Performance is Human Before It is Operational
Roxanna Marazzi is the founder of RM Consultancy and a former Vice President at Salesforce with over 20 years of experience in commercial leadership, sales and enablement across the United Kingdom, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. She brings a practical perspective and approach to hiring, coaching, leading and developing consistently successful teams.
We spend a lot of time trying to fix performance through process. New systems. New methodologies. New technology. New targets. New dashboards. Sometimes that is exactly what the business needs. But after more than 20 years working across sales, leadership and enablement, I’ve learned that when performance isn't where it needs to be, the operational problem isn't always the real problem. Sometimes you need to look underneath it. At the humans. Because performance is human before it is operational.
I learned this from both sides of the table
I've been the salesperson expected to deliver the number. I've stepped into leadership and quickly discovered that being good at the job didn't automatically mean I knew how to lead other people to be good at theirs. I've led teams across different countries and cultures. I've worked for leaders whose expectations forced me to raise my game and learn quickly what they needed from me.
Later, as Vice President of Enablement at Salesforce, I saw the same challenge at scale. We can give people excellent processes, sophisticated technology and clearly defined targets. But ultimately, execution still happens through humans. Humans bring confidence, fear, judgement, bias, energy, ambition, experience, pressure and emotion to work with them, qualities that artificial intelligence (AI), thankfully, cannot fully replicate!
One of the biggest performance gaps I've observed isn't a knowledge gap. It's the gap between knowing what good looks like and consistently doing it when it matters.
A leader may know they should coach rather than immediately solve the problem themselves. But under pressure, they take over. A manager may know they should have the difficult conversation. But they delay it.
A sales leader may know a great performer is demonstrating behaviours that damage the wider team. But the revenue makes challenging that behaviour uncomfortable. A business may say it values accountability. But when standards slip, nobody wants to be the person who calls it out.
That's where performance becomes undeniably human. Because a process can tell us what to do, but it cannot guarantee how we will behave when the pressure is on.
The human operating system beneath performance
I often think about organisations as having two operating systems. The first is the one we can see. Strategy. Structure. Process. Technology. Key performance indicators (KPIs). Roles. Governance. All incredibly important.
But underneath that sits another operating system. How people think. How leaders behave. How safe people feel challenging something. How clearly expectations are communicated. How consistently accountability is applied. How people respond when things go wrong. How leaders behave when the numbers are under pressure.
That second operating system is much harder to put on a dashboard. Yet it has an enormous influence on the first.
Research from Gallup reinforces just how significant managers are in this equation. Its research says managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement, and that engaged teams outperform on outcomes including productivity, profitability, safety and employee wellbeing.
That shouldn't lead us to another initiative labelled “employee engagement.” Or a badge telling everyone what our top five characteristics are. It should make us ask a more uncomfortable question: What are our leaders creating every day through their behaviour?
Human doesn't mean soft
This is where I think business sometimes gets confused. Putting humans at the centre of performance doesn't mean lowering standards. Empathy doesn't mean avoiding accountability. Psychological safety doesn't mean everybody agrees.
Gallup describes a psychologically safe environment as one where employees have permission to speak up, and highlights regular, meaningful manager conversations as important in supporting that environment.
For me, strong leadership requires both humanity and standards. Understand the person. Be curious before judging. Listen properly. Then be clear about what needs to happen.
The best leaders I've worked with weren't effective because they chose between empathy and performance. They understood that the two could strengthen each other.
Technology makes this more important, not less
Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing how quickly we can analyse information, automate work and access insight. I think that's hugely exciting. But the more capability technology gives us, the more important human judgement becomes.
AI can help a leader prepare for a difficult conversation. It cannot take responsibility for having it. It can surface patterns. The leader must decide what those patterns mean in context. It can reduce cognitive load. It cannot outsource courage, empathy or accountability.
That's why the philosophy behind my work is EQ-led. IQ-backed. AI-empowered.® EQ refers to emotional intelligence, and IQ to intelligence quotient. Not AI replacing leadership. AI enabling better leadership.
Before you change the process, look underneath it
So the next time performance isn't where it needs to be, don't immediately ask, “What process do we need to fix?” Ask yourself, “What is happening underneath the process?”
Do people understand what good looks like? Do leaders have the confidence to address poor performance? Are high performers being challenged as well as recognised? Do people feel able to disagree? Are leaders coaching capability or repeatedly stepping in and solving problems? Are expectations clear? Is accountability consistent? Perhaps most importantly, what happens to our leadership behaviour when the pressure goes up?
Because sometimes the system isn't broken. The strategy isn't wrong. The people aren't incapable. The real constraint sits in the invisible space between all three. That's the space we need to get better at understanding.
Because processes enable performance. Technology can amplify performance. Strategy can direct performance. But humans create it.
Read more from Roxanna Marazzi
Roxanna Marazzi, Leadership & Commercial Performance Advisor
Roxanna Marazzi is the founder of RM Consultancy and a former Vice President of Enablement at Salesforce, with over 20 years of experience spanning commercial leadership, sales, enablement and people development across the United Kingdom, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Roxanna's work challenges the assumption that humanity and high performance sit on opposite sides of the table. She believes the strongest organisations build both.
