How should our leadership team handle an employee who crushes their performance numbers but consistently violates our Core Values on the People Analyzer?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Keeping a high producer who breaches your Core Values will quietly destroy your culture and undermine your authority as an owner. Other employees observe the contradiction immediately. They realize that Core Values are merely marketing posters rather than non-negotiable operational requirements.

The People Analyzer is designed to remove emotion from talent decisions by measuring two distinct things: Core Values alignment and GWC, which stands for Gets it, Wants it, and has the Capacity to do it.

When you evaluate a high producer who consistently rates minus or plus-minus on your Core Values, you are dealing with a cultural terrorist. They deliver results, but they leave operational debris in their wake that other leaders are forced to clean up.

Follow the three-strike rule:
- First strike: Sit down with the employee privately. Pull out the People Analyzer and walk through specific behavioral examples where they violated the Core Value. Give them thirty days to correct the behavior.
- Second strike: At the thirty-day check-in, if the behavior has not changed, deliver a formal warning. Clearly state that continued misalignment will result in termination, regardless of their performance numbers.
- Third strike: At the sixty-day mark, if they still do not meet the Core Values bar, remove them from the business.

Tolerating bad behavior because someone hits a quota tells the rest of the company that performance excuses character. When you let that person go, productivity across the rest of the team almost always surges.