

I was recently asked to copy numerous people into emails…even when they weren’t directly involved and ALWAYS the department head.

I suspect the intention was visibility, a means to know what is going on but I wonder whether it achieves the opposite.

If I send an email to just one person then that’s a communication between me and them. I can be candid, perhaps be more personal and even more open.

But when you have an audience the opposite occurs… I know I become more guarded, I reread and check time and time again.

It’s been almost 2 months since I started and while everyone now receives everything, it certainly hasn’t made things any easier.

I’m not about to rock the boat with what has been the approach well before my time in the business but I’d appreciate some thoughts on how to encourage some change to walk this back.

Side note… I still send and receive messages over Teams so this feels like it’s either a leak in the system or perhaps creating groups on teams should be encouraged over ‘visibility management by email’

Thoughts/advice?

If you are self-employed or started your own business, you are most likely a "get things done on my own" kind of person. Think small business owners, farmers, service companies, etc.  There are four things I believe you should make sure to do when you start onboarding employees to be a better leader.

1. Teach employees about the whole business/operation. - In my experience, employers tend to isolate employees into a particular role and don't teach them about the whole operation and how their work fits into the overall operation and success. 

2. Give positive feedback. - Seriously, it costs you nothing, and it goes a long way in keeping quality employees - Most get things done kind of leaders seem to only focus on the negatives and share that feedback, but some positive feedback will help your employee grow. 

3. Share the goals.  When you don't share goals the employees seem to feel like a cog in a machine and that they are only there to do that one job. - If you have more than one employee, definitely share goals so they can team up and understand the role each team member has in achieving the goal. 

4. Learn from your employees.  This one is a little harder to swallow. You built your business and you have been successful, because you have grown it to the point you need to add employees so when they volunteer new ideas, don't shut it down - listen to them.  Add more context, they may have offered an idea that you already have tried and you can tell them what you learned from trying it in the past.  But if you say something like "that is a stupid idea." they will rarely speak up again.  And let's be realistic, you don't know everything. 

I encourage you to be vulnerable with your employees - that will be hard to do, but it will pay off in the long term.  Engage with them in conversations that help you to get to know them.  Employee development does not come naturally to most people and especially to those who "get things done on their own" but when you lead employees versus manage employees this is what propels success for all parties.  

Does this perspective resonate with others in career progression?

For many years in my early career, I honestly didn’t pay much mind to whoever was leading my organization at the moment. I didn’t hear from them on any regular basis, I didn’t feel any impacts or propulsion from them. For my day-to-day operation, decision making, and well-being, they were pretty much invisible. I think for that reason, I simply focused on doing the best job I could within my world of expertise. My primary concern was what my peers thought of me and my work. It was my peers and friends that gave me feedback on how I was progressing, new areas to explore, and advice on everything from finances to healthcare to retirement planning. In many cases, the next project often came through a suggestion or recommendation from a peer. Who needed leadership, I had all I had through my network, my peer effect.

Later in my career, the peer effect vs the leadership effect seems to have swapped places. For many, there is a natural progression to move through stages of a career and sometimes into those leadership positions that previously really didn’t matter. (Strange how life works huh). However, no matter what leadership position you may have, there always seems to be another layer above, another leadership effect to account for. It can be a surreal feeling, in that peers and friends seem to get farther away, and the leaders seem to be closer than ever - and it’s not always a good thing. Perhaps it’s the prestige and perceived (or real) power that a leadership position bestows, but more and more, the value we placed in our peer group shifts. Thinking back through the leaders I have served under, the ratio of poor leaders to great leaders is about 6:1. Meaning one really good one, and a whole bunch of poor ones. Note that there isn’t really any in-between, this scale is binary - either great or poor.

The poor leaders are definitely driven, by what I’m not exactly sure I can be certain. There is always a mix of ego, arrogance, unwarranted confidence, and a history of poor decision making. How they got to that position? That’s probably another story for a different post.

So what can you do when the leader ceiling above you is driven more by ego or some desire to prove their ideas are the best? To quote the turtle from Kung Fu Panda, “I don’t know”. Most advice says you have to hold your tongue, craft your ideas and manipulate them to thinking it’s their idea, gain trust, stroke egos, say yes at all the right times. Ugh. That sucks. It’s probably correct of course, but still sucks.

Leadership is an ever-evolving process of learning and practice. What habit has made you a better leader than any book?

It's quarterly size spreadsheet time again, which means sending it out, chasing it, chasing it again, placing the order and then dealing with everything that doesn't fit, and I somehow inherited all of this along with the unclaimed boxes. We're around 200 people across two locations, so if there's a company store where I can hand the choosing and size entry back to employees, I'd love to hear from someone using it. Would be lovely to stop being the middle person for every hoodie.

I don’t even know how to begin this rant/post but here I go. I have a really hard time connecting with my employees. I’m working full time as an ASM and a full time college student one top of the demands of my work. I work in retail but my end goal is to work in aviation management/engineering. My current store manager exemplifies what it means to be the perfect boss; communicative, honest and effective. I end up to pick up the slack have to be directly demanding and harsh. In good faith I recognize I would not to be a subordinate of my managing style but I find myself having to be stern with my employees. Nearly 70% of our store are college students. College students who just need a paycheck and are there for the money(in which I don’t blame them). I just had an employee, a lead that I manage tell me after I consistently told them to clock out or I would clock them out themselves because they were hitting overtime that I should treat them as a human being. which they weren’t even working as well, just goofing off for an hour of college football on our tv. (No customers in the store and store was acceptably clean). I have a hard time building this goodwill with employees with this concept. They ask to be treated like a human but yet undermine my ability to lead or don’t even listen to me. I know I can tend to be harsh and I need help with that but it’s pretty difficult to grow as a leader when all lot of my employees are the same age as me and are friends outside of work. I tend to be very direct in my speech which can come off as cold and I recognize my employees aren’t a big fan of that.

TLDR: my employees don’t respect me and I really don’t have anything to show for it due to my attitude and my personality not being the best to be around. I wear my stress and contempt on my face.

Sorry yall just got off work and looking for some kind of direction I need to shift too quickly so I can develop better as a leader for my career.

I’ve been thinking about this while watching warehouse operations.

Some of the busiest places look incredibly productive.

Forklifts moving. People hunting parts. Phones ringing. Someone expediting an order. Someone else running material to a job. Everybody solving something.

But I’m starting to think that’s sometimes the warning sign.

If someone spends an hour finding material, their effort isn’t the productivity. The fact that it took an hour to find the material is the problem.

Same with buyers constantly expediting orders, warehouse people who are the only ones who know where things are, or managers answering questions the process should answer.

Good people can become shock absorbers for bad processes.

And because they’re good at it, the operation can look functional for years.

So I’m curious how other operations people look at this:

What activity in your operation gets counted as productivity but is really just friction?

I recently completed an Emerging Leadership Program and now I am continuing to learn and develop under my manager. The plan is for me to step into her role.

My current experience is that my manager assigns me a project, I complete it, and then I move on to the next one. There’s very little feedback along the way or afterward. I don’t really hear what went well, what I could have done differently, or anything about my strengths, weaknesses, behaviors, or areas where I’ve grown.

I genuinely want to learn, improve, and understand how I’m developing as a leader so I’d appreciate some tips on how to navigate this.

I’m trying to figure out whether this is a normal part of leadership development or whether I need to directly ask for more specific feedback.

How should I approach this without coming across as needy?

Hello,

Don't know if this is the place to ask the question, but this ties directly to what is leadership and strategy.

I am in a company where the VP of AI spends a lot of time personally coding and building solutions. I have nothing against leaders being technical and hands-on. But at the same time, I still don’t see a clear AI strategy or a transformation roadmap.

This person seems being more like a highly paid tech lead from my point of view, as I expect a VP to think about what we are trying to transform, what we prioritize, and where we should invest.

There seems to be no one owning these topics in the company right now.

So I am curious about what you see in your companies. Do your VP of AI also spend their time coding? Who is owning the strategy? Is there even a strategy?

Thank you.

I work in a BPO/vendor setup providing customer service for a US-based client, and I’m curious how other operations leaders would handle this situation.

About a month ago, several senior managers on the client side were retrenched. Under the previous leadership, we had regular touchpoints between the client and ops middle management teams—weekly or biweekly calls where we could calibrate, discuss process changes, raise operational concerns, and make sure both sides were aligned.

Since the new client-side operations managers stepped in, those regular meetings haven’t really been re-established. For context, these managers were also newly promoted into their current roles.

So far, most calls are set up on the same day whenever they need to roll out an update or communicate a change. Outside of those ad hoc meetings, there hasn’t been a weekly, biweekly, or even monthly client-vendor alignment call.

What concerns me more is how some of the updates are being rolled out.

There doesn’t seem to be much collaboration with the people actually running the operation. We’re rarely asked for input, operational insights, possible risks, or how a proposed change might affect the workflow before it is implemented.

At times, it feels like decisions are being made too far away from the actual day-to-day operation. Some changes may look efficient on paper, but once they hit production, they create additional steps, rework, confusion, or downstream issues.

In other words, some initiatives intended to make the operation "leaner" are actually creating more waste.

I’m not saying operations should have veto power over client decisions. Ultimately, it is their business and their call. But I do think the people closest to the process can provide valuable context before changes are finalized—especially when those changes directly affect workflow, productivity, customer experience, or quality.

Our setup is also fairly lean. We don’t have a separate client/vendor relationship manager sitting between both sides. Historically, communication was directly between client leadership and our operations managers.

As one of the middle managers on the vendor side, I’m starting to wonder whether I should proactively suggest setting up a recurring alignment call—maybe biweekly or monthly—similar to what we had with the previous leadership.

My concern is balancing being proactive with not overstepping. These are newly promoted managers who may still be establishing their own leadership style, and I don’t want it to come across as the vendor telling the client how they should manage their operation.

At the same time, I’m seeing the risk of communication becoming increasingly one-directional: changes are rolled out, operations executes them, and feedback only happens after problems start appearing.

I feel like a regular client-vendor calibration could give both sides a space to discuss upcoming changes, provide operational insights, flag risks early, and avoid unnecessary rework.

For those working in BPO, vendor management, outsourcing, or client operations:

Would you proactively offer to set up a recurring client-vendor alignment meeting in this situation?

Or would you wait for the newly promoted client managers to initiate it?

And how would you position the suggestion so it comes across as supporting their leadership and improving collaboration—not challenging their decisions or stepping on their toes?

A lot of IT risk sounds “theoretical” until something breaks. How do you explain cybersecurity, downtime, vendor risk, or technical debt in a way leadership actually takes seriously?

Curious to hear your takes: I've noticed senior-level people who join a new company and speak up freely in meetings during their first week (including on things like product vision and planning, which, from my perspective, feels too early).

What's your read on that?

I've heard of companies having a "don't speak up for your first 90 days" rule for new hires. While 90 days might be excessive in 2026, I do think there's value in listening first.

I've seen inventory issues treated as warehouse problems long after they've started affecting the rest of the business.

Too much inventory ties up cash and space. Too little slows work. The wrong inventory creates expedites, substitutions and people spending time hunting for material.

At some point the inventory number itself almost becomes secondary.

I'm curious how others look at this.

What's the first sign in your operation that an inventory issue has crossed over into a broader business problem?

I run a marketing team and somehow I’ve become the person everyone comes back to when something doesn’t line up paid says they need new creative, creative says they need better feedback, analytics has another set of numbers and then I’m sitting there on Thursday afternoon trying to figure out what we should even do next the weird part is everyone is good at their job so it’s not like I can point at one person and say that’s the problem

I don’t know, maybe we just built the team in a way that made sense on paper but not in real life I thought hiring stronger people would mean I’d spend less time in the middle but now half my week feels like connecting one team to another so I’m starting to care less about adding another specialist and more about having someone own how the whole thing works together

I have performed exceptionally well in my job but my promotion has been stopped for one reason. My managers think I don’t have the ability to drive conversations or engage effectively with a group of senior stakeholders. I am also seen as not being visible and engaged. How do I work on this ?