Tzvi Schwartz, Certified EOS Implementer, breaks down what happens when the People Analyzer forces a tough people decision
Draws a sharp line between being nice (avoiding discomfort) and being kind (caring enough to be honest)
Covers how to coach someone below the bar with a clear 30, 60, or 90-day window
Explains "the monkeys," letting people own their own problems so they can actually grow
Shows how to handle split ratings on the leadership team by fixing clarity, not the person
Gives three filters for turning vague Core Values into something you can actually grade against
We recently sat down with Tzvi Schwartz, Certified EOS Implementer, to talk about what actually happens when you have to make tough people decisions. It's easy to find the basic textbook definitions of the People Analyzer online, but filling out a grid is the easy part. The real challenge is dealing with the human side of it.
Right out of the gate, Tzvi pointed out something most of us can relate to: deep down, you usually already know who is struggling on your team.
The issue isn't a lack of awareness, it's just that it's incredibly hard to look a loyal employee in the eye and tell them they aren't cutting it. It's much easier to tolerate the situation and call it "patience."
But when we stall, a minor performance gap can quietly drag on for years, simply because we lack the right vocabulary, and sometimes the backbone, to have the conversation.
Whether you're just starting with EOS or looking to get your current culture back on track, we wanted to look at how this tool works when real human emotions get in the way. We asked Tzvi the questions leaders lose sleep over behind closed doors:
How to run this process when you're deeply attached to a legacy employee.
What to do when your leadership team completely disagrees on a rating.
How to tell if your Core Values are too vague to actually mean anything.
Here is a practical look at how to handle the discomfort and start making honest people decisions.
First things first: what exactly is the People Analyzer
If you are new to the ecosystem, let's get the basic mechanics out of the way first.
To put it plainly, the People Analyzer is an objective evaluation framework that scores every team member against a company's Core Values to find the "Right Person" and against GWC (Get it, Want it, Capacity) to find the "Right Seat." It looks like a simple one-page chart. Your people run down the left column, your corporate values run across the top, and three columns for GWC sit at the very end.
The scoring system uses three basic symbols for Core Values:
A plus (+) means they live that value most of the time.
A plus/minus (+/-) means they live it sometimes.
A minus (-) means they mostly don’t.
For GWC, it's a straight yes or no on three specific questions:
Get it: Do they have a deep, intuitive understanding of the role, where it all just clicks for them?
Want it: Does the role genuinely motivate them day to day, can they bring their full energy to it, not just tolerate it?
Capacity to do it: Do they have the mental, emotional, physical, and time capacity to do the job, and do it well?
Before you grade anyone, your leadership team establishes The Bar, the absolute minimum standard for the company. For example, if you have five Core Values, your Bar might be three pluses and two plus/minuses In general, always zero minuses allowed. For GWC, the standard is non-negotiable: it requires three clear yeses.
Filling out this chart takes about ten minutes. But as Tzvi points out, the chart is just the prep work. The real work begins when the data tells you someone you care about is sitting below the line.
The real obstacle is your own comfort
This is where Tzvi's perspective gets down to the real issue. He draws a massive, uncompromising line between being nice and being kind, and notes that most executives confuse the two entirely.
Nice is the easy stuff. As Tzvi puts it:
"Nice means I'm going to treat them nicely. I'm going to smile. I'm going to hug them. I'm going to, you know, high five them, and I'm going to give them compliments, and I'm going to tell them how awesome they are."
There is a time and place for that, but it's not what transforms a business. Being kind is something else entirely:
"Kind means I care about people and I want to see them grow."
And that growth requires shedding our blind spots.
When leaders look at Tzvi and say, "I don't want to hurt their feelings," his response is immediate, direct, and unvarnished:
"I tell them respectfully, you're lying. You're not afraid of hurting their feelings, you're afraid of hurting your feelings. You're afraid of how you're going to feel when you have to talk to them about it. You are uncomfortable. You're afraid of your own uncomfort."
Avoiding the truth isn't protective. Leaving someone in a seat they can no longer handle means they go home miserable, produce poor results, and carry that stress into their personal lives. Out of fear of a tough conversation, you end up wrecking the team, wrecking the company, and wrecking the person you want to help.
Give them a real chance first
Falling below the Bar isn't an automatic firing sentence; it's a mandate to coach. More often than not, a person isn't struggling because they suddenly became a bad employee. They were fantastic, but the company scaled or the team evolved, and the role literally changed right underneath them. As Tzvi says:
"You have to get out of the car to see the car kind of a thing."
The kind response is to hold up the mirror, show them where they are strong versus where they are weak, and offer a transparent path forward with a clear 30, 60, or 90-day window to step up.
But what happens next is entirely on them, and this is where leaders must learn the discipline of managing what Tzvi calls "the monkeys." He references the classic management story about employees walking into an executive's office with problems jumping around like monkeys all over the desk:
"Help IDS the issue with the person [...] and then let them take the monkey back to their desk. Don't own their problem. Don't go home with their problem. It's their problem, not because we don't care, but the only way for a person to grow is they have to own their stuff."
If they want to level up, they'll stay humble, they'll learn, and they'll rise with the seat. If they can't, you can still transition them with complete dignity, whether that means moving to a different seat on your chart, shifting down a level, or helping them move to a new company where there is a greater future for them.
Either way, the goal isn't to punish someone for being in the wrong seat. It's to get everyone, including them, into a seat where they can actually win.
The People Analyzer doesn't make the decision for you; it just makes the choice completely honest.
When the team rates someone differently
It happens in almost every session room: the leadership team sits down to score a manager, and the ratings are completely split. One executive gives them a plus on being a "team player," and another gives them a definitive minus. Most teams try to treat this like a math problem to be averaged out, but Tzvi looks at the root cause:
"In my opinion, everything EOS is context, right? Clarity and context, clarity and context."
A split rating is simply a symptom of a breakdown in that clarity.
First, it's a sign that the Core Value itself isn't clear to the team because everybody has a different version in their head of what that value means. The friction isn't actually about the employee; it's about your own lack of alignment. You have to stop and define the value before you touch the grid again.
Second, if the value is clear and you are still completely split, it means your leadership team hasn't spent enough time together building real relational trust. Tzvi ties this straight back to Patrick Lencioni's Five Dysfunctions of a Team, where trust sits at the absolute base of the pyramid:
"Trust comes from two things again, looking at that Johari window. It's how well do you know me? And how well are we able to have a hard conversation about what's in my blind spot. So, how well do you know me is where people ultimately develop relationships."
This is exactly why the personal good news check-in at the start of your weekly Level 10 meetings isn't just filler or fluff. We share personal news to get to know each other, because the more we know someone, the more we care about them, and the more honestly we can lead together.
Why vague Core Values quietly break everything
The framework is only as good as the metrics you are grading against, and almost every Core Value written by an entrepreneurial team is far too vague. If your value is a generalized sentence like "always give it your best," every single person will look at themselves, grade themselves generously, and pass right through the filter. The tool completely loses its edge.
To fix this, you have to build out a definitive Core Value speech using Tzvi's three concrete filters:
Character traits. Describe the actual human traits of a person who naturally lives this value. If the value is "don't leave till it's done," specify what a natural person looks like. They are meticulous, organized, punctual, and never miss deadlines. The moment you name the specific traits, the people who assumed they were a perfect fit suddenly realize they aren't.
Company-specific do's and don'ts. Translate the value into daily operational activities specific to each department. Being a "team player" in the corporate office might mean speaking up courageously during tough debates. Out on an electrical field site, it means cleaning up the shared material room because you know the next technician behind you will be looking for a clean tool.
What it feels like to be around them. Flip the lens onto the rest of the team. When someone truly lives the value, their teammates feel calm, secure, focused, and reliable, you never feel the need to double-check their work. When they don't, the team feels nervous, reactive, and forced to constantly send reminder emails and check everything twice.
Tzvi emphasizes that Core Values sit at the very top of your V/TO for a critical reason:
"Before you even get into your vision of where you want to go, you have to start with, like, what is the state of mind you have to come to work with every day. Forget about what goal I want you to work on. I want to know what kind of state of mind you have to come to work with every day."
When those behavioral rules blur, the work blurs, the productivity drops, and the finances suffer. Clarity isn't a nice-to-have, it's the foundation everything else stands on.
