Every business I have worked in has had one of these.
Someone gets promoted into a role. Six months later it is clear to everybody that it is not working. Not because they are a bad person, and usually not because they are lazy. The role is just not the right fit for them.
Everyone can see it. Ask any of them privately and they will agree.
And then nothing happens, sometimes for years.
Why it sits
Because moving somebody out of a higher role is genuinely hard to navigate.
It feels like a punishment even when it is not meant as one. It is awkward for their team. It is awkward for whoever promoted them, which is often the person who now has to undo it. There is a fear that everyone else will read it as a warning about their own job.
So the decision gets deferred. Not refused, deferred. There is always a reason this month is the wrong month.
Most businesses never make the call at all. They wait for the person to leave.
We did make it, a few times. It still took a long time every time.
What eventually got us over the line
Not toughness. Arithmetic.
It works out better for everyone involved. Including, and I want to be clear about this, the person in the role.
Look at what is actually happening while nothing is being done.
That person is stressed. They are finding the job very hard, they know they are not on top of it, and they are making mistakes. Nobody is enjoying that, least of all them. We could see it.
And the mistakes do not stay with them. The follow-on is that they are creating a large amount of extra work for everybody else. Other people are quietly picking it up, working around it, redoing it. That cost is real and it compounds every week the decision is deferred.
Once you put those two things side by side, leaving it alone stops looking like the kind option. It is just the comfortable one.
The part people skip
Follow the right procedures. All of them.
This is not a thing to do quickly because it has been hanging around and you have finally got the nerve up. A rushed version of this is unfair to the person and exposes the business, and it will also confirm every fear the rest of your team had about what the decision meant.
Done properly, with the process followed and the reasoning explained, it reads as what it is. A role correction, not a verdict on a human being.
There is usually a good landing spot too. Very often the person was excellent at the job they had before, which is exactly why they got promoted out of it.
The objection worth taking seriously
Someone will say yes, but that will cause X.
Take that seriously. I always do. If someone can show me logically that a change I want to make will produce a worse outcome for the business, I would rather be told before than after, and I will happily be wrong.
But test it. Most of the time the feared consequence is real but much smaller than the cost that is already being paid, and it turns out to be avoidable with a bit of thought about how the change is handled.
Occasionally the objection is right and the change should not happen. That is worth knowing too.
If you want a structured way to do that, the Negative Branch Reservation tool walks through it. You write out how the change supposedly leads to the thing people fear, step by step, and then look for the step that does not have to follow.
Most fears do not survive being written down in order.
If this is sitting in your business right now
You probably knew who I was describing by the third paragraph.
Two questions worth answering honestly.
What is it costing, in work other people are absorbing? Not a feeling. Have a look at who is redoing things, who is being asked to check, where the rework lands.
What is it costing them? They know. They have known longer than you have.
Then work out what a fair, well handled version of the change looks like, follow the process properly, and stop calling the delay kindness.
It is the hardest call on the list. It is also the one where waiting helps nobody, including the person you think you are protecting.