The performance matrix asks two questions about every person in your business. Do they deliver the results? Do they behave the way this business needs people to behave? Score both, plot them, and you get four boxes — keep and grow, coach or move, act now, and the hard call — each with a different job attached.
The fourth box is often the conversation an owner has been putting off.
The four boxes
Keep and grow — strong results, strong behaviours
The job here is retention and stretch. Give them more scope, more to decide, and ask them directly what would make them leave. Because they never generate a problem, these people are easy to take for granted.
Coach or move — right behaviours, wrong numbers
Sometimes this is skill, sometimes it is the wrong role, occasionally it is a target nobody could hit. All three are fixable, but only inside a time limit. Ninety days, a written standard, weekly contact, then a decision. Without the time limit, this box becomes a comfortable place to keep someone you like for three years while quietly carrying them.
Act now — low on both
This is often a recruitment or induction failure rather than a bad person. Say so and move quickly, because dragging it out costs them as well as you.
The hard call — strong results, corrosive behaviours
The one who bills more than anyone, misses every meeting, keeps information to themselves, is short with the admin team, and answers every challenge with a reminder of what they bring in.
Why the fourth box decides your culture
Everybody watches what you tolerate in your best performer, and the team takes that as the real standard rather than your written values.
Tolerating it tells the team that results buy exemption, and your standards then apply only to people who are not performing well enough to break them.
Scoring behaviours without it becoming a popularity contest
Behaviour is harder to score than results, so score observable actions rather than personality: the small number of actions this business depends on.
Use three tests. Could a stranger reading the evidence reach the same conclusion? Would you promote somebody for doing it consistently well? Would you say the same thing to the person’s face, in those words, this week?
Anything that fails those tests is a preference rather than a standard, and you should not be managing anybody against it. Anything that passes belongs in writing, applied to everybody, including the person who owns the company.
How to use it
Plot everybody in ten minutes
Do it from memory and quickly, because your instinct has already scored them.
Test each placement against evidence
What specifically did they do, or fail to do? If you cannot produce an example, the placement is a feeling and needs evidence before you act on it.
Define behaviours as actions
Write “turns up on time to the weekly meeting, updates the system before Friday, raises problems in the room” rather than “team player”, so it can be discussed without argument.
Put a date on the coach-or-move box
Ninety days, a written standard, a weekly check-in, a decision at the end. Say the date out loud to the person, so it is theirs as well as yours.
Have the one conversation you have been avoiding
Prepare it properly, reduce the risk around it first — other relationships introduced into the key accounts, the pipeline documented, contracts checked — and then book it.
Plot yourself
Use the same two axes on yourself before you enforce a standard on anyone else.
Common mistakes
The first mistake is scoring results only, because results are measurable and behaviour feels like an opinion. The matrix then collapses into a sales league table, and the person doing the most damage to the business sits at the top of it.
The second mistake is using the grid privately, as a labelling exercise. Its value is in the conversation. If the person in the top-right box does not know they are valued, and the person in the bottom-right does not know there is a problem, plotting them has changed nothing.
The third is treating a placement as permanent. People move between boxes when the role changes, when the manager changes, when things at home change. Re-plot every quarter, and pay particular attention to anybody who has moved down, because that is often a signal about the business rather than about them.
Questions to ask yourself
- Out of 10, how consistently do you hold your highest performer to the same standards as everyone else?
- Who is in your hard-call box, and how long have you known?
- What has tolerating that already cost you in people, standards and your own energy?
- When did you last tell someone in your keep-and-grow box exactly what they are worth to this business?
This is part of the team work inside Leadership Coaching. OARBED is how you run the conversation once you have decided to have it, and Organisational Health explains why a business full of good individuals can still pull in four directions at once.
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Common questions
How do I score behaviours without it becoming favouritism?
Score actions rather than personality, and put them in writing before you score anybody. Not team player, which is an adjective and unarguable. Turns up on time to the weekly meeting, updates the system before Friday, raises problems in the room rather than in the corridor afterwards. Use three tests: could a stranger reading the evidence reach the same conclusion, would you promote somebody for doing it consistently well, and would you say it to the person's face in those exact words this week? Anything that fails those is a preference, not a standard, and nobody should be managed against it. Anything that passes applies to everyone, including you.
What if losing my highest performer would hurt the business?
Then sequence it. Reduce the concentration risk first: introduce other relationships into the key accounts, document the pipeline, check the contracts, get the process out of one person's head. Then set a written standard with specific observable behaviours, a stated consequence and a date, and hold the conversation properly. What often follows is one of two things. The behaviour changes, because for the first time somebody has said it out loud with a consequence attached, or the person leaves and the revenue turns out to have belonged to the business.
How often should I re-plot the team?
Re-plot quarterly. People move between boxes when the role changes, when their manager changes, when a system changes, and when something at home changes. A placement treated as permanent turns into a label, and labels stop you noticing that somebody who was struggling six months ago has quietly become one of your strongest performers. Pay particular attention to anyone who has moved down a box, because a drop is often a signal about the business rather than about the individual: a new process, an unclear priority, or a manager who has stopped having one-to-ones.