I regret to inform you…keeping an incompetent manager has run off your best people
- Harry T. Jones
- May 1
- 3 min read
There’s a letter I’ve watched founders receive in slow motion.
It doesn’t arrive all at once.
It comes in pieces—a resignation here, a quiet exit there, a revenue number that keeps shrinking no matter what you try.
By the time most founders read it clearly, years have passed.
And the message is devastating:
I regret to inform you… the people you kept have driven away the people you needed.
I want to tell you about a family I’ll call the Mercer family.
Three children grew up in the business. They never worked anywhere else.
The middle child—a daughter—was the most competent of the three. Sharp, capable, and deeply committed to the business she’d grown up in.
She was passed over.
Not because of her performance. Not because of her character. But because of her place in the family.
She left.
And the business is still paying the price.
The Hard Truth About Tolerance
When you tolerate an incompetent leader—whether it’s a family member, a longtime employee, or a founder’s child—you are not being kind.
You are making a choice.
And your best people are watching.
They are measuring whether performance matters here.
Whether accountability is real.
Whether their contributions will be recognized—or whether the answer to every promotion question is already written in the family tree.
When they decide the answer is no, they don’t argue.
They leave.
And they take their talent, their relationships, and their institutional knowledge with them.
The Solution Is Not Complicated—But It Is Hard
The answer isn’t to exclude family. It’s to hold everyone—family and non-family alike—to the same standard.
Accountability for performance and engagement.
Not for bloodline.
Not for birth order.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
Every leader must have a designated backup—someone being developed and kept informed on their role. No backup? Not eligible for promotion. No backup? Eligible for exit.
Succession readiness is not optional. Every leader in the organization should have a “man up” plan—a person being prepared to step into their role.
Include non-family leaders in ownership conversations early. Don’t make promises you delay. Delayed promises become broken promises.
The Question That Changes Everything
Over many years now, I’ve sat with two founders—both now in their eighties—and asked them the same question:
“Do you want to select your successor and steep them in the values you want to continue? Or do you want someone else to make that choice?”
Both said immediately: “I want to select my successor.”
That was ten years ago.
Neither has done it.
One of them watched his entire board walk out the door.
The window doesn’t stay open forever.
Engagement: The Other Half of the Equation
Accountability without engagement is just pressure.
The other half of developing great leaders is genuinely investing in the people around you—not just as employees, but as human beings with goals, dreams, and futures of their own.
I know a founder—I’ll call him Chuck—who started something simple with his team. He created a goal sheet for his people. One year, five years, ten years.
On it were the questions:
What do you want to drive?
What are your hobbies?
What do you want to earn?
What do you want to build?
It sounds simple. But what happened next surprised even him.
A 58-year-old employee with no savings opened up about his fears for the first time.
A 42-year-old supervisor revealed he wanted to own his own business someday.
That supervisor became the leading candidate to succeed Chuck as CEO.
Chuck said it best: “It communicated that we value them—regardless of how long they’re with us.”
That’s engagement. That’s what keeps your best people in the room.
Three Questions to Ask Yourself Today:
Who have you tolerated that your best people can no longer tolerate? The exit interviews will tell you—if you’re willing to listen.
Does every leader in your organization have a designated backup? If not, your succession plan has a hole in it.
Do you know what your people want—not just from their job, but from their life? If you don’t know, you can’t help them get there. And if you can’t help them get there, someone else will.
What Can You Do?
If you’re ready to build a team of leaders from which to choose your successor:
Get in a Succession Planning Breakthrough Group where other founders are wrestling with the same questions—and finding answers
Read Succession Planning for Impact to understand how defining your niche protects your legacy
Work through Succession Planning for Impact (The Workbook) to identify where a lack of niche focus may be derailing your transition
Sign up for our private email list for ongoing insights on building a business worth continuing
The best time to develop your next generation of leaders was years ago.
The second-best time is today.
Don’t let the letter arrive in pieces.
Let’s finish well—together.
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