# Conclusions

**Source:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE3TwzH-XCE
**Title:** Your Company Can't Outgrow Your Team
**Duration:** 4:35

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## Core thesis

**A company can only grow as fast as its people.** If the business is targeting 100% growth, every person on the team has to grow ~100% too — otherwise the company hits a ceiling made of humans, not markets. Leadership's job is to make that expectation explicit, make each person's performance visible, and hold the line against tolerance drift.

> *"Good got you on the team. Great keeps you on the team, because 100% requires greatness."*

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## The "Business Athlete" framework

The speaker teaches a **philosophy**, not a task list, so that people who want to climb have a model to climb toward. It's the difference between operational management (what to do) and leadership training (how you show up for the work).

Two of the seven athlete practices called out:

| Practice | What it means |
|---|---|
| **Have a coach** | *"I'm not your coach."* Team members must own their own development — books they read for their industry, external coaches, deliberate learning. |
| **Have a practice schedule** | *"We practice until we can't get it wrong. We don't practice to get it right."* Repetition to the point of unconscious competence, not to first success. |

The other five aren't named in this clip, but the pattern is clear: they're behaviors, not skills.

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## Making performance public

Everyone's numbers/status are posted where the whole team can see them.

- Each person has their name and their standing on display.
- *"They know where they sit."*
- **Praise in public, criticize in private** — the 1-on-1 is where hard conversations happen, not the wall.

Publicness creates self-driven accountability without the manager having to constantly enforce it.

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## The Keeper Test (borrowed from Netflix)

The single question every leader should ask about every team member:

> *"If this person came to me tomorrow and said they had an offer for 30% more money, would I fight to keep them?"*

- **Yes** → they belong on the team.
- **No** → they shouldn't be on the team. Have the conversation. Turn it into a **development plan**: here's where you are, here's what I'm not seeing, here's why — grounded in the Business Athlete framework.

The point isn't to fire people quickly; it's to force honesty. Silent tolerance of "no" answers is what rots a team.

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## "Shining a light" — using bright spots as leadership content

Instead of top-down lectures, the speaker grabs a team member who thinks about their work differently and asks them to teach the rest:

- Age, tenure, seniority don't matter — a rising star gets the spotlight.
- Others hear a peer articulate a way of thinking they'd never have arrived at alone.
- Message to the room: *"be more like that person."*

Leadership training becomes peer-generated, not manager-generated.

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## Values: hire → inspire → fire

Three-step integration so values are operational, not decorative:

| Stage | What it looks like |
|---|---|
| **Hire with the values** | Screen for them in recruiting — before skills. |
| **Inspire with the values** | Tie every internal decision, praise, and initiative back to the three values. |
| **Fire against the values** | When someone goes, name the specific value they violated. |

Examples of value-based firings from the clip:
- A leader who didn't develop their team (didn't build people).
- Someone who added complexity to a process. *"Complexity fails, simple scales."*

**The punchline:**
> *"Values aren't what you say they are. They're what you tolerate."*

If you say "we value simplicity" and keep someone who ships complex processes, your real value is complexity. Firing is how you tell the team what the values actually are.

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## Actionable takeaways

For a founder / team leader:

1. **State the growth math out loud.** If the company is doubling, the team is doubling too — that message can't be implicit.
2. **Adopt a Business Athlete philosophy** (or your own equivalent framework) so "how to show up" is teachable, not vibes.
3. **Post the scoreboard.** Make each person's standing visible; use 1-on-1s (not the wall) for the hard talk.
4. **Run the Keeper Test on every direct report** — turn every "no" into a documented development plan or a departure.
5. **Weekly, pick a bright spot** and have them teach the team their thinking. Never let leadership training all come from you.
6. **Audit your last three fires** — did you name the value each violated? If not, your team can't tell what your values actually are.

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## Who this is for

- Founders whose company growth is stalling and who suspect (correctly) it's a people ceiling, not a market one.
- Managers who feel they're "doing all the coaching" and getting no leverage.
- Leadership teams whose stated values don't match the behavior they tolerate.
