A leader argues that companies need to define mission, vision, and values first, then use them to evaluate whether people fit. When everyone aligns with the same purpose, you can make hard calls about underperformers based on the mission, not personal loyalty.
Do they represent the things that we have all agreed upon that we want to achieve as a company? People need to take some ownership in their lives. But for high performers, we actually don't need to take on this massive personal responsibility for people on our team, right? We have to actually be loyal to the mission. So how do we make that decision? Well, we have to have a rubric, and this is where mission, vision, values comes in. If you haven't taken a day or two and gone through a formal process of determining the mission, vision, values of your company, I highly recommend you do so. Because now if you have an underperforming member of the team, you can actually just line that person up against your mission, vision, values and say, do they represent the things that we have all agreed upon that we want to achieve as a company? And if no, now your decision is easy. Now you can be loyal to the mission instead of loyal to an underperforming team member.
