I know this is advice you probably don’t want to hear.

We’ve all been told that micromanagement is bad. That great leaders hire great people and get out of their way. That autonomy is the secret to building high-performing teams.

And that’s 100% true. For your A-players.

But here’s the honest truth that nobody wants to talk about: most founders are going to have some weak folks on their team. We all hire some. Even the best of us. Maybe you inherited them. Maybe you settled during a desperate hiring crunch. Maybe they interviewed great and just… aren’t.  Maybe it just didn’t work out the way you’d hoped.

The ideal choice is to move them out quickly. We all know that. But for many reasons—the fundraise is in 60 days, you can’t afford the transition right now, you’re hoping they’ll turn it around, too much change in other roles—you may end up keeping a mediocre VP longer than you should.

If that’s the situation you’re in, you have exactly one option: micromanage them.

I know you don’t want to. But you have to.

Here’s What Happens When You Leave a Mediocre VP Alone

Let me paint the picture for you, because I’ve seen this movie a hundred times.

The Mediocre CFO won’t manage cash properly.

Trust me.  I see this time and time again. They’ll tell you runway is fine when it isn’t. They’ll miss the nuances in the collections process. They’ll let expenses creep because having hard conversations with other department heads is uncomfortable. You’ll wake up one morning and realize you have 6 months of runway instead of 12, and nobody told you because nobody was really watching.

The Mediocre CRO will blame everyone else for the miss.

Marketing gave them bad leads. The product isn’t competitive. The pricing is wrong. The economy is tough. They’ll have an excuse for everything and a solution for nothing. They’ll churn through your best reps because top performers don’t tolerate weak leadership. And by the time you figure out the problem is them, you’ve lost two quarters and your best salespeople.

The Mediocre CMO will just want to manage their favorite agencies.

They’ll spend $200K on a brand refresh nobody asked for. They’ll obsess over the website redesign while pipeline generation falls off a cliff. They’ll show you beautiful dashboards full of vanity metrics while your CRO is screaming about lead quality. They’ll confuse activity with results because results are hard and activity is easy.

The Mediocre VP of Engineering will add a lot of process but never really understand the product or customers.  And velocity slows down.

They’ll tell you the estimates were wrong (they made the estimates). They’ll gold-plate features nobody needs while critical bugs pile up. They’ll build a team that’s loyal to them personally instead of aligned to the company.  They’ll endless tell you about feature debt and how everything has to be rebuilt, and it’s not their fault.

See the pattern?

Mediocre VPs don’t just underperform. They actively make things worse while telling you everything is fine.

Why the “Leave Them Alone” Approach Backfires

Here’s what I’ve learned after 20+ years of doing this:

If you leave your best people alone, you often get even more out of them. They’re self-directed. They see around corners. They raise problems before they become crises. They actually want more autonomy because they know exactly what to do with it. Getting out of their way is the highest-leverage thing you can do.

If you leave your mediocre people alone, they spend all the money and get little done. They’re not self-directed—they’re self-serving. They confuse busyness with effectiveness. They optimize for what’s comfortable, not what’s needed. They interpret your absence as approval.

The same management approach that unlocks your A-players will absolutely destroy you with your C-players.

This is the part most founders get wrong. They read the leadership books about empowerment and autonomy and they apply it uniformly across their team. That’s a mistake. Your best people and your worst people need completely different things from you.

What “Micromanaging” Actually Looks Like

Let me be clear about what I mean, because “micromanagement” has become a dirty word.

I’m not talking about being a jerk. I’m not talking about undermining them in front of their team. I’m not talking about doing their job for them.

I’m talking about radical accountability on a short cycle.

#1. Weekly (or even more frequent) 1-on-1s with real metrics.

Not the fluffy “how are you feeling about things” conversations. The “show me the numbers, what did you commit to, what did you deliver, what’s the delta, and what are you doing about it” conversations.

#2. Specific, measurable commitments every single week.

Not “we’re working on improving pipeline.” Instead: “By Friday, you will have generated 15 qualified opportunities from the new outbound sequence.” Make it concrete. Make it undeniable.

#3. Direct involvement in their key decisions.

Yes, this takes more of your time. Yes, this feels like a step backward. But a mediocre VP making mediocre decisions autonomously will cost you far more than the hours you spend in the room with them.

#4. Visibility into their team. Skip-levels aren’t optional here.

You need to know what’s actually happening, not just what they’re telling you is happening. Mediocre leaders are often very good at managing up while everything below them burns.

#5. Short timelines for improvement.

If you’re going to keep them, keep them on a short leash with clear milestones. 30-60 days, not “let’s see how Q3 goes.” If they can’t perform under close supervision, they definitely can’t perform without it.

“But I Don’t Have Time to Micromanage”

I hear you. You’re a CEO. You have a thousand things to do. The whole point of hiring VPs was to not have to do this.

Here’s the hard truth: you’re already paying for this mediocre VP. You’re paying them a VP salary. You’re paying them in equity. And you’re paying the hidden costs—the missed opportunities, the wasted spend, the organizational drag they create.

The question isn’t whether you can afford to spend 5 extra hours a week managing them closely. The question is whether you can afford not to.

Because those 5 hours of micromanagement might save you from:

• The $500K in wasted marketing spend

• The two quarters of missed revenue targets

• The three engineers who quit because leadership was absent

• The fundraise that fell apart because your metrics told a different story than your deck

A 1-on-1 is often the most efficient way to manage a mediocre report. Use it.

The Real Answer (That You Already Know)

Let me be honest with you: micromanaging a mediocre VP is a temporary solution. It’s a tourniquet, not a cure.

If someone needs this level of oversight to perform at a VP level, they probably shouldn’t be a VP at your company. The job of a VP is to lift things off your plate, not add to it.

So yes, micromanage them for now if you have to. But set a deadline. Give them a real chance to step up with the structure and support. And if they can’t perform even with you in the room every week?

Make the change.

Because the only thing worse than having a mediocre VP is having a mediocre VP that you’ve stopped paying attention to.

It Happens To Everyone

We can say we’ll only hire the best of the best. But the reality is, for many reasons, you may end up keeping a few mediocre VPs. And even settling and hiring a few that you shouldn’t.

When that happens, you have two choices:

1. Move them out quickly (the ideal choice)

2. Micromanage them until you can make the change

What you cannot do is leave them alone and hope for the best.

Your best VPs will take autonomy and turn it into magic.

Your mediocre VPs will take autonomy and turn it into chaos.

Treat them accordingly.