How much of your week goes to your three weakest people?
Where a leader spends their attention is a strategy in itself. For many CEOs, that strategy is quietly backing the wrong people.
In a recent quarterly session, an executive admitted she spends half her time managing the bottom three or four people on a team of forty. She said it almost in passing. What struck the room was how normal it sounded.
She is not unusual. Look honestly at your own week and a pattern often appears. The people who struggle absorb the meetings, the coaching, the second chances and the mental load. The people carrying the business, your A-players, get a quick thanks and a heavier workload. Attention flows to weakness, almost by default.
Poor performance is not neutral. It compounds.
We worked with a leader who had tolerated two clearly underperforming people for years. Everyone knew. The cost was not just their output. It was the drag on everyone around them, the results that quietly slipped, and the message it sent about what this business is willing to accept.
That message travels further than you think. One client was trying to bring in a highly sought-after senior hire and lost them. The reason was simple. The person looked closely, saw that the “premium team” was carrying long-term underperformers, and decided it was not the high-performance environment they wanted. Your tolerance of poor performance is visible, and your best people and best prospects are reading it.
The shift: back your best, act on the rest
The businesses that scale make a deliberate move. They put their attention where the return is.
Start with your A-players. They are the ones who will help you grow, and they are often the ones quietly looking for more challenge. They need recognition, stretch and a reason to stay, and they rarely ask for it. If your calendar gives them the least of you, that is a risk hiding in plain sight.
Then get honest about right people in the right seats. Growth is a question of who before what. A talented person in the wrong role is still a problem, and a capable team with the wrong few members never quite fires.
None of this means being harsh. Acting on poor performance should always be done with good intent and in line with your values. But it needs to be done, and sooner than feels comfortable. Indecision here does not protect your culture. It shapes it.
A few questions to test where you stand
How much of your week goes to your weakest people versus your strongest?
When did you last give a genuine stretch to your best performer?
How long has your longest-running performance issue been running?
If a great hire studied your team today, what would your tolerance tell them?
Where your attention goes, your business follows. Point it at the people who carry the load, and act early on the ones who do not.
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