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Opening Salvo
Performance rarely collapses overnight. It erodes slowly. A missed expectation turns into a tolerated habit. A minor issue becomes an accepted norm. A team absorbs the silence around it. By the time leaders notice, the drift is wide enough to feel permanent.
I have watched strong teams slip into performance drift without any single moment to mark the decline. The pattern begins with leaders who hesitate. They delay tough conversations. They soften expectations to avoid conflict. They convince themselves that certain issues might correct on their own.
Employees see the hesitation before leaders do. They notice when standards loosen. They notice when low performance is managed quietly. They notice when accountability fades. Over time, the team shifts its sense of what “good” looks like. The new normal becomes lower than the old one.
Performance drift often reflects leadership tolerance and inconsistent expectations, not a gap in talent quality. Leaders, make expectations visible and enforce them with consistency. Address issues early, set clear boundaries, and protect the standards the team needs to succeed.
Teams rise when standards rise. They drift when standards stay unspoken.
Practical Personas (with a tinge of hyperbole)
The The Hopeful Optimizer: Believes the issue will correct naturally. They wait. They soften language. They give more time than the situation deserves. Drift grows quietly around them.
The Conflict Avoider: Sees the performance issue but fears team disruption. They protect short-term comfort at the cost of long-term accountability.
The Standard Keeper: Addresses concerns early. Creates clarity before frustration builds. Makes expectations explicit and consistent. Protects the team by protecting the standard.
Ask Yourself:
Where have you allowed performance to slip without addressing it?
What conversation have you avoided because it felt uncomfortable?
Which expectations have become implied instead of stated?
What standard needs to be re-anchored before the next cycle begins?
Performance drift often emerges when leaders hesitate to act or wait for issues to resolve without intervention.
Did You See This?
The Skill Gap Inside the Skill-Building Team
A new report covered by HR Dive shows that talent development professionals want more training for themselves, even as they work to build capability across their organizations. Their call for support highlights an overlooked gap, the people responsible for upskilling others are not receiving the investment they need to stay current.
LinkedIn Learning’s seventh annual Workplace Learning Report found that 72% of learning and development professionals want more training for their own roles. Seventy percent said they want clearer expectations, and 61% want fairer compensation. The article notes that organizations continue to expect L&D teams to lead skill building in areas such as AI, leadership, and digital transformation. At the same time, L&D professionals report that they need more support to advance their own skills. They identified strategic planning, cross-functional influence, and program measurement as priority areas for growth.
The report also found that companies increasingly view skill building as essential to performance and retention, placing more responsibility on L&D teams without always expanding their resources.
Organizations can strengthen their learning strategy by supporting the people who run it:
Train L&D as a strategic function: Provide development in data literacy, influence, and long-range planning.
Clarify role expectations: Publish responsibilities and success measures so priorities are consistent.
Fund capability growth: Budget for certifications, conferences, and technology training for L&D teams.
Align workload to resources: Rebalance assignments when demands expand faster than team capacity.
A learning strategy is only as strong as the people who lead it, and they cannot build capability at scale if they are not allowed to grow as well.
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Performance Drift
Performance drift occurs when team standards decline over time due to inconsistent accountability, unclear expectations, or unaddressed performance issues. It erodes execution quality and creates confusion about what success looks like.
What Drives It:
Leaders delaying or avoiding direct conversation
Lack of clarity around performance expectations
Tolerance for inconsistent outcomes
Cultural preference for harmony over honesty
What It Looks Like:
Teams confused about priorities
Quiet frustration among high performers
Declines in consistency or reliability
Increased reliance on workarounds
What to Change and How:
Clarify performance expectations for every role
Hold timely conversations when issues emerge
Reinforce standards through routines and documentation
Recognize and reward consistency to anchor positive norms
Build psychological safety so feedback feels constructive
Performance improves when leaders address issues early and with clarity. Drift stops when standards are stated and supported.
The Plug
This newsletter is brought to you by AstutEdge, a performance consultancy that helps organizations execute strategy by fixing misalignment in people, systems, and structure.
We work with leadership teams that want to turn strategic intent into measurable execution, by aligning operating rhythms, decision accountability, and leadership capacity with the metrics that matter most.
How We Help:
Expose Friction: Surface the hidden work, duplicate effort, and slow decision paths that quietly stall execution.
Realign Operating Rhythms: Redesign meeting and decision cadences so priorities move faster and accountability sticks.
Build Leadership Capacity: Strengthen how leaders make, communicate, and cascade decisions across teams.
Clarify Ownership: Define decision accountability to reduce noise, sharpen focus, and eliminate rework.
Engineer Performance Systems: Connect performance metrics to real outcomes, not paperwork.
Reinforce Organizational Health: Align people, systems, and structure so performance scales without burnout.
If your organization, or a partner organization, needs to move strategy from “planned” to “proven,” let’s talk.
Share this newsletter with leaders who feel the drag of misalignment, or visit astutedge.com to see how we help organizations execute faster, cleaner, and with greater impact!
The best HR advice comes from those in the trenches. That’s what this is: real-world HR insights delivered in a newsletter from Hebba Youssef, a Chief People Officer who’s been there. Practical, real strategies with a dash of humor. Because HR shouldn’t be thankless—and you shouldn’t be alone in it.
