Driving performance shouldn’t feel like throwing good people into a furnace and hoping something useful comes out. If you’re on the hook for results, you’ve probably been told to “hold people accountable” while working inside a system that’s chaotic, unclear, and unfair.

Most “tough” management is just leaders skipping the hard work of building a real performance system. They crank up the pressure, wait to see who survives, and call the survivors “strong hires.” Everyone else is labeled weak, unmotivated, or “not a good fit.”

Killing Crucibles exists to replace that trial-by-fire approach with deliberate performance design. I lay out a powerful system—The Nine Laws of Performance Management—that makes strong performance inevitable.

Here, you’ll learn how to:

• Focus effort on what really drives results

• Make performance visible so nothing important hides

• Keep employees engaged by rewarding the right behaviors

• Protect top performers from carrying dead weight

• Remove excuses without burning people out

• Hold people accountable without second-guessing yourself

Every Thursday, you’ll get one Law to anchor the week, and a 15-minute Directive you can implement immediately.

This is written for managers, small business owners, and team leads responsible for results, who earned responsibility through grit and determination, but were never formally trained to lead.

I’ve built and led teams in high-pressure environments, turned around failing systems, and scaled multiple businesses past seven figures. I’ve also learned the hard way how much damage a crucible culture can do. What I share comes from operating in complex, real-world systems across diverse industries, not parroting management theory.

When you build the system first, performance becomes inevitable and accountability becomes automatic. You get solid ground, clear standards, conditions to succeed, and confidence in decisions about who stays, who grows, and who goes.

If you want high standards without high turnover and a team where every member carries their weight, join the Forge.