This page is for the founder of an established company in Miami or South Florida who runs a leadership team of function owners and plans by the quarter. Our quarterly review guide lists the quarter's people moves among the parts of the plan each owner updates at the review. This page explains how to turn a people decision into a quarterly commitment its owner can verify.
What are the quarter's people decisions?
The quarter's people decisions are the hires, promotions, development moves and exits the leadership team agrees to make before the next quarterly review. The Blueprint's plan records them in its People section, one move per line, with an owner and a target date beside each.
The section has six lines. We recommend filling only as many as the team can complete this quarter, and an empty line is fine. Each line records a decision already taken. A general worry about a department, such as "sales is stretched", needs a decision about what will change before it earns a line.
Each move type does a different job. A hire adds capacity or a skill the company lacks. A promotion gives someone a larger set of responsibilities. A development move builds a capability a person needs in their current work. Here an exit means a person leaving the company, and that person's own leader handles it through the company's employment process.
Why doesn't the Blueprint score people on a shared sheet?
The Blueprint keeps individual scoring off the shared plan so that the leadership team plans the moves and each leader judges the performance of the people who report to them. A common approach has the leadership team rate each person together on one sheet every quarter. We left that step out of the plan. Carlos Garrido, who designed the Blueprint, gives the reason:
The Blueprint keeps people scoring off a shared sheet because rating colleagues in front of each other judges the person instead of the role, and candor goes once that starts. The leadership team agrees the quarter's people moves together, and each leader holds the performance conversation one to one with the people who report to them.
In practice, the plan records the decision, and what a leader knows about one person's performance stays in their private conversations. The team can agree that the service function needs its supervisor running the delivery schedule alone by the end of the quarter. The supervisor's leader discusses progress with them privately, bringing in HR support when it is needed.
When a person's name starts to dominate the team discussion, bring it back to what the function needs, and let the leader take the rest one to one. Anyone on the leadership team can then open the plan without finding a colleague's rating, and each line still says what will change and who owns it.
Where do the people moves come from?
People moves come from the work the company has committed to: the function map, this year's milestones and what the weekly scorecard shows. In the Blueprint the team builds them after mapping the critical functions, so each move can point at a function.
We recommend that each function owner arrives with evidence. A function with no owner may call for a hire or a promotion, once the team has checked whether an existing leader can take it on. An owner carrying work that belongs to another function points to a move that shifts the load. A milestone that needs a skill nobody has points to a hire or a development move. A scorecard metric that has missed for several weeks may point to a capability gap.
Check the cause before proposing a people move. Unclear responsibilities or a broken process can produce the same miss as a capability gap, and a new person inherits both. Our guides to mapping critical functions and choosing which processes to map first cover those two checks.
Then tie each proposal to a function and say why it belongs in this quarter. If it serves a milestone later in the year, name what has to happen now. Before committing, we recommend confirming the budget and the owner's capacity to carry the move, and noting any approval that could change the date. Choosing the quarter's wider priorities is covered in our guide to the founder bottleneck.
How do you write a people move?
Write each move as one line that names the change and its result, then add one owner and a target date inside the quarter. For a quarter ending in March, a hire line might read: "Hire a service coordinator to take over scheduling from the operations lead. Owner: operations lead. Target: March 15." The hiring process itself is a separate job, run by the owner.
A vague line cannot be closed. "Improve leadership" gives nobody a finish point. "Supervisor runs the weekly delivery schedule without the operations lead. Owner: operations lead. Target: March 31" tells the team what the owner will be able to observe at quarter end.
If a hire cannot start inside the quarter, write the stage the owner commits to reach, such as an accepted offer. Keep the expected start date in the owner's notes so nobody reads the line as a finished hire.
| Move | When it belongs on the plan | How to write the line | Owner | Done at quarter end |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hire | A function needs capacity or a skill nobody has | The role, the work it takes over and the date | Leader of the function the role joins | The person has started, or the agreed hiring stage is reached |
| Promote | A larger set of responsibilities needs an owner, and a person is ready for it, judged against what the role requires | The new responsibilities and the date they move | The person's leader | Responsibilities handed over and the old work covered |
| Develop | Current work needs a capability the person lacks | The work the person will do to the agreed standard, and the date | The person's own leader | The leader has seen the person do that work |
| Exit | The person's leader has raised it, and the change is approved through the company's employment process | The coverage the function needs, with the individual action kept in a restricted record | The person's own leader | The owner confirms it is complete |
Who owns each move, and what does the founder do?
Each move has one owner, normally the leader of the function it changes. We recommend the leader with the authority to make the change happen. Others can help, including an HR adviser, while the owner stays answerable for the date and raises anything that needs the team's decision.
In the Blueprint the founder sets the company's direction, and the leadership team builds the execution plan, people moves included. When the team plans the moves, the founder tests whether they serve that direction and whether the company can carry them in one quarter. A founder who still runs a function owns that function's moves like any other leader. If the move under discussion is a number two, our guide to when a founder needs a second-in-command covers that decision.
During the quarter, each owner reports progress against the date and raises a slip as soon as it shows. Our guide to running the weekly leadership meeting covers where that report happens.
How do you handle an exit move?
The leadership team agrees the staffing change the function needs. The decision about an individual, and its timing, follows the company's employment process, run by the person's own leader with whoever must approve it, and employment-law questions go to the company's own employment attorney or HR adviser before anything is committed. This page does not cover how to run a termination.
We recommend checking whether a line's wording, owner or date could identify the person to anyone who can open the plan. In a small company even a job title can. If it could, keep the individual action in a restricted record and put only the coverage commitment on the shared plan, for example "Delivery scheduling covered by the service team from March 31. Owner: operations lead." Keep the team's discussion on what the function needs, and keep performance records through the company's HR process, with access limited to the people who need them.
What happens at the quarter's end?
At the quarterly review, each owner reports every move as done or not done against the result written on its line, and the team decides which to close, change or drop. In the Blueprint the people moves are one of the parts of the plan that can change at the quarterly review.
Judge a development move by the work. A course attended counts as progress, and the move is done when the leader has seen the person do the agreed work.
For a move that slipped, keep the original date on record and write down why. Before giving it a new date, we recommend checking whether the people move is still the right action, since the need may have changed during the quarter.
Check whether finished moves solved the problem they were written for. A hire can start while the workload stays stuck. Treat that as a new issue and decide it on its own merits. The wider agenda for the day is in our quarterly review guide.
What goes wrong with quarterly people planning?
People planning goes wrong when the session turns into judging individuals or the lines cannot be checked. Watch for these five patterns.
- Rating people at the leadership table. Once colleagues score each other in front of the team, the talk moves to the person. Plan the moves together and hold the performance conversation one to one.
- Lines nobody can close. "Work on morale" gives the owner no finish point. Write what the owner will be able to show by the target date.
- Hiring to fix a process. A new person inherits the same unclear responsibilities. Check the function map and the process first.
- Exit details on the shared plan. Put the coverage commitment on the plan and keep the individual action in a restricted record.
- Moves that roll over every quarter. Ask the team to decide each slipped move again at the review.
What should a founder do before the next quarterly review?
Before the next review, ask each function owner to bring proposed people moves and the status of the current ones.
- Bring the evidence. The current function map, this year's milestones and any scorecard misses that point to a people need.
- Write each proposal as a line. The change, its result, one owner and a date inside the quarter.
- Check the current moves. Report each as done or not done against the result written on its line.
- Protect confidential moves. Check that no line identifies a person leaving, and keep the individual action in a restricted record.
The Blueprint's People section has six lines. We recommend committing only to the moves the company has the capacity to complete, and confirming each owner and date before the session closes.
- The leadership team agrees the quarter's people moves together, up to six in the Blueprint.
- Each move is one line with one owner and a target date inside the quarter.
- Individual scoring stays off the shared plan, and each leader holds performance conversations one to one.
- Keep exit actions in a restricted record, and take employment-law questions to the company's attorney or HR adviser.
- At quarter end, close each move against its written result and decide again on any that slipped.
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