© 2025 James Hardie – Course Correction Consulting Ltd. The EASE Framework™ is a proprietary model developed by James Hardie to support the creation of psychologically safe, empowered, and strategically aligned teams. All rights reserved.
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Learn how to: Define outcomes, then derive competencies from real work (job analysis, work samples) and output that will lead to them. Use structured interviews plus work samples, score with anchors, and calibrate. Onboard with role clarity, feedback cadence, and psychological safety rituals. Run continuous performance: goals, coaching, learning loops, and clean metrics.
If you want scaleable growth, then treat talent like a critical system. While you may define success in outcomes for you and for them, select and assess with structured interviews and work samples, and score consistently. Onboard with role clarity and a weekly feedback cadence so problems surface early. Run performance management continuously through goals, coaching, and learning loops, not an annual judgement day. Motivation improves when autonomy, competence, and relatedness are built into the environment. Watch for common failure modes: vague roles, “culture fit” bias, and over engineered metrics that invite gaming.
What causes staff turnover in high growth companies?
Executive Answer. We build scaleable growth through talent by making selection predictable, fair, and evidence based, then running performance as a coaching system, not a once a year verdict. So why are you still doing it painfully wrong? You need to learn how to let go to let your people grow.
“Mastering the Art of Course Correction” delves deep into the strategies and mindset shifts you need to realign your goals and reclaim your path, LEAD with EASE. This week, EASE your hiring and performance system: reduce noise, increase signal, and build a team that scales without you becoming the bottleneck.
Most hiring fails are not from selecting “bad people”, they arise from misalignment, cognitive dissonance, unclear roles, vague assessment, and inconsistent management.
In addition, people have biases and when it comes to recognising talent honestly, there is evidence of failures in these areas which may also be protected by local legislation: Race/ethnicity, Gender, Sexual orientation,Parenthood status and Social class.
You never stood a chance of finding the 'best fit' because they may never even have applied, and even if they did how would you detect them? So you hired the best available to your system and then did you make the best of it?
Perhaps not, as inconsistent performance reviews try to fix in one conversation what the system neglected for months. Dissatisfaction increases and other issues arise. Before you know it you have a paid employee who is quietly quitting. Such a shame, and what a waste all round?
From your initial job description, your selection process and your offer to hire you are at risk of getting it wrong, but let us assume you did right and you have a great new hire for the team. Exciting times for everyone...
You have made your best available selection so now do a rapid job analysis: what must be true in 90 days for this hire to be a win? Translate that into observable behaviours and outputs. There may be gaps in skills and experience but that is to be expected, and they can grow too. This reduces any perception of “culture fit” bias and improves fairness and expectation management. You did not hire someone to increase your costs, you hired someone to create more value and they want to be able to show that too. Purpose and fulfilment can be created in the same frame of reference of great work. Your culture has already changed slightly by admitting a new person, how you all integrate together will be the test of that change.
Use a structured interview (behavioural and situational questions) and score answers against anchored criteria. (Wiley Online Library) Add work samples (a short task that mirrors the job). The evidence base consistently favours this kind of approach over unstructured chat. (ResearchGate) A practical minimum stack for most roles:
Onboarding is the most important of activities for both customers and new employees. All too often it is done badly and repaired too late. Have a 30 day plan and on day 1, clarify role and remit, decision rights, and what “good” looks like. Then create a weekly cadence: priorities, blockers, learning, and feedback. Make sure other things are happening too, compulsory training and social activity inclusion. Psychological safety is not softness, it is early risk disclosure and faster learning all round. Trust is the currency.
Ditch the annual performance ambush with the added threat of bonuses on the line. Instead run performance as: clear goals, frequent coaching, and real time feedback. Bonus performance will be clear and predictable all round.
However, if you keep these conversation as 1:1 only, then you may look like you are keeping the best talent for yourself, patting people on the back while with-holding their opportunity to grow. The land of the mediocre where managers suppress their best people until they leave.
Sometimes you have to let your best people go to help them and the organisation to grow. If you do not find a place for them to go then they will find somewhere else. Mediocrity scales itself too but can your organisation afford to be mediocre everywhere?
Talent will find a way so do you want to help or hinder them?
Evidence based guidance from SIOP and SHRM emphasises continuous conversations, flexible goals, and feedback as part of everyday work. (siop.org) Use goal setting properly: specific, challenging, accepted goals with feedback loops. (PubMed) Motivation holds when people experience autonomy, competence, and relatedness. (selfdeterminationtheory.org)
When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Goodhart's Law