The book is targeted to someone running a small business that needs to hire in order to grow. Think of a restaurant, RV rental business, flower shop. The mantra is to write down how you do everything, and then train everyone. If "how you do your job" changes, then you need to update the process and re-train everyone.
This is what I meant by "clearly explain your expectations" and "Don't be afraid to 'explain common sense.'" You're giving the underperformer a chance to improve, working on your "interpersonal conflict" issues, and building a set of objectives expectations that can be used to measure performance.
(In my case, the underperformer quit the day after I explained all of my expectations; and the replacement that was hired was AWESOME.)
Thanks for the details and the recommendations. I'm in complete agreement with them. Especially the explain the common sense part. A lot of people are ridiculously bad at communicating their expectations (both managers and managees(?))...
