Managing Underperformers: The Problem Might Not Be The Person

When managers deal with underperformance, the default assumption is often that the problem lies with the individual. The conversation usually focuses on motivation, capability, attitude, or personal circumstances, followed by performance plans, regular check-ins, and coaching conversations to help the person get back on track.

But over the years, I have seen multiple situations where the real problem was much deeper than the individual themselves.

Sometimes The System Fails Them

When I was managing scaled operations at Google, we had two very different sales programmes. One focused on high-value, low-volume accounts, while the other focused on high-volume, low-touch customers.

For a long period, many reps in the high-volume programme struggled to hit targets. Naturally, the initial focus was on the reps themselves. We reviewed calls, analysed activity levels, and conducted coaching sessions.

Then something became obvious.

These reps did not fully understand what it meant to manage a high-volume pipeline. Instead of moving efficiently between opportunities, many were spending excessive time servicing customers in detail, almost like account managers. The bigger issue was that both groups had gone through almost identical onboarding and training, despite operating in completely different sales environments.

Once we recognised the problem, the focus shifted away from blaming individuals and towards fixing the onboarding system itself. We introduced separate onboarding tracks, increased coaching around pipeline management, and created far clearer operational expectations for high-volume teams.

Inexperienced Managers Leading Inexperienced Reps

I have also seen another pattern repeatedly: inexperienced managers leading people who are completely new to a function.

In fact, I experienced this personally.

When I first moved from accounting into sales, I was highly motivated and eager to learn. But only one quarter into the role, I was suddenly informed that I was being placed on a Performance Improvement Plan.

The experience shocked me because performance plans should rarely come as a complete surprise. Having been a manager myself, I knew there should already had been multiple coaching conversations, clear feedback, expectation setting, and support long before things reach that stage.

At Bloomberg, the typical route into sales usually came from the service desk rather than the data team, where I came from. Most reps already had exposure to sales tools, pipeline management, customer conversations, and activity tracking before joining the role.

I did not.

Nobody had explained many of the operational basics that experienced sales reps naturally took for granted, including logging activities, managing pipeline hygiene, or using internal sales systems properly. At the same time, my manager himself was also relatively new to leadership.

Years later at Google, I watched a very similar situation happen again with another new hire joining from a completely different industry under a newly promoted manager. She was full of ideas, energy, and motivation, but within one quarter she was also placed on a PIP.

It reminded me how often organisations celebrate hiring people from diverse backgrounds, but sometimes forget that these hires require a different level of empathy and contextual onboarding at the beginning. Sometimes managers unconsciously assume that people already know the basics because those skills feel obvious to experienced employees. But what feels obvious to someone who has spent years in a function may be completely new to someone entering it for the first time.

As managers we often spend a lot of time explaining KPIs, but not enough time explaining what good actually looks like operationally on a day-to-day basis.