The biggest regret of any leader I've ever spoken with was that they held on to underperformers for too long.
We're talking 12-24 months.
The reality is that underperformance compounds faster than top performance.
Now imagine every manager holding on to that "one low performer" across multiple departments.
This is how you harm culture. You tell employees we tolerate under performance and you teach new hires that our company doesn't take performance management seriously.