Hey, it's Laura and Jason.
Welcome back, and thanks for being here!
This is Issue #6 of The Weekly UNLOK, where human potential meets organizational performance.
"THE GREEN, YELLOW, AND RED OF IT"
FROM LAURA
I had a lovely chat with my neighbor at a barbecue last weekend.
She is the COO of a national gym. I don’t do small talk, so of course I was asking her meaty questions about her role, what challenges she’s facing and we got into a whole discussion about leadership development.
She told me how her leaders (GMs) are measured.
Every single one of them operates inside a clear visual system: green, yellow, red.
Green means you’re performing. Yellow means something’s off. Red means we have a real problem.
The thresholds aren’t ambiguous, they’re clearly defined. Everyone on her team knows what “green” looks like.
They know when they’ve drifted into yellow. There’s no guessing, no wondering how you’re really doing, no silence that you have to interpret for yourself.
Clear is kind. And this is what drives me mad about the way most organizations operate… at least, many that I’ve seen lately…
Most leaders have never told their people what green looks like. Not specifically.
They hire for potential. They onboard with optimism. And then they leave people to figure out the standards on their own from the feedback they get (or don’t), from the projects they’re given (or not), from the vibe in the room when the CEO walks by.
I’ve had this conversation thousands of times. It sounds like:
“I’ve been here eighteen months and I genuinely don’t know if I’m doing well.”
“I think I’m good, but I can’t tell if that’s true or if I’m just not hearing anything bad.”
“Nobody’s said anything. So I’m just… assuming.”
Excellence is never defined. And that is not doing your people or your business ANY good.
What my neighbor described wasn’t just a performance management tool. It’s a Mastery infrastructure.
When people know where they stand, they can bring their FULL selves to the work. When they can’t see the standard, they spend half their energy managing their own anxiety about the invisible one.
Anyone? Anyone? (reply if this is you, I seriously want to know)
FROM JASON
There’s another part about Laura's COO neighbor that stood out to me:
How she makes the right hires in the first place.
She doesn’t lead with credentials or experience. She wants to understand if the person in front of her has thought about what lights them up, what they’re actually after. And she reads the energy in the room when they answer.
She can feel conviction or the absence of it. And conviction is, for her, a better predictor than a resume.
This is how I hired for decades, and most of the time it was the biggest marker of success.
You’ve probably been in an interview where someone listed accomplishments beautifully, and you still left with a hollow feeling.
That hollow feeling is the gap between what someone has done and what they’re actually hungry for.
Most organizations hire to a job description, a list of prior experience they want to match, and a loose sense of “culture fit” which usually just means “reminds me of someone who’s already here”.
Don’t get me wrong, job descriptions and experience are important, to a point. And you should have a clear definition of what culture you’re hiring for.
But then there’s the secret sauce… the presence the person has when they talk about where they want to go, the curiosity, the willingness to stretch themselves in the service of getting better.
Put those people in a system with clear feedback (the green/yellow/red standard), progression discussions about how you’re expected to grow, clarity about how the org/role is designed to grow with you, and they’ll thrive.
These aren’t nice-to-haves, they’re three organizational design decisions that are baked into one operating philosophy…
A philosophy that creates a culture of forward motion.
The organizations that win the talent game aren’t the ones who hire the best credentials.
They’re the ones who build the best conditions and then attract the people who can feel the difference before they even take the job.
YOUR TURN
Inner Game: Think about the people you work with most closely. Do they know, clearly, what “green” looks like for them in their role? And honestly, do YOU know what green looks like for yourself right now?
Outer Game: When you last interviewed someone, what were you actually assessing? And if the answer is “mostly their track record,” what would it look like to add energy and conviction as deliberate criteria?
WHAT THIS MEANS TOGETHER
What Laura heard at that barbecue and what we’ve both seen across 50 combined years of building and recruiting comes down to the same thing.
Most organizations have a gap between what they pay for and what they actually get from their people.
They pay for full capacity. They get a fraction of it.
And that fraction shrinks further every month someone spends not knowing where they stand, not seeing a path forward, not feeling like their energy and conviction are truly valued here.
The gym model makes the standard visible. It selects for conviction at the front door. It creates movement (up or out) as the default, not the exception.
You can’t scale individual transformation without organizational infrastructure.
And you can’t build organizational infrastructure without knowing what “excellent” looks like in every seat on your org chart.
The most competitive companies will treat their people as the primary differentiator.
That means defining green. Hiring for aliveness. And building systems where growth is the expectation, not the bonus.
We’re here for the ripple effect ✨,
Laura & Jason
P.S. - Have a story to tell? Reply back and let us know. We're collecting more evidence.
BEFORE YOU GO: HOW WE CAN HELP
FOR COMPANIES: The gap between what your organization pays for in human capacity and what it actually captures isn't a culture problem. It's a design problem. Book a strategy call.
OR... [Take the free self-assessment →]
FOR INDIVIDUALS: If you’re looking for one-on-one support, Laura works with a small number of people personally. Book an activation session and let’s get into it.