“I would sit them down and ask what is actually going on, because past performance does not guarantee future performance and two months of missed deadlines means something has shifted. Then I would get very clear on the expectation, agree the next deliverable and date, and stay close until I see it land.”
“Two months of missed deadlines from your best person is a signal, not a sudden laziness problem. I'd sit them down this week, state the missed dates factually, ask what is in their way, and agree a time-bound fix. If the issue is you, your process, or unclear expectations, fix that before you lose them.”
“I had a top performer on a 1990 Accenture project who started missing dates, and I learned the hard way that pushing harder just burned the team out. With your best person, I'd sit down and ask what's actually changed before the next deadline gets set.”
“I used to show up at someone's desk on a Friday with a box, and they never saw it coming. Two months of missed deadlines means the conversation should have happened six weeks ago; have it today, name the pattern, and ask what's in the way before you write a plan together.”
“I watched a mix engineer go quiet for a week and a designer miss a deadline by a month, and both times nobody noticed until release week. If your best performer is slipping for two months, the issue is rarely them; it's that the team has no early warning system before a missed deadline becomes a crisis.”
“Two months of missed deadlines from your best performer is a signal, not just a slip. I would sit down with them and ask what changed, because the best people usually start missing dates when something around the work changed, not when they did.”
“I once watched a high performer get performance-managed out because the leader kept measuring them against old output instead of asking what was actually in their way. Two months of missed deadlines is a signal, not a verdict; I'd sit down with them and find out whether the load, the goal, or something outside work has shifted, before the organisation loses someone it has already invested in.”
“I have let a high performer slide on deadlines because I did not want to lose them, and the rest of the team ended up paying for it. Now I would ask what changed two months ago and have the courage to name the pattern before it becomes the standard.”
“Two months of missed deadlines from a top performer is usually a signal, not a performance problem. I would have a direct conversation this week about workload, priorities, and what changed, because the best people often get buried quietly while still producing enough to hide it.”