Make Performance Inevitable

Nine Laws of Performance Management

Nov 15, 2025

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.