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Unclear Expectations Are Killing Your Performance.

You wouldn’t coach a sports team without a game plan.
You wouldn’t build a house without a blueprint.
So why are your employees operating without clear rules?

Here’s what I see in professional services firms every day:

  • People getting “performance managed” for expectations they never knew they were supposed to meet.
  • Leaders frustrated because “they should just know”.
  • Teams scrambling to succeed in a game where the goalposts keep moving.

Let me be clear:
Your people want to perform.
They want to win.
But they can’t do that if they don’t know how you’re keeping score.

The Invisible Cost of Vague Expectations

Confusion = hesitation
Hesitation = delays
Delays = lost profit

You’re not just wasting time. You’re eroding trust. You’re breeding disengagement. And you’re making performance feel like a guessing game.

This isn’t about hand-holding. It’s about leadership.

The Strategic Shift

Top firms are ditching assumptions and getting explicit. They’re:

🔹 Defining what great looks like with Outcome Profiles
🔹 Aligning roles to results, not just responsibilities
🔹 Creating scorecards that actually guide performance
🔹 Giving feedback that’s tied to something real

Because clarity isn’t fluffy—it’s efficient. It’s scalable. It’s profitable.

Here’s the Reality

In a professional services firm, time is money.
But direction is leverage.

Without clarity, your highest performers will plateau.
Your middle performers will under-deliver.
And your low performers? They’ll stay hidden in the fog.

What Now? Turn Clarity Into Consistency

🔹 This week: Review one role—do they know exactly what success looks like?
🔹 This month: Build or refresh Outcome Profiles for your top five roles
🔹 This quarter: Link your performance review process to those profiles

Stop making people guess. Start helping them win.

Your job isn’t to micromanage. Your job is to create the conditions for high performance.

The first step? Clear rules.

Ready to show your team exactly what success looks like? Let’s connect:

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