Why the People Side of Your Business Matters
- Chad Haldeman
- 22 hours ago
- 5 min read
Author, Chad Haldeman, is a Senior Business Advisor with The Resultants.
People aren't just part of your business. They're the engine and the heart and soul of your company.
I've spent years working with business owners and leadership teams, and I can tell you this with absolute certainty: when the people side of your business is broken, everything else suffers.
And when it's healthy? That's when the magic happens.
Think about it this way.
You can have the best strategy in the world. You can have brilliant plans, great products, strong market position. But if your people aren't aligned, if they don't know what's expected of them, if they're not working together as a cohesive team — none of that other stuff matters.
Because at the end of the day, you get results through people.
Watch the video below to learn more or scroll down to read.
What It Looks Like When You Have People Problems
The symptoms can be overt or they can be subtle and insidious. Here's what I see most often:
The Quiet Room
There's a big old elephant in the room, but nobody's willing or able to speak up and call it out.
People are hiding in the weeds, unwilling to disagree with one another.
The Silo Mentality
“That's Patty's responsibility. That's not my responsibility. So I'm just going to sit here on my hands."
There's no cohesiveness. Each department protects its own turf, focuses only on its own metrics, and points fingers when problems arise that cross departmental lines.
Lack of Clarity
People aren’t clear about their role, how they’ll be measured, who they report to, or what they should focus on.
"I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be doing. Who exactly do I report to? I report to George one day and Susan the next, and I'm expected to do things in a couple different departments, and I'm not sure what to focus on."
When people don't have clarity around expectations, they're set up to fail.
Overwhelm
I have never walked into a company where people are sitting around playing Yahtzee in the back room with nothing to do.
The problem is always the opposite. They're trying to do way too many things - and they’re trying to do it all perfectly.
It's what I call 'boiling the ocean' — trying to do everything at once instead of focusing on what will actually move the business forward.
That overwhelm is paralyzing. It creates burnout.
High Turnover
Especially among your high performers.
When your best people don't have clarity about their role, when they're constantly fighting fires instead of focusing on meaningful work, when they see dysfunction at the leadership level — they won't stick around.
They'll find a company where they can thrive and win.
Inability to Engage in Healthy Conflict
When teams can't debate, discuss, and disagree respectfully, when they can't attack issues instead of each other, you've got a people problem.
Doing this well – engaging in what Pat Lencioni calls healthy conflict – is essential.
So, how do we fix all this?
Getting the People Part of Your Business Right
The people component of your business operating system is one of three critical elements (alongside Plan and Execution) that everything else is built on.
When you get the people side right, the transformation is remarkable. Here's what you'll see:
Team One Behavior
People thinking in terms of the greater good. Not "that's not my job, that's Patty's job," but "that's our job — how can I help?"
Their first loyalty is to the overall team performance, because as goes the team, so goes the company.
Open, Healthy Conflict
For those of us from the Upper Midwest, conflict’s a scary word. But it's really about debate, discussion, disagreement.
We're attacking the issues, not one another. It's done in the spirit of the greater good of the company, even if sometimes it comes at the expense of my department.
High Execution
You'll see priorities getting done. Not just tactical departmental stuff, but the big company-wide initiatives that the leadership team is truly collaborating on and aligning around.
Active Communication
People aren't being forced to communicate. It's just a regular, natural part of the dynamic.
Leaders are sharing information about their departments because they see it helps the team.
Work Hard, Play Hard
There's laughter. There's energy. People are engaged, leaning in, loving what they're doing, skilled and passionate about their work.
Vulnerability-Based Trust
This is the foundation of everything. When people trust each other, they're willing to be wrong, admit mistakes, ask for help, challenge and disagree, get aligned, and become truly accountable.
Without trust, people stay in the weeds. With trust, you get collective results focused on company profit, revenue, market share — the things that really matter.
What It Takes to Get There
The path isn't complicated, but it requires intentionality and execution. You need to get three things right:
1. Core Values
These aren’t just words to put on your website. It's how you behave, how you show up at work, how you think, how you treat one another and your clients.
It's about bringing on people who align with those values and will live them on a daily basis, both internally and externally.
Values you can coach around and recognize: "When you're living this value, it looks like this. When you're not, it looks like this."
These values become your filter for hiring and your foundation for accountability.
2. Organizational Structure
As Peter Drucker aptly put it, "Structure exists to execute strategy."
Your organizational structure needs to define clear roles and accountability, so people know exactly what's expected of them.
This is also where you achieve what Jim Collins calls "right people, right seats."
Right people means those whose values align with yours. Right seat means doing work that plays to their strengths. When someone gets to do what they do best every day, that's when they thrive.
3. Performance Expectations and Feedback
Set crystal clear expectations around what your team members are accountable for.
Not "am I on the boss's good list or bad list today?" but objective measurements through KPIs, clear roles, and 90-day priorities.
Provide regular, meaningful feedback that helps people continuously improve and thrive in their roles. At The Resultants, we’re big fans of employee-led performance management.
Let the team members tell you how they think they're doing, then offer your take.
My experience is that high-performing team members will often be much harder on themselves than we ever are as fair leaders.
This regular feedback rhythm means people know where they stand and have a roadmap for growth. Not just in their current role, but in identifying where they might go next in the organization.
When you have a strong, healthy, people component in your business, your team executes on strategy by doing what they do best every day.
That's powerful when it happens.
Most companies know this intellectually. Where they struggle is in the execution — turning these concepts into daily operating rhythms that actually stick.
That’s where we come in.
Ready to Build a Healthier Team?
If you're seeing some of these people problems in your own organization — the quiet room, the silos, the overwhelm, the turnover — or if you're just ready to make your already-good team great, let's talk.
Schedule a consultation with one of our business advisors.
