Before firing someone, leaders should be forced to answer: 'What known structural problem are we choosing not to fix?' This question reframes termination not as a performance issue, but as a conscious leadership decision to accept the cost of turnover over the difficulty of fixing the underlying system.

Many clean-sounding rules for startups, from maximizing output to finding "barrels," share a common flaw: they blame individuals for systemic failures. Effective leadership requires identifying and fixing the underlying organizational issues that cause these problems.

Exceptional people in flawed systems will produce subpar results. Before focusing on individual performance, leaders must ensure the underlying systems are reliable and resilient. As shown by the Southwest Airlines software meltdown, blaming employees for systemic failures masks the root cause and prevents meaningful improvement.

Leaders often default to blaming interpersonal issues when conflict arises. The root cause is frequently structural: two people given overlapping ownership and contradictory goals. The organization effectively puts them in a 'steel cage match' and then blames them for fighting, ignoring its own design flaw.

Solving deep-seated structural and dynamic issues isn't about creating more documentation. The solution requires leaders to look in the mirror and confront how their own behaviors and decisions created a system that produces undesirable outcomes. The problem is a lack of introspection, not a lack of process.

While a single performance-based layoff can target underperformance, repeated rounds signal a systemic failure in leadership. It suggests managers are unable to hire, coach, or provide feedback effectively, making it a management problem rather than an individual employee issue.

Citing family systems psychology, the individual who appears to be a problem is often just the point where underlying systemic stress and dysfunction surface. Instead of trying to fix or fire the person, leaders should investigate what environmental or process issues are causing their behavior.

Highly skilled teams will repeatedly fail if the surrounding organizational structure—decision-making, governance, silos—is dysfunctional. The root cause of failure is often not the team's ability but systemic issues that must be addressed at a leadership level for anyone to succeed.

Leaders often react to team burnout by hiring more people. However, this is often a symptom of broken systems, not a true headcount issue. Adding staff without fixing underlying processes leads to a bloated, inefficient, and expensive team.