Is the performance problem with the person, the team or the system?

Performance problems travel across levels

A missed outcome is often attributed to the person with formal accountability. That is a reasonable starting point, but it is not yet a diagnosis. Senior roles are performed through teams, authority structures and organisational conditions that can amplify or constrain individual capability.

The diagnostic task is to identify where the problem is maintained. That may be one level, or it may be the interaction between levels: a capable person inside an unworkable mandate, a strong team avoiding one conflict, or a sound structure enacted through inconsistent leadership behaviour.

Test the person

Examine the executive's judgement, behaviour, capability and willingness in relation to the actual demands of the role. Use specific decisions and observable effects rather than broad labels such as leadership style, confidence or fit.

Ask what the person could reasonably do differently without requiring changes from others. If a credible behavioural change would materially alter the outcome, an individual intervention may be justified.

Test the team

Senior performance frequently depends on peers who control resources, information or decisions. Examine whether the team resolves trade-offs, uses conflict productively and maintains decisions after the meeting.

A problem sits at team level when interaction patterns repeatedly prevent the available capability from becoming coordinated action. The evidence is usually found in how decisions are reopened, escalated, qualified or quietly reversed.

Test the system

Structures, measures, incentives and decision rights shape what is possible and safe. A person may be held accountable without sufficient authority. Two functions may be measured against outcomes that cannot both be optimised. A role may have expanded while its resources and mandate have not.

System explanations should also be tested rather than used to remove personal accountability. The question is whether the conditions reliably reproduce the pattern across capable people and repeated attempts to change it.

Locate the maintaining interaction

Use evidence from all three levels before deciding where to intervene first.

1. What could this person reasonably change within the current role?
2. Which team interactions affect the outcome?
3. Which structures or measures reinforce the pattern?
4. Where does the first observable loss of movement occur?
5. What is the smallest intervention that would test this explanation?