Founders
“Why does everything still come back to me?”
For the work of managing
Practical guidance on setting expectations, discussing progress and addressing performance in growing businesses. Written by the people who do the work.
Year-end appraisals are coming. Start here to make them fair, evidenced and quick to run.
- 16 articles
- 3 free templates
- 7 topics
- No sign-up to read
Start with the question on your desk.
Managers
“What should I follow up each week?”
HR
“How do we address poor performance fairly?”
Browse by condition
Every article is filed under one of the six PACE conditions, so you can go straight to what is getting in your way.
Direction
Help people understand the priorities and their part in delivering them.
2 articles →Clarity
Set expectations people understand before their performance is reviewed.
3 articles →Conversation
Use check-ins and feedback to recognise delivery and address problems early.
2 articles →Both ways
Identify obstacles, assign actions and review the business’s part.
2 articles →Fairness
Build records, hear the employee’s response and follow a fair process.
2 articles →Leadership
Define what managers own and which decisions need the founder.
5 articles →Which one first?
The Quick Picture shows which condition your answers point to.
Take the 3-minute check →The toolkit
Templates from our articles. Free to download and adapt, no form to fill in.
Talentos Founder Visibility Toolkit
From the article: What should a founder's dashboard show? The few numbers a growing business needs
Business Goal-to-Employee Expectation Template
From the article: Turning business goals into staff targets: a practical guide for growing businesses
Talentos Performance Management Template Bundle
From the article: What is performance management? A plain-English guide for business owners
Which of the six conditions is weakest in your business?
Twelve statements, around three minutes, no sign-up. You get a profile and one thing to try this week.
Recently updated
Every article
- Why performance appraisals fail in small businesses, and how to fix themWhen one meeting decides pay, promotion and performance from memory, people get guarded and ratings drift. How to separate the decisions and build the review from records kept through the year.
- Missed monthly targets: how to read department KPIs in a growing businessA red number on the monthly scorecard says a target was missed. It doesn't say whether anything changed. How to tell a real problem from normal ups and downs.
- How to measure staff performance in roles without clear KPIs: a guide for small and growing businessesSome roles are valued for what doesn't go wrong. How to judge an accountant, PA or compliance officer on real evidence, without inventing numbers.
- Setting KPIs in a small business: why teams hit their targets and the business still strugglesEvery manager's scorecard is green, yet margins are thin and cash is tight. How KPIs change behaviour, and the questions to ask before you set one.
- Job description vs role scorecard: defining good performance in a growing businessYour employee does everything in their job description and the business still suffers. Why that happens, and how a role scorecard writes down what the job is for.
- What should a founder's dashboard show? The few numbers a growing business needsPlenty of reports and still no clear view of cash, margin or risk? The five questions a founder's dashboard should answer, and who should put it together.
- How to coach a newly promoted managerYou promoted your best performer and they're still doing their old job. How to coach a new manager on real work, starting with the role itself.
- What should a manager do each week? Five things to expect in a growing businessYour managers are busy. Can they tell you what their team achieved this week? Five things every manager should own weekly, with practical examples.
- Manager or senior employee? How to tell before you promote someoneYour best employee keeps rescuing the business. That doesn't show they can manage. How to tell the difference before you promote, and after.
- Why your managers won't decide without you, and what founders can changeYou've told your managers to take ownership, yet every decision still comes to you. How your everyday reactions teach managers to wait, and how to reverse it.
- Why hiring managers hasn't reduced your workload as a founderYour managers run their departments, yet you're still the one sorting out problems between them. Why it happens and how to get managers to resolve it together.
- When your business can't run without you: founder dependency in growing businessesIf decisions, knowledge and follow-up still wait for you, growth is limited by your time. How to tell where your business depends on you and how to delegate safely.
- Turning business goals into staff targets: a practical guide for growing businessesYou've set the target and shared it with the team, and little has changed. How to turn a business goal into clear expectations for each role, and keep them alive.
- Why your team keeps missing growth targets: turning goals into daily work in a growing businessGrowth targets slip when nobody turns them into weekly work or raises problems early. How founders connect targets to what managers and staff actually do.
- Underperforming staff or unsupported staff? How employers can tell the differenceBefore you decide someone is underperforming, check whether the business made good work possible. The signs, what to fix, and when support should end.
- What is performance management? A plain-English guide for business ownersPerformance management explained simply: what it is, who runs it, how it differs from an appraisal, and what it looks like week to week in a growing business.
The terms we use
- Culture of performance
- People know what to deliver, managers address progress and problems, and decisions rest on shared evidence.
- PACE
- Talentos’s method, built on Priorities, Accountability, Conditions and Evidence, assessed through six conditions.
- Performance Picture
- A ten-working-day assessment of how a business manages performance.
- Quick Picture
- A free, three-minute self-check for founders, owners and CEOs.
- PACE Check
- A follow-up assessment using the same conditions and baseline measures at months 6, 12 and 24.
How we write
Our articles are written by the Talentos founders from the work itself: setting expectations, running check-ins, reviewing records. Each one is filed under the PACE condition it helps with, and shows when it was last updated.
Where we cite research or law, we link to the source. Nothing here is legal advice on a particular case.
We don’t sell a newsletter or gate our templates. If an article helps, the next step is yours to take.