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.
Three of the four are straightforward. The fourth is the reason the model exists, and it is usually the conversation an owner has been avoiding for somewhere between six months and six years.
The four boxes
Keep and grow — strong results, strong behaviours
The job here is not management, it is retention and stretch. Give them more scope, more to decide, and ask them directly what would make them leave. Owners take these people entirely for granted because they never generate a problem, and are then astonished when one of them resigns.
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
Almost always a recruitment or induction failure rather than a bad person, and the honest thing is to say so and move quickly. Dragging it out is not kindness. It is kindness postponed, at their expense as well as yours.
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. This is the box that decides what kind of business you are running.
Why the fourth box decides your culture
Because everybody is watching it. Your written values are a claim; what you tolerate in your best performer is the evidence, and the team weighs the evidence rather than the claim.
Tolerate it and you have said clearly that results buy exemption. From that moment your standards apply only to the people who are not performing well enough to break them, which is precisely backwards — and the good people in the keep-and-grow box start quietly updating their CVs.
Scoring behaviours without it becoming a popularity contest
The obvious objection to the vertical axis is that behaviour is subjective, and a matrix built on personal taste is just favouritism with a diagram attached. That is a fair objection. So do not score personality. Score the small number of observable actions this business genuinely depends on.
Three tests will keep you honest. 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
From memory, quickly. The speed is the point: your instinct has already scored them and you are only writing it down.
Test each placement against evidence
What specifically did they do, or fail to do? If you cannot produce an example, you have a feeling rather than a judgement, and feelings do not survive a difficult conversation.
Define behaviours as actions, not adjectives
Not team player. Turns up on time to the weekly meeting, updates the system before Friday, raises problems in the room rather than afterwards. Observable, 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
You already know whose it is. 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
Same two axes, same honesty. If you would not tolerate your own diary discipline in an employee, that is worth knowing before you go and enforce a standard.
The mistake most owners make
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, not the diagram. 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 precisely 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 usually a signal about the business rather than about them.
Coaching questions to sit with
- 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?
Culture is not what you wrote on the wall. It is the worst behaviour you are prepared to tolerate from your best performer — and everyone who works for you already knows exactly what that is.
This is the sharpest tool in 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. Three tests keep you honest: 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 really hurt the business?
Then the answer is not a dramatic exit on a Tuesday afternoon, and it is not indefinite tolerance either. It is sequencing. 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 usually 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?
Quarterly is about right, and re-plotting matters as much as the first plot. 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 usually 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.