For most of the twentieth century, if you worked in an office, you wore a suit. S&K Menswear was built to corner that market.

Founded in 1967, they grew to over 200 stores across 26 states with a business model that gave men access to nationally recognized brands at 20–40% below department store prices. At their peak they were debt-free, funding their own expansion, and still posting a profit in 2007. But by February 2009, they didn’t exist.

So how does a company go from debt-free with 200 locations to liquidating everything in a matter of months?

The easy answer is the one the former CEO gave: “The suit business isn’t a good one.” Business casual was eroding formal wear. The Great Recession was hammering consumer spending. But Men’s Wearhouse faced the same headwinds and posted $1.97 billion in revenue the year S&K went bankrupt.

The biggest problem was that S&K’s leadership didn’t have clear answers about what the business was supposed to prioritize.

I was an assistant manager at one of their stores during that time. We had a floor full of capable salespeople. But they were being asked to chase targets that were always shifting.

Every month, corporate sent down a new incentive program. Different combinations of metrics, different thresholds, structured less like a bonus plan and more like a monthly challenge you had to solve. You’d spend the first week or two of the month figuring out what kind of sales you had to build to hit it.

Then someone actually hit it.

The next month’s packet from corporate came in, and the incentive program was revised.

Then it happened again.

We listened to the Store Manager read the new bonus plan, and the other assistant manager just lost it.

“They don’t really want us to hit this, do they?”

I looked over at our top salesperson. He was the only one who’d ever earned the bonus. The look on his face was pure disappointment. He put in a lot of work to figure out the system. And the revised targets were always moved further out of reach.

The manager didn’t say anything. He was just as frustrated as we were.

After that, people would glance at the new sheet when it came in, shake their heads, and wouldn’t give it a second thought. Nobody chased the bonus, because nobody believed there was a bonus to chase.

It was embarrassing when new candidates asked whether there were any additional earnings beyond base pay because you knew nobody ever hit it.

People were always looking for other work. I didn’t stay long myself.

S&K went bankrupt in 2009. The recession and shifting dress norms were real challenges. But when headwinds are hitting, the last thing you can afford is a team full of unmotivated salespeople.

Poorly designed incentives are worse than having no incentives at all. They’ll create resentment and drain the belief out of any organization.

Where This Fits

Expectations define the target. Measurements make it visible. Training closes the gap. Tools remove the barriers. The environment makes it sustainable.

Law 6 asks whether your reward structure is channeling effort in the direction you need it to go.

The foundational work of Laws 1 and 2—clear expectations and visible measurements—must be in place first. If it isn’t, you end up with what S&K had: constantly changing challenges that reflect your own uncertainty about what matters most.

What Most Managers Get Wrong

They believe people should perform just because it’s their job.

They should be giving 110% anyway. I’m paying them enough already. Why would I pay extra for someone to just do their job?

If “that’s their job” is your philosophy, then you’ll find yourself with a team doing just enough not to get fired. People will show up, do the bare minimum, and go home. Every dollar of growth that could have moved your business forward will sit unclaimed.

They assume compensation is the only incentive.

Pay matters. But it’s not the only thing that motivates people. Sometimes it’s not even the most important thing. Additional time off. Recognition. Write your own schedule. Lunch with the boss. Premium parking. Choice of projects.

These are all incentives. Most managers squander these opportunities without ever considering what could be reinforced with non-monetary perks.

They believe they can’t afford it.

They only see a bonus structure as an additional cost. But a properly designed incentive plan doesn’t work that way. If nobody performs beyond the baseline, nobody earns extra. If they do perform, the payout comes from the increased value that growth generated.

You’re not adding an expense to your overhead. You’re sharing new profits with the people who helped create it.

They reward activity instead of outcomes.

When you consistently reward activity for its own sake, you train people to pretend, not produce.

If your incentive is tied to calls made, emails sent, or hours logged rather than results produced, you'll just get more empty work.

They confuse equal treatment with fair treatment.

Across-the-board raises. Team bonuses where everyone gets the same cut regardless of individual output. Blanket recognition that doesn’t distinguish who carried the weight.

When a top producer consistently carries extra weight and receives the same reward as the person doing the minimum, you’ve built an incentive to stop going above and beyond. That’s a crippling tax on both your business and your best people.

Law 6 Defined

The simplest truth in production management: you get what you reward.

“Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome.”

• Charlie Munger, Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway

Incentives are the signals your organization sends about what it values.

When incentives align, self-interest and organizational interest run in the same direction. People don’t need to be pushed toward the right behaviors The system makes the right behaviors the rational choice.

Aligning incentives means everything you reward should have a clear line back to your core drivers. When the system is right, you don’t have to manufacture motivation. People already want to do the things that drive results.

What It Looks Like

The jewelry retailer where I tripled a store’s revenue in three years built their incentive plan around five core drivers.

Top line sales volume was the anchor. Warranty and protection agreements drove additional revenue and were crucial to customer satisfaction and retention. Add-ons increased the average sale. Repair sales supported in-house jewelers which kept customers returning to the store rather than going somewhere else. Credit applications expanded buying power and drove higher-ticket purchases. Every one of those drivers had a clear line back to the same thing: top line sales.

They offered a small direct cash incentive for each extended service plan sold, because those were important enough to reward specifically and immediately. But the most significant bonus came from where the store landed in sales by the end of the month.

If the store didn’t beat the prior year’s volume, associates earned half a percent commission. Beat last year and the commission doubled to one percent. From there it tiered up until selling thirty percent over last year’s numbers was paying out three percent commission to everyone in the store.

I used a similar model when I took over my trucking agency.

The dispatchers had been running under a single incentive. They had to hit a monthly revenue volume to earn a half-percent bonus. The target was unreasonably high. They never got close to it and stopped trying after the first few months.

I threw that out and built something with two levels.

The first level was the big picture. I put a wall thermometer in the office and as we booked volume each month, we’d fill it up toward the target. Hit 10, 20, or 30% over last year’s volume and they received a bonus on their first paycheck after the end of the month. It was anywhere from $200 to $1,000 per person. I designed the bonus structure so the payouts came to roughly thirty percent of the additional profit we generated.

The second level was for every load they covered, they earned a small cash incentive of one to three dollars depending on the revenue the load generated. On average, each dispatcher was making an extra forty to sixty dollars every week in cash. Some weeks it was closer to a hundred.

The per-load incentive served a critical purpose. It made every load matter. Even in a slow month where the big goal became out of reach, a dispatcher who pushed hard each week could still walk away with something to show for it.

Word got around and I started getting calls from other agents asking what I was doing differently.

This Week’s Directive

Before you build anything, go talk to your people. Ask them to give you three to five things that would genuinely motivate them.

Of course you’ll hear money, but you’ll also hear things you hadn’t thought of. Some of these things may matter more to certain people than a dollar figure, and don’t cost you much, if anything, to provide. Let them tell you what they want. It’ll help you shape a better system and build buy-in before you’ve even launched it.

Now build the structure around your business metrics. Start with the primary business driver that most affects your profitability or bottom line.

Set the target. It needs to be a stretch, either above last year or tied to operational goals. That’s what separates it from an expense line item and turns it into a real driver of growth. But don’t get greedy about what “stretch” means. If it’s always out of reach, they’ll lose belief in the system and you’ll end up with a resentful team that’s less productive than if you’d offered nothing at all.

Then decide what you’re able to share. I don’t know where that is for you, but it’s usually between 10-50% of the revenue or profit upside generated above the target.

You’re solving for a few things at once:

1. It should be meaningful enough to motivate your people.

2. It needs to leave enough on your side to reinvest and grow.

3. It should allow you to compensate yourself fairly as well.

Keep these things in mind as you build the structure:

• Build in line-of-sight at multiple levels.

  Each person should see a direct connection between their daily effort and their reward. A single large goal with no intermediate rewards creates a plan most people mentally abandon by mid-month if they’re behind.

• Balance individual and team components carefully.

  A plan weighted too heavily toward individual performance creates a cutthroat environment. Weight it too heavily toward team performance and your top producers end up being dragged down by weaker colleagues. The goal is a structure where individual contribution is rewarded directly and team performance creates a multiplier so individual collective interests pull in the same direction.

• Design the largest portion of payouts to come from growth.

  This builds a plan that scales without eroding your margin.

Once the structure is set, make it visible. Keep it in front of them every day so they can see exactly where they stand.

Now build in a secondary layer. It should be a shorter-term, individual incentive that runs alongside the big goal.

Identify the core behaviors or individual actions that drive revenue or results, and reward people for hitting those marks regardless of the stretch goal. Create at least one of these shorter-term incentives. Design the reward to be meaningful and paid out frequently. Either daily, weekly, or at least every pay period.

One thing to watch: if the big goal is never getting hit, don’t ignore that signal. Either the target needs to be adjusted, or there’s a deeper problem with the business model.

What This Forges

When you offer incentives people genuinely care about, you stop having to push them from behind because you’re directing them toward something they already want.

That secondary layer of shorter-term individual incentives will keep a team pushing to the end instead of watching effort and attention drift off from discouragement in a down month.

Petty squabbles, territorial behaviors, and the frictions that drain energy out of a team start to ease when every individual’s reward is tied to how the group performs.

And motivation will be baked into your system. Not something you have to constantly manufacture through pressure, pep talks, or micromanagement.

Next up: Law 7. The system is built. The incentives are aligned. Next, we need to make sure people are getting the honest, direct feedback they need to keep improving and stay on the right track.

Phil • Killing Crucibles

New here? Start with the introduction to the Nine Laws.

Next in the series: Law 7: Give Specific & Timely Feedback

What’s been your experience or challenge with this? Drop it in the comments below.

Freight was steady. The trucks were moving. Revenue was strong. On paper, nothing looked broken, but something was festering just beneath the surface.

The agency owner’s neglect allowed the environment to rot.

Two dispatchers ran the entire operation out of a room that wasn’t built for the job. They didn’t even have proper desks. They were working off crates. The walls had holes in them. Plants crept in from the outside. Mold was growing between the walls.

The owner let drivers camp out in the house while he worked on their trucks outside. Interruptions were constant. The dispatchers were trying to coordinate shipments and service customers while people wandered in and out of their workspace all day.

The biggest customer represented 90% of the volume — and that customer leveraged it. When they wanted something, they yelled. They demanded. They cussed and pressured until someone caved. The owner never drew a line. The abuse became normal. His only instruction was to take care of that customer at all costs, because that single customer was the only thing his revenue hinged on.

Then the payroll checks started bouncing.

Not once. Multiple times. The business had more than enough revenue to cover it, but the owner lacked the discipline to manage his money. The people holding his business together couldn’t trust that their pay would clear.

Finally, after one bounced check too many, one of the dispatchers quit.

It didn’t take long for the other to follow. He wasn’t about to absorb the entire workload alone.

Those two dispatchers were the only people holding that business upright. The owner was so disconnected he had no way of operating it himself. When they walked, the agency collapsed.

Leaders who operate like this borrow against their environment every single day.

Eventually, the bill always comes due.

Where This Fits

Expectations define the target. Measurements make it visible. Training closes the gap. Tools remove the barriers.

But every one of those investments can bleed out if the environment they work inside is unstable, chaotic, or hostile.

Law 5 examines what surrounds the work, and whether it’s helping or subtly eroding everything else you’ve built.

What Most Managers Get Wrong

1. They think environment means just the physical space.

The office layout, the lighting, and whether the break room is stocked all matter. But they’re the surface layer.

The more damaging conditions are things like how priorities are maintained, how conflict gets handled, and whether people are able to maintain focus. Most managers never look past the physical because the deeper layers require harder work to fix.

2. They normalize chaos and call it “fast-paced.”

Every day is a new emergency. Priorities change. People get yanked off one task to chase another.

The cost of that constant churn shows up in slower output, higher error rates, rising frustration, and disengagement.

3. They are the biggest source of interruption.

Managers sometimes miss how often they are the interruption. The drive-by question. The “got a minute?” meeting. The last-minute request that disrupts someone’s rhythm for the day.

Research found that after a single interruption, it takes an average of 23 minutes to return to focus. Even a brief 2–3 second interruption can double error rates. Across a full workday, researchers have estimated workers get fewer than three hours of truly productive time out of eight.

When you treat your team’s attention like a free, infinite resource, you’re draining the very capacity you’re paying for.

4. They let outside forces poison the environment.

If you let a client hassle your people, or a vendor create chaos in your workflow, or another department dump their problems on your team without consequence, your environment is toxic.

If you’re not managing those boundaries, you’re letting someone else set the conditions your team works inside.

5. They underestimate the damage of instability.

Uncertainty about whether the business is stable, priorities that shift without warning, and leadership that’s absent or inconsistent all do damage.

People can’t perform at their best when they don’t know where they stand. When they don’t feel secure, their attention is split between the job and their own survival.

6. They let conflict, gossip, and drama live in the walls.

Most leaders see gossip, cold shoulders, and back-channel complaints as annoying but harmless.

Surveys show that 57% of employees have experienced disrespectful or dismissive treatment from colleagues or leadership. One in four of them give less effort as a result.

When managers refuse to address it, they send a clear signal: “You’re on your own.” People waste energy navigating politics instead of doing work.

Law 5 Defined

The environment contains all the conditions that affect how well your people can focus on the work that matters, and do it well.

It exists in three layers:

• The physical layer is the one most people recognize: workspace, noise levels, equipment, air quality, basic cleanliness and safety.

• The operational layer is where many leaders unknowingly destroy productivity: how priorities get set and how often they change, the volume and structure of meetings, communication norms, and whether protected focus time exists.

• The cultural layer is the emotional climate of the team: how conflict gets handled, whether outside pressure from clients, other departments, or leadership above is allowed to reach your people, and whether people feel safe enough to speak up, take risks, and admit mistakes without fear.

When the environment is stable and well-managed, the behaviors you’ve trained become sustainable. The tools you’ve provided get used effectively. And the expectations you’ve set become achievable on a consistent basis.

The environment won’t always be perfect. But stay aware of what’s working to support your team and aggressively guard against anything that disrupts it.

What Happened to That Agency

When the company GM heard about the situation, he flew into town to meet with the agent and see what was going on.

When he asked about the conditions, the payroll, and where the agent was spending his time, the agent became combative. The agent told him it was none of the company’s business.

The agent’s refusal forced the GM’s hand, and the company pulled the agency from him.

They didn’t want their name attached to that kind of operation. This company had standards for how the business should run and how people should be treated. And beyond that, they had no confidence that this owner could hold together an environment capable of supporting the business.

The GM talked the dispatchers into coming back. He moved the operation into a professional office space. He stabilized payroll and provided basic benefits and insurance. He made sure they had the right equipment and committed to hiring additional help so the full weight of the operation wasn’t crushing two people.

One of those dispatchers was a good friend of mine. He’d been filling me in, and I couldn’t believe how chaotic the situation had gotten.

But when I heard how this company enforced their standards and took care of their people, I knew I wanted to be a part of it.

I applied for the dispatcher position. It was a lot less money than I was making at the time. I had never worked in trucking and had zero industry experience. So the general manager didn’t take me seriously when I told him I wanted to eventually run the agency. But he hired me anyway and said, “We’ll see what happens.”

It looked like a gamble. But I knew what cards I was holding. I’d already had success building businesses across multiple industries, and I was confident I could duplicate it once again.

Over the next year, we grew the business.

I identified opportunities with existing customers and reached out to new ones. We created over $1 million in new revenue, which started improving the customer ratios and gave the business room to breathe.

I absorbed some of the incoming calls from customers and set better boundaries around communication so the work became more sustainable and less demeaning.

We were able to grow that business because the conditions supported the execution. The same two dispatchers who had been overwhelmed and walked away were now steady, productive, and thriving under a different set of circumstances.

Same people. Same freight. Better environment. Different results.

Because of the growth that company saw, I was given that agency just one year later and am still running it today.

This Week’s Directive

You can’t diagnose this from your desk. Go to where the work happens and watch.

Look at how often they’re interrupted. Look at how many windows, apps, or systems they’re juggling at once. Look at how often they have to hunt for information or approvals.

Ask them what conditions are helping them in their work and what conditions make it harder.

Then look at the outside forces you might not control directly but are responsible for managing. Is there a client or vendor creating undue stress? Is there pressure from above that you’re passing straight through unfiltered to your team? Is there conflict or gossip that you’ve been tolerating because it’s easier than addressing it?

Pick the single condition causing the most drag on focus and performance and take visible action this week.

Declare a daily focus block where no interruptions are allowed. Have the conversation you’ve been avoiding about a conflict that’s leaking into everyone’s day. Or fix something in the workspace that everyone has been stepping around.

Sometimes the fix is fast and cheap. Sometimes it’s a longer play. Either way, the first step is seeing the environment through their eyes, not yours.

What This Forges

When you take ownership of the environment, you stop losing good people to problems you could have fixed.

Your team notices. Anyone can make a speech about culture. But people can see right through it. When you visibly invest in the conditions they work inside, they feel the difference.

People who see that you’ve invested in them first will work harder to produce results for you. The value you place on your people shows up in the value they’re willing to give back.

Gallup found that 70% of the variance in how engaged and committed a team is day to day traces directly back to the manager. And over half of all employees who’ve quit a job cite the work environment as the reason.

When the environment is sound, your team stops leaking productivity through cracks you could have sealed. You get that time back.

Leaders who borrow against their environment pay for it in burnout, turnover, and diminished results. Leaders who build it get compound interest in performance, engagement, and trust.

Consciously foster the environment that lets capable people produce. Protect it from the forces that would undermine it. Then watch what happens when your team has the optimal conditions to perform.

Next up: Law 6. Once the environment is sound, the next question is whether the incentives are driving effort in the right direction.

Phil • Killing Crucibles

New here? Start with the introduction to the Nine Laws.

Next in the series: Law 6: Align Incentives

What’s been your experience or challenge with this? Drop it in the comments below.

I was 19 years old, in my first job outside my parents’ donut shop. My manager sent me out to help unload a delivery truck. Part of the load was heavy boxes full of books. That meant lifting them off the back, twisting and bending, and dropping them to the warehouse floor.

I asked her for a back support. She told me if I wanted one, I could go buy it myself.

The internet wasn’t what it is today. I didn’t even know where to find one. And making barely more than minimum wage didn’t give me much to work with.

I hurt my back. Bad.

The pain hit me that night and didn’t stop. I went in for X-rays and found out I had a bulging disc at L4–L5. At 19 years old. The doctors didn’t want to do surgery on someone that young, so they put me on workers’ comp and chiropractic care.

I still walk around stiff every day. Because it happened so young, I don’t remember what it was like to not have pain in my back.

One $20 back brace could’ve prevented all of that.

It wasn’t even about the money. She just didn’t care enough to help me get one.

Hopefully, your tool failures won’t literally cripple someone. But the same mindset of “Just make do with what we’ve got,” is injuring your team’s performance, their morale, and sometimes their bodies.

Where This Fits

Expectations define the target. Measurements make it visible. Training builds the capability to hit it. Law 4 asks: Do they have what they need to do the job to the standard you’ve set?

If the answer is no, everything you’ve built so far stalls. You’ve handicapped your team’s work before it’s started.

What Most Managers Get Wrong

1. They have no idea what their people are working with.

   They set the expectation, train them, and move on to the next fire. Meanwhile, their team is working with outdated software, broken equipment, or clunky workarounds they’ve cobbled together because nobody’s asked them what they need in months.

   They look around and think, “They’re making it work,” and never ask what it’s costing.

   Their team members stop bringing it up. They work harder to cover for tools that aren’t helping as they should. And mangers never see the drag because they’re not close enough to the work to notice it.

   Over time, workarounds become “the way we do it here,” and leaders congratulate themselves for having “resourceful people.” When really, the system is failing and the team has just gotten good at hiding it.

2. They dismiss concerns when their people speak up.

   Someone complains that the system is slow or the equipment doesn’t work right. And the response is some version of “We don’t have the budget,” or “You should be more resourceful,” or “That’s how I did it, and I managed.”

   Every time you wave off a legitimate concern, you’re training your people to stop telling you what’s broken.

3. They treat tools as an expense instead of an investment.

   When someone asks for better equipment or a new system, a lot of managers hear a line item. They weigh the cost against the budget and either reject it or push it off. What they don’t calculate is the cost of not having it. It shows up in the rework, the missed targets, the slow bleeding of time and morale when people are fighting their own tools.

4. They ignore tools that are right in front of them.

   Sometimes the tool isn’t missing. It’s neglected. It’s sitting in the back, dirty, broken, or forgotten because nobody saw the value in maintaining it.

5. They give people tools without a strategy.

   A tool without a clear purpose is clutter. Managers hand out new software, new equipment, new processes, and expect results just because the tools exist. But a tool only works when it’s tied to a clear expectation, the person knows how to use it, and there’s a reason for using it that connects back to what drives the business.

Law 4 Defined

So what counts as a “tool”? Anything that removes barriers between capable people and the outcomes you expect.

When the right tools are in place, the behaviors you’ve trained become the path of least resistance. The system makes the right way easier than the wrong way. When tools are missing or broken, you’re not testing skill or will. You’re testing tolerance for dysfunction.

A new tool often requires new training. Sometimes equipping a tool reveals that your expectation needs to be reframed. You’ll move back and forth between the Laws as needed.

A Neglected Tool Becomes A Sales Engine

Remember the store I took from a million to $3.5 million a year? One of the biggest levers was a tool nobody was using.

I asked everyone in the store what was holding them back. The overwhelming response was they had no traffic.

The store had a jewelry cleaning station that was meant to be up in front of the store where customers could see it. But the previous manager had it shoved in the back.

It was dirty. The ultrasonic cleaner didn’t work properly. The signs were old and faded. And years of dripping water left discolored streaks down the side.

It looked like garbage, so they treated it like garbage.

But I recognized it as a tool we could leverage.

I ordered a new ultrasonic cleaner. Then I spent a full day cleaning it inside and out, replaced the signage, and made sure it had everything it needed.

This store had an incredibly valuable neighbor: Von Maur, an upper-end department store. Those were exactly the customers I wanted.

So I wheeled that cleaning station right up to the lease line and positioned it near the Von Maur entrance.

I told them they were going to stand on the lease line and offer to clean people’s jewelry for free. I coached them to start a conversation while the jewelry was in the cleaner. To ask about special occasions coming up or recommend matching pieces. If they spotted a loose diamond, they just saved the customer from losing it and probably picked up a repair sale. They learned how to use the cleaning as a door opener and build the relationship from there.

Traffic started climbing. Sales started climbing. Our customer base grew. We became so busy that after a while, I was wheeling that cleaning station back into the store.

When traffic slowed down again, we’d bring it back out.

Nothing changed about the mall. Nothing changed about the economy. I didn’t get a better ad budget. I took a neglected tool, restored it, positioned it right, and trained people how to use it. One simple cleaning station became part of the engine that drove $2.5 million in growth.

What’s sitting neglected in your operation right now?

This Week’s Directive

This week, go to where your people do the work.

Pick one role or one function tied to your core drivers. Then ask two questions.

First, ask yourself: What tools does this person need to hit the standard I’ve set? What systems, equipment, resources, or processes does the work depend on?

Second, ask them: What’s slowing you down? What’s broken, missing, outdated, or harder than it needs to be?

But before you ask, frame it. Tell them you’re there to see how the work gets done and find out what’s in their way. Without proper framing, they’re likely to hide the workarounds, avoid the broken tools, and run the polished version of their job.

Make a list. Prioritize by impact. What’s causing the most drag on the metrics that matter most?

Your team will notice. Not just because the tool got fixed. But because you showed up, asked, and acted.

What This Forges

Somewhere in your operation right now, somebody is “unloading the truck.” They’re wrestling with software that fights them, equipment that doesn’t work right, or processes so clunky they’ve built their own workarounds just to get through the day.

Every time you send someone into that without what they need, you’re rolling the dice with their output, their energy, and your results. Most of the time the cost is subtle. It shows up in slower work, more errors, rising frustration, and surprise quittings.

When you take Law 4 seriously, effort stops getting wasted on compensating for broken or missing tools and starts converting directly into results.

You’ll also notice something shift in how they see you. When you walk the floor, ask what’s broken, and fix it, you build trust that no speech or policy can replicate.

Fully equip your people. Then step back and watch efficiency climb when they have the proper tools to work with.

Next up: Law 5. The next question is whether the environment they’re working inside helps them or holds them back.

Phil • Killing Crucibles

New here? Start with the introduction to the Nine Laws.

Next in the series: Law 5: Create A Productive Environment

What’s been your experience or challenge with this? Drop it in the comments below.

The director of sales was a friend who’d worked with me before at another hotel, so I thought I knew what I was walking into. I was wrong.

She walked into my office, dropped a directory of associations on my desk, and told me to start making phone calls.

I asked for some orientation and training first.

She shook her head, looked confused, and asked why.

I told her I’d like to know things like how many rooms we had, banquet capacity, catering options, room rates, and target pricing.

She scrunched up her nose and told me, “You don’t need to know any of that. Just start making phone calls.”

So I trained myself. I dug through old files and found contracts from associations we’d hosted years ago. I studied what they’d booked and what they were looking for. Before I picked up the phone, I met with every department manager in the hotel: front desk, catering, banquets, the head chef, maintenance, housekeeping. I wanted to see the hotel through their eyes.

What I heard was the same story, over and over: nobody had been trained. People were thrown into their roles and left to figure it out.

Later that week, the general manager pulled me aside. He’d heard I was making the rounds and wanted to know what I was up to. I told him what I’d found.

He vented about the hotel’s guest service scores. They were in the toilet. The brand was breathing down his neck. He might lose the Holiday Inn flag if things didn’t turn around.

At another hotel, as the Front Office Manager, I had taken guest service scores from the bottom of the barrel to the best they’d ever had in under three months.

I said, “Based on everything I’ve heard, the biggest issue is training. Everyone is frustrated that there’s a lot they don’t know and no one’s shown them what to do. If you want those scores to move, we need to put a training plan together.”

He looked at me and said, “We have so much turnover in our staff. It would just be a waste of time and money.”

“That is the stupidest management philosophy I’ve ever heard.”

I let the statement sit there in uncomfortable silence.

Not surprisingly, he let me go shortly after. And the Holiday Inn sign came down within a year.

I wasn’t sorry. Life’s too short to work for someone who sees investing in their people as a waste of resources. Build the skills to lead well, and you’ll never have to.

Closing the Gap

Expectations define success. Measurements reveal the gap. Training closes it.

Without clear expectations and visible measurements, training becomes scattered and disconnected from what’s holding the business back. With them, you can see who’s struggling, whether the whole team is falling short, and exactly where to focus.

If someone knows what’s expected and can see where they stand but doesn’t have the knowledge or skill to close the gap, you have a training opportunity. No amount of pressure, accountability, or feedback will fix it.

What Most Managers Get Wrong

Most managers would never say “training is a waste of time” out loud.

That general manager looked at the turnover and decided training wasn’t worth the investment. But he never saw that the turnover existed because no one invested in training. His people were embarrassed about what they didn’t know, overwhelmed, and frustrated. So they quit.

But plenty of managers operate from the same logic in subtler ways.

The most common version of this thinking is “It’s faster if I just do it myself.”

Teaching someone takes longer than doing the task. So you do it yourself. Six months later, you’re buried under work that should have been delegated months ago and your team still doesn’t know how to do it.

Another mistake is confusing orientation with training.

A lot of managers walk a new hire around, show them where things are, and call it training. That’s orientation. It doesn’t make them competent.

The next mistake is assuming experience means they already know.

You hire someone with ten years in the industry and figure they’ll hit the ground running. But ten years somewhere else doesn’t mean they know how you want it done here. If you don’t show them your way, they’ll default to whatever habits they had before and you’ll be frustrated by results that don’t match your expectations.

Then there’s what I call the curse of competence.

When you’ve done something long enough, it becomes automatic. You stop thinking about the individual steps. And because it feels effortless to you, it’s easy to assume it should be obvious to everyone else.

I discovered this when I was teaching one of my kids to drive. They were struggling with right turns. They were either clipping the curb or swinging too wide. I tried to explain it, and I realized I couldn’t. I don’t think about how to make a right turn. I just make it. I had to get out, drive it myself, and deliberately pay attention to every micro-decision before I could teach it.

That’s exactly what the director of sales was doing at that Holiday Inn. Room counts, banquet capacity, and pricing were second nature to her. So when I asked for training, it didn’t dawn on her that she was operating with a great deal of context I didn’t have. She’d forgotten what it was like to walk in and know nothing.

The last pattern is the insecure manager who hoards knowledge.

Some managers won’t train because they’re afraid of what happens if their people get too good. If everyone knows how to do what I do, what do they need me for?

They keep critical tasks close. And eventually, the business outgrows them. I’ve watched managers build up a team or location, then get passed over or pushed out because they couldn’t delegate, couldn’t develop anyone, and couldn’t keep up with the demands they helped create.

The most secure leaders don’t cling to tasks. They produce capable people.

How to Train Effectively

Training is the transfer of knowledge and capability.

It starts with knowledge. People need to understand the what and the why before they can execute. But most managers stop there. They explain the concepts, then act surprised when performance doesn’t change. That’s because people don’t perform concepts. They perform behaviors.

Behaviors are actions you can observe.

When someone falls short, you shouldn’t just tell them to “do better.” You look at the behaviors tied to that outcome and ask: which ones are missing?

This is where the distinction between knowledge and skill matters.

Knowledge is what you know. Skill is what you can do. It’s the ability to execute reliably under real conditions.

Someone can recite every step of your sales process and still fall apart in front of a live customer or client.

Your job in Law 3 is to move people from “I understand it” to “I can do it consistently.” Then eventually to “I can do it under pressure.”

Use the training process IDPOPS: Introduce, Demonstrate, Practice, Observe, Provide Feedback, Summarize.

Introduce the concept. Keep this tight. Give them the what and the why. Just enough to understand the standard and the reasoning behind it.

Demonstrate what it looks like. Model the behavior so they can see it done right, not just hear it described.

Practice. Let them do it in a low-risk environment. Role-plays, walkthroughs, dry runs. Practice is how they build their own “muscle.”

Observe as they apply this skill. Step back and watch them execute.

Provide Feedback on what you saw. Be specific. What they did well, and what could be improved.

Summarize the key points.

If you stop after the introduction, you just held a briefing. If you stop after the demonstration, you only performed in front of them. Training doesn’t happen until they practice, and it doesn’t stick until you observe, coach, and reinforce.

When training follows this progression and ties directly to your expectations and measurements, you’re not just running a training program. You’re building capability exactly where your business needs it most.

Same Problem. Different Mindset.

Remember the problem that general manager refused to fix? Here’s how I solved it at my previous hotel.

Guest service scores were near the bottom when I arrived, and my main task was to turn them around.

Corporate sent monthly reports with every question from the guest survey along with how we ranked against other Holiday Inns.

Expectations and measurements were already in place.

We were in the bottom 10% of Holiday Inn guest satisfaction scores nationwide.

During my interview, I sat in the lobby and saw the problem immediately. The front desk was consistently empty. Guests would walk up, stand there, and wait until someone finally wandered out from the back.

That’s when I watched one man come down from his room three separate times because his key wouldn’t work. Each time there was no one at the desk. He’d stand there waiting until someone appeared, recoded it, and sent him back upstairs without a second thought. By the third trip, he was irate.

That was the first problem to fix, because it was the first impression every guest had of the hotel.

I reframed the job. These are guests in your home. You are the host. Your job is to make them feel important and comfortable and their stay hassle-free.

Then we translated that into simple, concrete behaviors.

Someone always needed to be standing at the desk. Every guest got a smile and a greeting before they even reached the counter.

We held training meetings on Saturday mornings. We role-played check-ins, greetings, and problem situations. We drilled these behaviors until they became second nature.

I trained them to treat that entire arrival process like a choreographed dance.

When a call came in from a guest arriving at the airport, the front desk attendant took the name and sent a bellman in the shuttle to pick them up. The bellman greeted them by name at the curb: “Good morning, Mr. Smith. Let me grab that bag for you.” On the drive back, the bellman radioed the front desk: “I have Mr. Smith. We’ll be there in five minutes.”

The front desk pre-printed Mr. Smith’s paperwork, coded his keys, and had everything waiting.

When Mr. Smith walked through the door, the front desk already knew who he was. They greeted him by name, confirmed his ID and payment, had him sign, handed him the key, and got him on his way feeling like a million bucks.

Within the first month, those behaviors alone moved us from the bottom of the brand to roughly the top 30% on guest satisfaction. By the end of the third month, after training our way through the rest of the survey issues, we were performing in the top 10% of Holiday Inns nationwide.

Same situation. Same market. Added training. Different results.

This Week’s Directive

Build a simple grid. Across the top, list each of the key standards you’ve identified. Down the side, write the name of every person you manage.

Once you’ve filled in all your numbers, take a highlighter and mark every point where someone is falling short of the expectation.

If you look down a column and more than half the team is highlighted, that’s not an individual problem. That’s either a gap the whole team needs training on, or a standard that needs to be reexamined.

If you look across a row and one person is highlighted across most or all of the categories, you have an individual problem. That person needs focused attention.

Identify one to three behaviors that would have the highest impact.

Then design your training using the IDPOPS progression.

Follow the progression and observe whether they can execute. Repeat the steps until they can do it well.

Next up: Law 4. Once your people know what to do and how to do it, you need to make sure they have the right tools to execute.

What This Forges

When you train deliberately, you stop wondering whether underperformance is a system failure or a people failure.

Your team gets sharper. You spend less time correcting mistakes and more time building on what’s working.

You’ll also notice something less obvious: trust. When people see that you’re willing to invest in making them better, they respond differently. They take feedback as help instead of criticism.

And when someone still can’t perform after they’ve been trained? You’ll have the clarity and confidence to act when it’s time for the harder conversations.

That’s what training does when it’s built into the system. It doesn’t just raise skill. It raises the standard of accountability.

Give the knowledge. Build the skill. Then watch who starts to excel when new behaviors are forged.

Phil • Killing Crucibles

New here? Start with the introduction to the Nine Laws.

Next in the series: Law 4: Equip the Right Tools

What’s been your experience or challenge with this? Drop it in the comments below.

I was 26 when I took over a store no one expected much from. It had a long history of stagnant growth, and the company had written it off as an average, low-volume store.

The VP told me I wouldn’t promote out of there because it would never do more than a million dollars a year. He was trying to encourage me to relocate.

But in less than three years, that store did over $3.5 million.

Then he was slapping me on the back and buying me drinks at the after-party where just one hour earlier, I walked across stage to accept the award for Manager of the Year with him standing beside the President and CEO.

After that, I could write my own ticket.

One of the most important things I did to turn that struggling store into one of the top stores in the division, was to make the core metrics of success unavoidably visible to the team.

Why This Comes Second

Law 1 made your expectations clear.

Law 2 makes them real.

You can tell someone all day what good looks like, but if they can’t see something that shows whether they’re achieving it, that expectation might as well not exist.

Without visible measurements, the outcome is subjective. It’s open to interpretation. All the work you’ve done so far won’t matter. And you won’t be able to effectively do any of the work ahead of you.

Building the Scoreboard

There were lots of numbers to manage in that store. But there were five key standards that made or broke our success.

Corporate sent out daily reports in an email. The data was there. Every associate could log into the system, pull their numbers, and see how they were doing.

And they did… most of the time.

That wasn’t good enough for me. I took a different approach.

Every day, I printed those numbers. I stripped off every piece of non-essential information. Then I went a step further.

I circled the wins. The places where their metrics were at or above goal. I wrote a brief note of encouragement to celebrate their success.

On the areas where they were behind, I did the math for them and noted what it would take to catch up.

At the top of each sheet, I wrote a simple score: five out of five, four out of five, whatever the score was that day.

I taped those sheets to the break room door.

Impossible to Ignore

Why the door? Because it was impossible to avoid. Everyone looked there…

• When they came in for the day.

• When they went back for lunch.

• When they grabbed supplies.

• When they left to go home.

You could not walk in or out of that break room without seeing your name and your five numbers.

I knew it would get their attention. But I was surprised at how fully they embraced this. All day, associates would open that door just to check the sheet.

After a sale, they’d check, how much more do I need?

They’d get a credit application and then go see how close they were now to their target.

They knew the game. They knew the score. They knew exactly what they needed to do to win.

And those sheets did more than show them their numbers. They showed them that I saw their numbers.

I didn’t just set standards and walk away. Making the notes on those sheets told them three important things:

• This work matters.

• Someone is paying attention.

• Their effort and progress are seen.

That is the heart of real accountability. Not threats of firing or write-ups. The simple fact that their work is noticed.

What Most Managers Get Wrong

1. They assume everybody is looking at the measurements.

   The reports go out in an email, or they live in a dashboard somewhere, and the assumption is that people are paying attention to them. Many times, they’re not.

2. There are way too many metrics.

   I’ve seen scoreboards with ten, twenty, or sometimes more numbers on them. When you have that many, nobody knows what matters. You can’t focus on that many things at once, so people either ignore most of it or bounce between metrics without ever really improving anything.

3. There are too few metrics.

   If you zero in on just one thing—say, sales—you lose track of some critical things. Quality suffers. Customer relationships suffer. People start optimizing for that one number, and everything else gets broken along the way.

4. The scoreboard keeps changing.

   I’ve seen it change so often that employees start asking, “What’s important this month?” Eventually it turns into a joke. When the goal posts keep moving, people stop taking them seriously.

5. Measuring activity instead of impact.

   They track hours clocked, emails sent, meetings attended. Those things make people look busy. They make people feel productive. But none of them answer the real question: did we move the business forward?

And to be clear, this isn’t about ignoring behaviors altogether.

Sometimes we know that certain behaviors, done consistently, lead to results. There’s enough repetition there that the outcome is predictable.

The mistake is when behavior becomes the scoreboard.

Tracking activity is fine if it’s tied to something that moves the business. But activity by itself doesn’t tell you whether you’re winning or losing. It just tells you that people were busy.

What really counts is measurements that show results. Measure the things that have a real impact on the business.

If It’s Not Measured, It Doesn’t Matter

If you say something is important, how are you measuring it? Where does your team see that number? How often? What happens when it moves up or down?

If you don’t have good answers, you’re telling your team this is optional.

Measurement removes subjectivity. When expectations are tied to objective numbers, performance conversations don’t become about feelings or interpretations.

You help your team to manage themselves toward the goal. They see the gap, and they work to close it without you micromanaging every step.

I’ve seen this firsthand. It freed me up to focus on coaching and strategy instead of always chasing down performance issues.

Now you’re going to do the same.

This Week’s Directive

You’ve already identified your core drivers. If you’re tracking those numbers somewhere, this directive is about making them visible. If you’re not tracking them yet, you’ve got bigger problems. Start there.

How do you make these numbers unavoidable for your team?

Pick the metrics tied to your core drivers and decide where they need to live so people can’t miss them. That might be:

• A board in the work area

• A printed sheet at a daily choke point

• A shared message board that people use daily

• A screen people see before they start work

Get creative if you need to. The format doesn’t matter. Consistency does.

It needs to be in the same place at the same time every day.

Finally, decide how you’ll add the human element.

Your team can read numbers on a report. What changes behavior is knowing that you are looking at them too. Figure out how you can add quick notes and remarks to these reports.

That’s your objective for this week. Make the scoreboard real. Make it unavoidable. And let your team see that you’re watching it too.

Next up: Law 3. Once expectations are clear and performance is visible, you’ll see the gaps. Training is how you close them.

What This Forges

Visible metrics build confidence and ownership. When your team sees the direct connection between their effort and the numbers moving, they believe their work matters.

When metrics are visible, potential problems surface before they become fires. People speak up when they see gaps forming. They don’t wait for you to notice or for the crisis to hit.

The data confirms this. Gallup found that teams with clear expectations and visible metrics deliver 23% higher profitability and 18-25% higher productivity. But the best case study will be your own.

That once average, chaotic store did not become a top performer because the location or economy improved. It turned because the system made performance inevitable.

For Law 2: Provide Measurements, this meant:

• I locked on the few metrics that mattered.

• I built a simple, reliable way to measure them.

• I put those numbers where nobody could avoid seeing them.

• And I layered real human attention on top of the scoreboard.

The result: focus, excitement, ownership.

People knew what was expected. They knew what today’s work needed to be. And they knew their effort didn’t go unnoticed.

That’s what measurement does when it’s done right. It’s not pressure for its own sake. It’s clarity.

So, if something matters to your business, measure it. Make it tangible. Put it where they’ll see it. Add your marks to show you’re watching.

Then watch who closes the gaps when the score is fully visible.

Phil • Killing Crucibles

New here? Start with the introduction to the Nine Laws.

Next in the series: Law 3: Train Knowledge & Skill

What’s been your experience or challenge with this? Drop it in the comments below.

In my early 20s, I got hired at the most prestigious jewelry store in town. It was high volume, had the best people, and an incredible training program. I was hungry for all of it.

I was the least experienced person there by a mile. The next-least-experienced salesperson had been managing for another major chain for nine years. I’d been selling jewelry for less than a year.

The manager wasn’t in the store much. But whenever we did talk, he’d reassure me.

“You’re doing fine. Just keep doing what you’re doing.”

I remained focused on the training.

Three months in, he took me out to lunch and said, “This just isn’t working out. You’re not doing good enough for this store, and I don’t see that changing any time soon.”

I asked if I could ever come back. He said: “Possibly. Go back to the minor leagues for a while and work on your swing. Then we’ll see.”

I was crushed.

I never forgot that feeling. And I swore I would never do that to somebody else.

What He Never Told Me

The veterans knew how to position themselves for the big sales—bridal sets, engagement rings, and high-ticket items. They controlled the prime floor space and passed the time-wasters off to me.

“Keep doing what you’re doing” made me believe my job was to master the sales and training and handle the overflow, not fight the experienced people for sales.

If he had pulled me aside and said, you need to be more aggressive on the floor and stop letting them position you for scraps, I would have prioritized differently.

But that conversation never happened.

The worst part is that this wasn’t even an oversight. It was part of his system: throw people into the fire and see who survives.

This manager was an exceptional recruiter. He always had a bench five to ten people deep. There was always more talent waiting to come in.

His system relied on time and pressure to sort out the staff for him. People were brought in, put on the floor, and left to figure it out. Those who hit the ground running, stayed. Those who didn’t, were shown the door.

He saw me struggle with something specific. But all he ever said was, “You’re doing fine.” All while he watched me drown.

When he finally told me what he wanted, he did it by firing me.

What Most Managers Get Wrong

Most managers don’t avoid setting expectations. They think they’ve already done it.

Gallup recently found less than half of workers know what’s expected of them. And that number is getting worse, not better.

Too often, managers aren’t specific enough. They’re too sloppy or vague. They don’t define what “good” looks like.

If anyone can walk away thinking “good” looks different than what you meant, you haven’t been specific enough.

It’s always a good idea to check what the other person heard

Have them tell you what the expectation is. If they can’t explain it the way you had it pictured, then you haven’t effectively communicated it yet.

Another mistake managers make is assuming that because someone has been there a long time, they should just know.

Managers can also assume because someone has experience somewhere else that they’re automatically going to do it the way they want it done.

And the biggest contributors to crucible culture are the managers that start putting pressure on people before they check for clarity.

Pressure has its place. Sometimes people do need a kick in the ass.

But if they don’t know what direction they’re supposed to be pointed, you’ll just be kicking them in the wrong direction.

One of the worst things managers can screw up is taking it personally.

They see someone not doing what they should be doing and decide it’s because they don’t respect them or care about their job.

Most people don’t wake up in the morning saying, “I wonder how I can piss my boss off today.”

So, before you make it personal, sit down and talk to them. Say, “Here’s what I’ve been seeing. Here’s what I expected instead. Tell me what’s going on.”

Sometimes there may be a valid underlying reason and you’ll thank me when that saves you from putting a big fat foot in your mouth.

Taking it personally in a leadership position is just low emotional maturity. And that will make you lose respect quicker than anything else.

How to Make Expectations Specific

Every clear expectation must answer three questions:

First: What’s the outcome?
Be specific. “Improve performance” is too vague. Name the actual result you want them to deliver.

Second: What is “good”?
It might be a number, a rate, a frequency, or a clearly defined behavior. This must be objective. If anyone could disagree about whether the standard was met, it’s not specific enough.

Third: What’s the timeframe?
Every expectation needs a time component. Is there a deadline or is it an ongoing responsibility? What is the window in which it must be executed and measured?

When all three are present, you have a clear expectation.

• Vague: Increase sales this quarter.
  Specific: Generate $50,000 in sales per month.

• Vague: Provide good customer service.
  Specific: Respond to all customer emails within 30 minutes during business hours.

• Vague: Keep quality high.
  Specific: Maintain a defect rate below 2% on all shipped units each month.

  ---

This Week’s Directive

Start with one of the core drivers you identified last week.

Pick one role that’s directly responsible for that driver and list every expectation you currently have around that driver for that role.

Now narrow the list. At this stage, you’re aiming for one expectation, or at most the top three.

Run through our three questions:

• What’s the outcome?

• What is good?

• What’s the time frame?

Repeat for any additional roles and each of the key drivers.

In the next article, we’ll cover how to measure these expectations so performance is trackable and visible.

Same Person. Different System.

After I was fired, I was immediately offered an assistant manager position at my previous company.

From the beginning, the manager made it clear that I was responsible for 25–30% of the store’s volume.

It only took a few months before I found myself in a head-to-head battle over a large diamond sale.

The customer bounced back and forth between me and the top salesperson at the store where I’d just been canned. She was a consistent company top ten producer, clearing over a million a year in a store that did nearly four times our volume.

But I closed that sale.

That one alone put me well over my monthly goal.

My manager pulled me aside afterward and said, “I can see you making a sale like that every month.”

I was the same person with the same skills and the same work ethic. The only thing that changed was clearly knowing what was expected.

Within days, the manager who had fired me reached out to bring me back.

After months of pursuit, I finally sat down with him. I asked, “What changed? It’s only been a few months. I’m still the same person you said wasn’t good enough. Why am I suddenly a good fit now?”

He said, “I can tell something changed in you. You’re standing taller. You’re walking with more confidence. You’ve grown.”

I told him, “I can’t work for you again. I never know where I stand with you.”

To his credit, he acknowledged it and said, “That’s fair.”

We departed on good terms and remained in contact, but the damage to any future working relationship had already been done.

What You’ll Forge

You’ll start getting a lot more of what you want.

You’ll notice environment changes too.

You remove a lot of the anxiety that comes from the unknown. A clear directive lets them focus their energy on what will make them successful.

You’ll also get a lot of time back.

When work gets done right the first time, you’ll stop fixing mistakes, catching up, and putting out fires.

So get to work and start ruthlessly critiquing your expectations.

If you want people to succeed, tell them what success looks like. Then watch how they deliver.

Phil • Killing Crucibles

New here? Start with the introduction to the Nine Laws.

Next in the series: Law 2: Provide Measurements

What’s been your experience or challenge with this? Drop it in the comments below.

Meet Claud Burnham

Claud was trying his best.

He’d been promoted because he was great at his job. A top performer. The guy who stayed late, fixed problems, and never dropped the ball.

But no one ever taught him how to lead a team.

On Monday morning, Claud called a quick huddle. Sales were soft and a deadline had been missed. He told the team they needed to “pick it up” this week. He didn’t explain what “it” was. He assumed they knew. He would have.

By Tuesday, a new hot‑button issue came down from above. Claud shifted the whole team midstream to chase it, and Monday’s directive got pushed off the plate.

By Wednesday, he introduced a new process he’d sketched out over lunch. It made sense in his head. He sent an email of what he wanted implemented.

When people asked questions, Claud felt a flicker of irritation.

It’s in the email!

When mistakes showed up, he pointed them out. He referenced how it was supposed to be done. What he didn’t notice was that no one had ever heard that stated out loud.

Claud believed that if he applied a little more pressure, performance would catch up.

When people started quitting, he felt blindsided.

He said to himself, “People just don’t want to work anymore.”

He thought he was doing a good job. No one had ever shown him anything different.

I’ve seen a lot of Clauds. I’ve worked for them. I’ve trained them. I’ve been one myself. I can still slip back into being one if I’m not diligent about it.

Most managers struggle because they were never taught to build deliberate systems, not because they lack standards or smarts.

I was one of them. Until I was introduced to a performance framework that gave structure to what I’d been learning through trial and error. This performance framework forever changed how I led.

The Nine Laws were built on that foundation. After I identified some missing pieces and developed a diagnostic sequence, The Nine Laws became a tool that stops performance from depending on increasing pressure and starts flowing from the system itself.

What Most Managers Get Wrong

If you’ve lived any version of Claud’s story, you’ve probably been told to “set clear expectations” or “hold people accountable.” It’s good advice. But rarely do they tell you what to base those on.

When performance slips, most managers jump to the same conclusions:

• “They’re not paying attention.”

• “They don’t care enough.”

• “They just weren’t cut out for it.”

We judge attitude and ability before we examine the system. Expectations go unstated. Progress is invisible. Standards shift. Tools are missing. Feedback comes late or not at all. And then we’re surprised when people struggle.

Leaders crank up pressure inside an ambiguous, unstable environment and call whoever survives a “strong performer.”That’s how crucible cultures are born. The Nine Laws break that pattern with one question: Is the system sound?

The Nine Laws

Here’s how the system breaks down. The Nine Laws are a diagnostic sequence. The first seven laws are about what you’re responsible to build. The last two are about the person. When you build them in order, performance management stops being reactive and becomes something you intentionally designed.

• Law 1: Communicate Clear Expectations – So everyone understands what “good” looks like.

• Law 2: Provide Measurements – So your people can see where they stand.

• Law 3: Train Knowledge and Skill – So they have the ability to hit the mark.

• Law 4: Equip the Right Tools – So everyone has what they need to execute.

• Law 5: Maintain a Productive Environment – So your team can focus and do their best work.

• Law 6: Align Incentives – So effort runs in the direction of results.

• Law 7: Give Specific & Timely Feedback – So each individual can keep steady or correct course.

Only after those are in place can you clearly assess the individual:

• Law 8: Evaluate the Ability – Are they built for the role?

• Law 9: Assess the Will – Are they choosing to show up?

We’ll dig into each one later. But first, you need to narrow down the few key things your business fundamentally depends on.

This Week’s Directive

Your business has a handful of things it lives or dies on. You might track dozens of metrics. But if you haven’t identified the core drivers, you wind up spending too much time on secondary issues and pet peeves.

Your first job is to identify them and strip away everything else. Once they’re locked in, we’ll build expectations around them.

Start by brain-dumping everything you think matters. Every metric, behavior, result. Just get it all out. Don’t filter yet.

Then go back through and be ruthless. Cross out anything that’s mostly about your preferences or looking busy. If it doesn’t directly affect revenue, throughput, quality, safety, or whatever keeps your business alive, move it to the background.

For everything that’s left, ask: if this dipped for 90 days, would the core business suffer? If the answer is “we’d be annoyed but fine,” it’s not a core driver.

Force yourself down to five or fewer. Pick the non-negotiables where if these slip, nothing else matters. If you’re creeping toward ten, you’re kidding yourself.

Park the rest. Don’t throw them away. Put them on a separate list called “supporting metrics.” You’ll still track and manage them, but your focus stays on these core drivers.

Now you have a trim but powerful list. Next, we’ll build expectations from those drivers and turn scattered, wasted energy into a concentrated force.

Putting It All Together

Early in my career, I had pieces of this. They were bits I’d picked up from reading and trial and error.

But the first time the full system came together, I’d just been hired to stabilize a store. The team was so frustrated with the previous manager they were all about to walk.

In my first meeting with the VP, he told me if I wanted to advance in the company, I’d have to relocate. I would never promote out of that store.

That store had been hovering around $1 million a year for its entire existence. They had no reason to believe it had anything more to give.

In less than three years, I took that store to over $3.5 million. Nothing about the location or customer profile changed. But once the full system was in place, performance didn’t just improve. It exploded.

Everything I’ve built since then sits on that foundation. When I scaled it across multiple industries and got the same results, I knew it wasn’t a fluke. It was a blueprint.

What You’ll Forge

That blueprint works the same way whether you’re running a jewelry store or a tech team. Focus on what fundamentally drives your business and everything falls into place: expectations get sharper, metrics get simpler, training gets more targeted, and feedback becomes a direct conversation about specific outcomes.

When the system is sound, most performance issues disappear before you ever get to Law 8 or 9. Your best people notice, too. They stop carrying the weight of a broken system. They can see that the standard is tied to the success or failure of the business. Find your core drivers. Lock them in. Everything else will follow.

Phil • Killing Crucibles

Next in the series: Law 1: Communicate Clear Expectations

What’s been your experience or challenge with this? Drop it in the comments below.