François leads a team of 10 engineers at a 100-employee consulting engineering firm. Two of them, Véronique and Karim, are exceptional: consistently on-time delivery, innovative solutions, always available for the most complex mandates. The rest of the team produces work that's fine, but minimal.

François sets no formal goals, considering the practice "too bureaucratic for a team of professionals." He holds no annual reviews: "We see each other every day, they know what I think of their work." Mandates are handed out based on stated availability rather than skill, which means Véronique and Karim consistently inherit the most demanding projects, with no formal compensation or recognition.

At salary review time, François gives everyone the same raise — 3.5% — "to avoid jealousy." Two days later, Véronique resigns. Her letter is blunt: "On this team, producing 150% of a colleague's work gets you exactly the same results as producing 80%. I deserve better."

💬 The Eskalon moment

The question François could have asked Eskalon, ideally well before this resignation: "My best engineers are carrying the team and one of them just resigned citing a lack of recognition. How do I set up a performance management system that rewards excellence without creating conflict?" The answer starts with a fundamental distinction: treating everyone the same isn't fair, it's uniform. Fairness means rewards are proportional to contributions.

Eskalon would have offered him a simple model of quarterly goals per engineer — a conversation framework rather than a bureaucratic system — along with a lightweight review cycle: a 30-minute one-on-one each quarter to document contributions, adjust mandates based on each person's strengths, and calibrate recognition on an objective basis.

The effect of this framework, applied in time, is direct: top performers feel seen and recognized, which retains them. The rest of the team clearly understands what sets an exceptional contribution apart from an adequate one, creating a positive ripple effect rather than a race to the bottom. François, for his part, stops managing by gut feeling and gains an objective tool to justify his recognition decisions — a tool that, applied sooner, would likely have kept Véronique on his team.