The Leadership Lesson Behind The Post Turtle

Author, Chad Haldeman, is a Business Advisor with The Resultants.

To learn more about Chad, visit our Team Page or connect with him on LinkedIn.

You've got someone on your team who isn't working out. They're a hard worker. They fit the culture. Everyone likes them.

But they keep falling short, and you can't quite put your finger on why.

Here's a way to think about it: you might be looking at a turtle on a post.

"If you see a turtle on a post… don't blame the turtle."

Here's where I first encountered this situation.

When deregulation lifted in the 90s, the media industry experienced a lot of consolidation. I was with Clear Channel radio at the time, and as the largest major market operator, we took the opportunity to buy up surrounding smaller markets.

One of our resources during this time was Lindsey Wood Davis, broadcaster and organizational development academic. Together, we'd go into these smaller markets and find people in ill-fitting roles that would leave us scratching our heads.

What was this person doing there, we'd wonder?

Lindsey would laugh and say, "Chad, my boy… If you see a turtle on a post, somebody put him there."

What Makes Someone a Post Turtle

Have you ever watched a turtle in water? They're a marvel. How fast they swim. How well they blend into their environment. How easily they snap up prey.

But all that talent doesn't help a turtle stuck on a fence post. Out of their element, four webbed limbs flailing, the turtle is useless up there. You know someone had to have placed it, because there's no way it climbed up on its own.

It's often like that with leadership teams. There's a person, or people, in a role so clearly outside their element that you can only assume it was someone else's decision, made higher up the ladder.

These Post Turtles have unique abilities of their own. Their role just isn't letting them live in those abilities.

Why Turtles End Up on Posts

1. A resource scarcity issue. The company needed someone to fill a seat and keep things moving, like plugging a leak on a sailboat.

   
   

2. A false belief that skill equals leadership ability. The rockstar Salesperson doesn't automatically make a rockstar Sales Manager.

   
   

3. A family business. Grandpa (CEO) wants more for nephew Edgar (GM) than Edgar wants for himself (to be a musician).

   
   

No matter the cause, the takeaway is the same: don't blame the turtle.

A Post Turtle is usually a matter of right person, wrong role.

This person can be a hard worker and a great fit for the culture.

But when an executive places them in the wrong role, they fall short of expectations, and the "turtle on a post" allegory puts the spotlight back on the leader who put them there.

When a board of directors asks us for the secret sauce of a successful organization, our answer is team health.

Team health starts with the right strategic structure, then filling that structure with the right people in the right roles.

Jim Collins calls this "right people, right seats." In our Accelerate Your Business™ model, it's Organizational Structure work, and it's foundational to everything else.

Why This Matters to Your Results

You can have the best strategy in the world. But if your team is dysfunctional, you might as well walk into the market with both hands tied behind your back.

I've been in positions where we had the dominant market share and an unhealthy team. Our performance was underwhelming.

I've also been in positions where we weren't dominant at all, but had a rockstar team. Guess which one knocked it out of the park.

Don't Blame the Turtle. Fix the Seat.

Post Turtles are showing up more often lately. The labor shortage has made "who's available" a bigger factor than "who's right for the role."

Your Post Turtles are causing your organization pain. Identify them. Find their unique abilities. Then place them somewhere they can actually live in those abilities.

That's an act of healing the organization, not a demotion.

Ready to Get the Right People in the Right Seats?

As business advisors, we're often tasked with investigating organizational dysfunction. When we spot a Post Turtle, we work through it in our one-on-one owner meetings and help leadership take the steps to fix it.

If your organization is suffering from poor health, give us a call or send us an email to set up a free Growth Consultation. We can have a deeper conversation about your organization and determine if our Accelerate Your Business program is right for you.