"My people are not performing." Founders say it often, and sometimes it's true.
Before you decide, ask two questions. Did the person know what was expected? And did the business give them a reasonable chance to deliver it?
From the founder's office, someone who can't do the job and someone who's been set up to struggle look the same. The report is late, the target is missed, the customer complains. The difference only shows when you look at what surrounds the work. Was the standard written down, or mentioned once in a meeting? Did the information arrive on time? Did anyone check progress before the deadline? Was there any feedback before frustration set in?
Some people call this performance enablement: making good work possible before judging whether someone has failed. The standard stays where it was, and so does your right to make a hard decision. What changes is that when the decision comes, you know it's about the person's work and that the business did its part first.
What it looks like in a real week
Take a building-materials wholesaler in Nakuru with three branches and about 30 staff. (This is an illustrative example, not a client.) The founder is unhappy with the stock controller. The weekly stock report should be on her desk first thing on Monday. For two months it has arrived on Tuesday afternoon, with errors.
It looks like carelessness. When someone finally asks, the picture changes. The branches send their delivery notes as WhatsApp photos, often late on Sunday evening, and one branch manager sends his on Monday. Nobody told the branches when the report was due. The stock controller has been phoning them and filling gaps from memory, which is where the errors come from.
There may still be something for her to improve. She could have raised the problem weeks ago. But a warning letter on its own would have left the cause untouched, and her replacement would have hit the same wall.
Signs the business hasn't made good work possible
The standard is spoken and never written. If expectations live in conversations, WhatsApp messages or the founder's memory, people will read them differently. One person thinks speed matters most, another thinks accuracy does, and the founder expects both. A role doesn't need a twelve-page document, but it does need answers to three questions: what does this person own, what does good look like, and how will we know? Our piece on job descriptions and role scorecards shows one way to write it down.
Managers notice problems but don't follow up. Some managers can tell you exactly who is weak and who is always late. Ask for the last check-in note, the agreed action or the follow-up date, and there's nothing. Many managers in growing businesses were promoted because they were good at the job and were never shown how to manage people. This is common well beyond Kenya: Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2025 report found that 44% of managers globally had ever received management training.
The same blocker comes back every week. A sales rep keeps missing targets because price changes reach him after he's already quoted the customer. Complaints repeat because nobody owns the handover between sales and delivery. When a blocker keeps coming back, the business has got used to it without solving it.
Feedback arrives after the damage. If someone has been mishandling customer calls since February and the first serious conversation happens in June, four months have passed with nobody managing the problem.
Training is used to cover an unclear role. A supervisor who doesn't know what they're responsible for won't become effective after a leadership workshop. Before paying for training, name the gap. It might be skill, knowledge, tools, information that arrives late, or a role nobody has defined. Each one needs a different fix.
Records start when the founder is already angry. Notes written in the final month look like a case being built, and they usually list the failures without any of the help that was given.
The founder keeps rescuing. You call the staff member directly, fix the mistake yourself or change an instruction without telling the manager. It feels faster. It also teaches everyone that the real manager is still you, a pattern we describe in how founders accidentally train managers to wait.
What to do instead
Write the standard down. For a customer service role, that might be: complaints acknowledged within one working hour, logged in the complaints sheet, and the customer updated before close of business. For an operations supervisor: attendance known by 8am, stock counts that match the system, and issues closed or escalated within the week. The aim is to remove guesswork. You don't need to measure everything.
Give managers a weekly routine. Ten minutes per person, four questions: what moved this week, what's stuck, what help do you need, and what do we follow up before next week?
Fix the blocker, or name it. Some can't be fixed straight away, such as a slow approval at head office or a system that needs replacing. Write them down anyway, so nobody mistakes a structural problem for personal failure.
Give feedback early, and make it specific. "You need to improve your attitude" gives a person nothing to work with. Compare: "When a complaint comes in, the standard is to acknowledge it within an hour and update the customer the same day. That didn't happen on 4, 11 and 18 September. Let's agree how you'll handle the next five." The manager should be able to say what was expected, what happened, what help is available and when they'll look at it again.
Record the help as well as the failure. Note what was clarified, what support was offered, what the employee committed to, the follow-up date and what improved. That gives you a fairer picture, and it stops managers having the same conversation every month while nothing changes.
Keep helping and deciding apart. While you're supporting someone, the conversation is about how they improve. At an agreed review date, the question becomes what the evidence shows. You can support someone properly and still make a firm decision later.
When support isn't enough
Support doesn't mean carrying someone forever. If the role is clear, the tools and information are there, feedback has been given and recorded, and the gap still hasn't closed, you're facing a different decision. You can take it with a clear conscience.
This is also where the law comes in. Under section 41 of the Employment Act 2007, before terminating someone for poor performance you must explain the reason in a language they understand and hear their side, with a fellow employee or shop floor union representative present if they choose. Section 43 requires you to prove the reason if the termination is challenged. Records kept from the start, including the support you gave, are what let you do that. Our guide to terminating an employee for poor performance in Kenya sets out what the courts look for.
Making it routine is the hard part
The questions in this article are simple. The difficulty is getting every manager to ask them every week, before frustration builds, without you having to remind them. In many founder-led businesses, whether someone gets clear expectations and early feedback depends on which manager they happen to report to.
Talentos works with founder-led businesses across Kenya to build a way of managing performance where this is normal practice: expectations written down, regular check-ins, notes of what was agreed and what help was given, and managers who follow through. The Performance Picture looks at both sides of the question in this article: how people are delivering, and whether the business gives them what they need to deliver. Over ten working days we hear from leadership and staff and look at your records, then show you where things break down and what to fix first. It doesn't assess any one employee. You can also start with the free three-minute Quick Picture.
This article gives general information on Kenyan employment law and performance management. It isn't legal advice for a specific case.