The Reputation Problem
Sarah (not her real name) was the VP of Marketing at a $45M SaaS company. She had a reputation for missing deadlines.
"Sarah's always behind," people said. "She overcommits." "She can't manage her team."
The CEO was considering a performance improvement plan. The COO suggested "better time management training."
None of them looked at the workflow.
The Workflow Audit
We mapped the process for shipping a single marketing asset — a landing page, a case study, a webinar slide deck. Here's what we found:
- 1.14 approval steps across 6 departments
- 2.Average approval time: 3.2 days per step
- 3.No parallel processing — each step waited for the previous one
- 4.No escalation rules — if an approver was busy, the asset sat
- 5.No visibility — Sarah couldn't see where anything was in the pipeline
A single marketing asset took 47 days from request to publish. Sarah's team was producing 12 assets per quarter. The company needed 40.
Sarah wasn't behind. The workflow was broken.
The Structural Rewrite
Change 1: Approval Consolidation
We reduced 14 approval steps to 4:
- Content review (marketing)
- Brand review (design)
- Legal/compliance review (legal)
- Final sign-off (VP)
Each review had a 48-hour SLA. Miss the SLA, and the asset auto-escalates.
Change 2: Parallel Processing
Content and brand reviews happen simultaneously. Legal review happens only for regulated content. Final sign-off is a 15-minute review, not a rewrite session.
Change 3: Pipeline Visibility
A simple Kanban board shows every asset in the pipeline, who's responsible, and how long it's been there. No more "where's that landing page?" questions.
Change 4: Decision Rights
Sarah's team can ship routine assets without VP approval. Only strategic assets (product launches, major campaigns) require sign-off.
The Results in Three Weeks
- Asset production time: 47 days → 9 days
- Assets per quarter: 12 → 38
- Sarah's "overdue" rate: 73% → 8%
- Team satisfaction score: 4.1/10 → 8.3/10
- Sarah's reputation: "always behind" → "the person who fixed our marketing pipeline"
The Lesson
When someone has a reputation problem, look at the system before you look at the person.
In 80% of cases, the person is performing exactly as the system is designed to make them perform. The system is the problem. The person is the symptom.
Fix the system, and the person suddenly looks competent. Because they were competent all along.
The One Question
Before you put someone on a performance plan, ask: If this person were replaced by the best person in the world at this job, would the results be different?
If the answer is no, you don't have a people problem. You have a structural problem. And structural problems have structural solutions.