When a Small Purchase Becomes a Six-Figure Problem

Last month, a supervisor called me sounding completely drained. "We need to let someone go. I know we do. But when I look at what we've actually documented..." She trailed off.

"How long have you known this wasn't working?" I asked.

Long silence. "Honestly? Since around month four. Maybe earlier."

By the time we started the formal process, the picture was painfully clear: the employee was going to be terminated, the supervisor had emotionally checked out months ago, and the company had unknowingly burned through something north of KES 400,000 tolerating a problem they had spotted before the sixth month.

What finally triggered the formal action? A purchase made without authorization. Small enough that in a healthy working relationship, it would have been a five-minute conversation. Instead, it became the documented incident that opened the exit door.

The Everybit Reality Check

Here is what was actually happening: this was not about a minor policy breach. This was about a fundamental role mismatch that went unaddressed until termination became the only viable option.

The employee had been underperforming against clear KPIs for months. Not because they were incapable—far from it. The role needed someone who could operate autonomously, make judgment calls, and drive accountability without constant oversight. What they had was someone with an "assistant" temperament in a "controller" role. I see this constantly: someone who's excellent at following instructions, now expected to set the instructions.

The unauthorized purchase? That was just the clearest example of a pattern nobody had named. After eight months, this person still didn't understand their decision-making boundaries. Because no one had ever documented them.

Here is the uncomfortable breakdown: the company hired for credentials and experience—strong CV, relevant background, good interview. Then discovered too late that credentials don't predict behavioral fit. And by the time everyone acknowledged the mismatch, the relationship was already too damaged to repair.

Why This Keeps Repeating

I have watched this exact cycle play out in at least a dozen Kenyan SMEs. There's a framework that helps explain it—Simon Sinek talks about the trust-performance matrix that elite teams use. The principle is straightforward: you can coach high performers who have low trust. You can develop low performers who have high trust. But low performers with low trust? They become what Sinek calls "toxic drains." Not because they are bad people, but because the compounding effect just bleeds leadership energy.

This employee started as a performance gap. They became a trust issue when every single conversation about missed targets was met with an external explanation:

• "The system doesn't let me..."

• "I'm still waiting for [someone else] to..."

• "No one told me I was supposed to..."

There is a psychological term for this—external locus of control—but you don't need the jargon to recognize the pattern. It is the person who always has a reason why something was not their call to make. You can train technical skills. You can coach process improvements. But getting someone to fundamentally shift how they take ownership? That is behavioral wiring, not a skills gap. And it doesn't change in 90 days.

Now here is the part that makes supervisors uncomfortable: this dynamic doesn't happen in a vacuum. Management created the conditions for it to fester.

No structured onboarding checkpoints, so the misalignment was not caught early. No documented decision-making framework—the employee was genuinely guessing at boundaries for eight months. And no early performance conversations, which meant small issues quietly became entrenched habits.

By month eight, you had the classic death spiral: the supervisor was micromanaging out of frustration, and the employee was disengaging because they felt micromanaged. I could see it in how they talked about each other. The trust was gone.

John Maxwell has this concept he calls the "Law of the Lid"—the idea that your leadership ability determines how effective your organization can be. This supervisor hit their lid around month four when they noticed the problem but chose to compensate rather than confront. That four-month delay of the hard conversation? It cost the company roughly KES 250,000 in compounding drag.

What This Looks Like in Practice

If you are trying to prevent this cycle in your own organization, here is what actually works—not theory, just what I have seen make the difference:

Before you hire: Use behavioral assessments alongside credentials. A strong CV proves someone can execute tasks. It doesn't tell you how they approach accountability, autonomy, or problem-solving when things get ambiguous. That is where the mismatch usually hides.

In the first 90 days: Schedule formal review points at 30, 60, and 90 days. Make them real checkpoints, not just "how are you settling in?" conversations. A three-month mismatch is recoverable—you part ways professionally, everyone moves on. An eight-month mismatch is expensive and emotionally exhausting.

Document decision authority clearly: Create a simple matrix: who can approve what, up to what threshold, with whose sign-off. If a minor purchase ends up triggering a termination process, the problem is not the purchase. It is the fact that after eight months, nobody had clarified the boundaries.

Address the pattern, not just the incidents: When every performance conversation produces an external excuse, that is not a training gap. That is a fundamental mismatch between what the role requires and how this person operates. Have the difficult conversation at month three. Not month nine.

Know when you have reached the end: Not every hire works out, and that is okay. When you know the fit is fundamentally wrong—and you do know, even if it is uncomfortable to admit—extending the timeline doesn't change the outcome. It just makes it more expensive. Exit respectfully, document properly, move forward.

The Quiet Consequence

The employee was eventually placed on a formal performance improvement plan with clear, measurable targets. The supervisor committed to stepping back and giving them room to operate independently.

My honest assessment? The plan will likely fail. I know how that sounds—like I am being cynical about the PIP before it even starts. I am not. I am just pattern-matching based on what happens when trust has eroded this far.

Improvement is possible, sure. But not when someone has spent eight months feeling micromanaged while their manager has spent eight months compensating for performance gaps. A 30-day reset doesn't rebuild what took eight months to break down.

What usually happens next is predictable: partial improvement (enough to demonstrate effort), unmet targets (because the gap is behavioral, not technical), termination anyway, potential dispute, and then a months-long process to hire and onboard a replacement.

The pattern I see repeating across Kenyan SMEs: discomfort with early confrontation leads to tolerance. Tolerance leads to compounding costs. And by the time someone finally acts, the financial and emotional bill is 5-10 times what early intervention would have cost.

The Real Question

How many people in your organization right now are:

• Underperforming, but you're "giving them more time"?

• In roles that don't actually match how they naturally work?

• Operating without clear authority guidelines?

• Consuming disproportionate management energy just to stay functional?

This is usually where leaders realize the real issue. It was not the employee—or at least, it was not just the employee. It was the absence of systems that would have caught the misalignment early, when it was still fixable.

The small problems you are tolerating right now? They are not staying small. They are compounding. Every week you wait to have the difficult conversation, the eventual cost doubles.

The encouraging part? These patterns are fixable. You can build the systems. You can have the early conversations. But not by avoiding discomfort, and not by hoping people will spontaneously shift their fundamental approach to work.

If any of this feels familiar—not all of it, just the sense that you are three months past when you should have addressed something—the question is not whether you have the issue. It is whether you can afford to let it keep compounding quietly in the background. We help Kenyan SMEs build the systems that catch role mismatches before they become terminations. Ready to look at what is actually happening? Let's talk.