I have never believed in bad employees.

I believe in bad hiring processes. Bad training systems. Bad performance standards that were never defined precisely enough to be held. Bad cultures that subsidize mediocrity because conformity is easier than standards. Bad leadership that creates the conditions for ineffective behavior and then acts surprised when the behavior appears.

The employee who is underperforming today was hired by someone. Trained by someone. Evaluated on a shift-by-shift basis by someone who deemed them fit for the role. Every one of those decisions was made by a leader. And every one of those decisions either increased or decreased the probability of the outcome that is now being attributed to the employee.

How did the ineffective behavior come to exist in your business in the first place? The answer is almost always the same. It was probably there from the beginning.

The hiring process evaluated candidates based on availability rather than on the specific capability the role requires. The interview assessed personality rather than performance potential. The job description described tasks rather than outcomes. The reference check was cursory or skipped entirely. The hire was made because the position needed to be filled, not because the candidate was the right fit for the standard the operation requires.

Then the training produced compliance rather than competence. Page after page of transactional lists to be memorized. A manual that described what to do without explaining why the standard exists or what good looks like when the conditions change. Orientation dressed as development, producing a cast member who can execute the sequence in normal conditions and has no second instinct when conditions are not normal.

Then the performance management evaluated likability rather than results. The write-up system that counts infractions rather than developing behavior. The coaching conversation that never happened because the manager lacked the skill to have it. The performance metrics that did not exist, so the standard was held inconsistently — enforced when the manager was paying attention and allowed to drift when they were not.

Then the culture — the one that rewards not rocking the boat more than it rewards the cast member who holds the standard in a difficult moment, the one where mediocrity is tolerated because addressing it requires a conversation nobody wants to have.

By the time the “bad employee” label gets applied, the operation has already made a hundred decisions that produced the outcome it is now blaming on the person.

Leadership is taking responsibility for the actions of the people who work with you. Not because the individual has no responsibility for their own behavior — they do. But because the leader is responsible for the system that hired them, the process that trained them, the culture that shaped what behaviors were acceptable, and the standard that was held or not held on every shift before the performance failure became visible.

The leader who blames the employee and does not examine the system will keep producing the same employees. The system is intact. The next hire runs through it. The outcome is predictable.

So are there really bad employees? Or is it bad leadership that created the conditions for the behavior, tolerated it long enough for it to compound, and is now looking for someone other than itself to hold responsible?

Every problem in a restaurant is a leadership problem.

Every time.

What Changes Tomorrow

The next time an employee underperforms, ask one question before you decide what to do about the person: what in the system produced this outcome?

Not what is wrong with the employee. What in the hiring process, the training process, the performance management process, or the culture allowed this behavior to develop to the point where it is now a problem?

Fix the system. The person is a symptom.