Put the wrong people on the wrong seats. This will destroy your bottom line and employee morale. It can even set your business on fire.
Every day, it happens. A high-performing individual-contributor gets catapulted into management because of tenure, not talent. A senior executive keeps their title, despite being out of touch. The mid-level manager is kept in their position because they are “nice”, but lack the leadership skills. Leadership turns a blind-eye because confrontation is uncomfortable, changes are disruptive, and mediocrity can be oddly comforting.
What happens next? The decay begins.
The hidden costs of corporate complacency
Let’s be brutally honest. The majority of companies are losing money and don’t know it. It’s not because of inflation or market fluctuations, but because companies are carrying too much dead weight. 8.99 trillion dollars is lost because of HR inefficiencies.
Misaligned talent costs more than just money. It’s a cancer that slowly spreads beneath the surface. This is how it works:
- Talent Wastage: The A-players, the ones who are supposed to be shaping the future, spend their time cleaning the mess left by underqualified and misallocated co-workers. They are babysitting instead of innovating. Instead of leading they buffer incompetence. Guess what? They’re exhausted.
- Culture Erosion : When the wrong people are in the wrong positions, the workplace becomes toxic. High performers lose their engagement, lose trust in leadership and check out, or permanently check out, taking their brilliance to your competitor.
- Bureaucracy is the death of bureaucracy. People who lack the ability to execute compensate by holding meetings, sending emails and wasting endless time indecisiveness. The paralysis begins. Once agile, your company now moves at molasses speed. It is suffocated in its own inefficiency.
- Customer experience degradation: Have you ever interacted with a business that felt like it was in slow motion? It’s not just the incompetent managers who are at fault. Customers don’t tolerate incompetence. Customers leave. They don’t return.
How Leadership Fails (And Why They Are Too Afraid To Fix It)
When it comes to the tough decisions, executives hesitate when they hear about “talent management.” Why?
They feel uncomfortable about firing someone “nice” who is ineffective. It’s awkward to confront a longtime employee regarding their declining performance. Realigning talent makes them admit that they made poor hires.
They avoid it. They appease. They justify. They justify. In doing so, however, they betray the best of their talent, undermine their culture and drain money from their organization.
Everyone is at Risk of Reassessment: The brutal (yet liberating) truth
It’s simple but not for the weak-hearted. Every single person in your organization–including the C-Suite–needs to be evaluated against three non-negotiable criteria:
- CompetencyDoes the candidate have the necessary skills, knowledge and experience for effective execution? Are they able to understand the goals and objectives of your organization?
- Culture fit: Are their values, beliefs and behaviors in line with the company’s mission, values and long-term goals?
- Drive Do they operate with hunger, ownership and a relentless dedication to progress?
If an employee fails to pass even one of these test, they are not entitled to that seat. That’s it. This means difficult conversations. This means discomfort in the organization. Here’s the reality: If someone doesn’t deliver at an exceptionally high level, they’re already stealing from your company. They steal money, drain energy from their teams, and actively contribute to dilution your company’s edge.
Ruthless Talent Realignment: The Return on Investment
Your organization will transform when you make decisions based on alignment, rather than sentimentality. What happens when you put the right people in the right places?
- Team productivity skyrockets. Clear decisions are taken. Execution becomes effortless. No wasted motion, only momentum.
- Innovation is a thriving industry: When individuals are placed in positions where they can use their strengths to create, they innovate. They solve problems. They are a force of nature. They push boundaries.
- Culture Strengthens : Toxicity disappears when each employee is surrounded with high-caliber coworkers. The work becomes stimulating, and not exhausting. Engagement and retention improve.
- Profitability Explodes – Let’s talk numbers. Companies that maximize their talent allocation win not only in culture, but also on the balance sheets. Revenue increases. Costs are reduced. Bottom line: Businesses thrive when the correct people are at the right place.
The final wake-up call: Are you protecting the future or coddling the past?
Ask yourself, if you are the leader of an organization: Are you protecting future or comfort for underperformers in your organization? You already have a problem if your answer doesn’t seem obvious and immediate.
It’s not external pressures that are causing organizations to fail. They fail because they tolerate mediocrity. They cling to outdated hierarchies. They value tenure over talent. The most dangerous phrase used in corporate America is “that’s how we do things around here.”
Companies that are going to dominate the future will be those that adopt a new paradigm, where each seat is filled by the person who is unquestionably and undeniably best suited for the position.
No excuses. No excuses. No dead weight.
Want to win? Make the tough decisions. Now.
Kelly Meerbott, a TEDx speaker and certified leadership expert, is also an author, podcaster, and a TEDx keynote speaker. Kelly Meerbott has helped hundreds of senior executives and C-suite executives transform their leadership style with a trauma-informed, PTSD-training approach. She also trained more than 400 high ranking military officers.
