Nudge-Letter September 2026
You’ve seen this before
Many founders say it with genuine intent. They want people to care about each other, stand by each other and feel they belong.
- But then someone isn’t performing.
- A difficult conversation gets postponed because “she has been with us for years.”
- A senior employee’s experience gets more weight than actual competence.
- A conflict comes back to the founder to resolve.
Someone gets another chance. And another.
What’s really happening
Until care starts to mean something else.
That is where the family metaphor starts getting in the way. In a family, relationships can come before performance. You don’t stop being someone’s family because they aren’t doing well.
In a family, relationships can come before performance.
– Who said it can matter more than what is being said.
– Seniority can command more respect than competence.
– Past performance can continue to carry weight long after potential has faded.
A high-performing team is different. Relationships still matter. But so do contribution, competence, accountability and difficult conversations.
When these get blurred, founders can find themselves protecting people they should be challenging, tolerating performance they should be addressing, and resolving conflicts the team should be capable of resolving itself.
So how do organisations create belonging without letting it dilute performance?
A Case In Point
Netflix’s early culture had many qualities founders associate with a family. But after the 2001 layoffs, Hastings began questioning the metaphor. Netflix adopted a different one: a professional sports team, where people care about each other, but the right person needs to be in the right role and performance matters.
But the dilemma isn’t uniquely Netflix’s.
The Physio Co, founder Tristan White says a family-like culture was the right starting point. But as the organisation grew, he found care and loyalty alone weren’t enough for a high-performing team, and shifted towards greater accountability and performance
TaskRabbit, founder Leah Busque describes a close-knit, happy team, but recognised that the business wasn’t performing at the level it needed to. Looking back, she wished she had built a high-performance culture into its DNA much earlier.
Closer home, Mahindra CHRO describes culture as a “caring meritocracy”: supporting people while maintaining high standards of performance and outcomes.
Different companies. Different contexts. A similar realisation.
The culture that helps you build the organisation may not be the culture you need to grow it.
The answer isn’t to care less.It is to recognise when care, loyalty and belonging start getting in the way of meritocracy.
More from our “Nudge” series
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From our “Impact Stories” section
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Recommeded Read
A practical perspective on how caring personally and challenging directly can coexist. A useful read for leaders who want to build accountability without losing the human side of work.
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Coming up…
We are happy to announce our next batch that will start in October with self-paced on-line learning phase.
If you are planning to be part of this, this is your opportunity.
Try This
When you find yourself saying:
“They’ve been with us for years.”
“Let’s give them another chance.”
“I don’t want to upset them.”
“I’ll handle it.”
Pause. Ask yourself:
Are we caring for the person, or protecting them from accountability?
And then ask:
What is this costing the team?
You may be surprised by how often care shows up as avoidance, protection or founder intervention.
What Shifts
The mindset shifts from believing that caring for people means protecting them, to recognising that care and accountability can coexist.
Everyone needs to understand that being part of the organisation and contributing to its success are both important, but they are not the same thing. Belonging does not remove the responsibility to deliver, grow and contribute.
That is the foundation for meritocracy:
creating an organisation where contribution, competence and accountability matter alongside relationships and belonging.
Curious about this nudge and want to know more about how you can implement this?
Write to us, and we will connect
Interested in more nudges from us?
More from our “Nudge” series
From our “Impact Stories” section
Coming up…
We are happy to announce our next batch that will start in October with self-paced on-line learning phase.
If you are planning to be part of this, this is your opportunity.