A ProvenChaos Framework
The 5 T’s of Execution: Is It Them, or Is It Me?
The 5 T’s of Execution is a ten-minute diagnostic for an underperforming employee. It answers one question: is it them, or is it me? Three T’s are what the leader owes the employee (Tools, Time, Training). Two are what the employee owes the company (Talent, Tenacity). Three on you. Two on them. That’s the whole framework.
The problem: the 5s, 6s, and 7s
Terrible employees are easy. You identify them quickly, you excuse them from their role, and you hope they find employment at your largest competitor. That part’s clean.
It’s the 5s, 6s, and 7s of an organization, the mediocre ones, that steal the soul of a company. Not bad enough to fire. Not good enough to ignore. They live in the middle, draining energy from the team, watering down the standard, and burning months of leadership attention while you bounce between “maybe I haven’t given them enough” and “maybe it’s just not them.”
Why skipping the diagnosis costs you twice
You go too soft. You assume it’s on you, keep investing, keep extending the benefit of the doubt, and nine months later you have an employee still not performing, a team quietly watching you tolerate it, and a standard that’s drifted three points lower than where you set it.
You go too hard. You assume it’s on them, have the brutal conversation early, exit someone, and three months later realize you never actually gave them the tools, the time, or the training to succeed. You burned a good person, and your team noticed that too.
Both errors compound. Both come from the same root: blurring the two sides of the relationship together. The 5 T’s forces the honest question: have I owned my 50% of this relationship?
The Company Side: have I done my part?
- Tools. Does this person have what they need to do the work? The software, the templates, the documented processes, the access, the resources?
- Time. Have I protected enough of their calendar for this work? Or am I asking them to execute on top of everything else they’re already carrying?
- Training. Have I invested in the skills this role demands? Real training: workshops, deliberate practice, coaching feedback. Not “you’ll figure it out.”
If any of the three is no, the diagnosis is on you. Don’t have the hard conversation yet. Give the benefit of the doubt and double down on what you owe them. Build the tool. Clear the time. Invest in the training. Then re-evaluate after you’ve genuinely owned your side. You don’t get to confront anyone for missing the bar if you haven’t given them what they needed to clear it.
The Employee Side: have they done theirs?
Only run these once you’ve honestly answered yes to all three above.
- Talent. Do they have the intellectual horsepower to actually solve the problem they were hired to solve? Not the experience. Not the credentials. The raw capability: right wiring, right strengths, right disposition for the work.
- Tenacity. Do they have the grit and resilience to persist even when they’re getting their teeth bashed in? Through the hard quarters. Through the feedback. Through the moments where the work is genuinely uncomfortable.
If you’ve owned your 50% and the gap is in talent or tenacity, the brutal reality is this is no longer an investment problem. It’s a fit problem, or it’s an effort problem. Either way, it’s not yours to fix by giving more. That’s when you have the hard conversation. Not a coaching conversation. The real one.
The sentence the 5 T’s lets you say honestly
“We’ve done the best we can on our side. What’s missing now is on them.”
If you can say that sentence, having walked the 5 T’s and confirmed the first three are solid, you have permission to confront and permission to move. That’s how talent-dense organizations get built: not by hiring perfectly, but by moving quickly and cleanly when the diagnosis is clear. If you can’t say it honestly, the work is still yours.
Where it connects
Once the company side is solid, the accountability conversation itself is a mindset choice: Coaching versus Catching, with its two honest endgames, the Reset or the Release. And if you keep discovering missing tools and unspoken standards, the deeper issue is an undesigned Invisible Operating System. The full system for holding standards without hovering: Accountability Without Micromanaging.