The unspoken rationale we eventually settled on was that “he knows the organization,” “he knows the work,” and (most importantly), “we know him.” With those three truths, we let a very nice, very affable, but underperforming colleague stay on the team for way too long. “We know him.” That was the most powerful one. We knew what we were getting. We were comfortable with him. We knew what he was all about. Yes, we only managed to get about 75% production out of him, but at least we knew what we had. And, if we decided to make a change, then it might prove disastrous. Who might we end up with? Eventually, he moved on and we found a replacement. The replacement was very nice, and very affable. The replacement showed up on time. The replacement worked diligently. The replacement was way more than we expected. Lesson (painfully) learned. The boogeyman that lives in potential change only has power when we grant him power. If we continue to focus on the horizon, on what is possible, and keep moving forward, then the boogeyman doesn’t have a chance. It turns out that change is not synonymous with bad.
With your teams, don’t get out of the way, do this instead
"Get out of the way!" I often hear some version of this sentiment when talking about building a culture to incentivize high performance teams. "You have to find the right people, equip them, and then get out of the way." People who talk about getting out of the way...