--- title: "One heavy weight can hold your whole company down · Performia" description: "Every person is a balloon: lift that drives them up, and weight that pulls them down. A clear, complete guide to the one weight that grounds a whole team, and to why how a person looks tells you almost nothing about whether they will produce." url: https://performia.com/en-it/insights/helium-and-sand markdown_url: https://performia.com/en-it/insights/helium-and-sand.md language: en-IT locale: en-it type: article author: "Mårten Runow" site_name: "Performia" publisher: "Performia International AB" image: https://performia.com/og/en-it.png updated: 2026-09-29 breadcrumbs: - name: "Performia" url: https://performia.com/en-it - name: "Insights" url: https://performia.com/en-it/insights - name: "One heavy weight can hold your whole company down" url: https://performia.com/en-it/insights/helium-and-sand organization: name: "Performia International AB" url: https://performia.com founded: 2001 founder: "Mårten Runow" headquarters: "Bergviksgatan 27, 152 50 Södertälje, Sweden" phone: "+46 8 586 101 40" email: info@performia.net alternates: en: https://performia.com/insights/helium-and-sand en-AU: https://performia.com/en-au/insights/helium-and-sand zh-CN: https://performia.com/zh-cn/insights/helium-and-sand es-CO: https://performia.com/es-co/insights/helium-and-sand es-CR: https://performia.com/es-cr/insights/helium-and-sand cs-CZ: https://performia.com/cs-cz/insights/helium-and-sand es-EC: https://performia.com/es-ec/insights/helium-and-sand et-EE: https://performia.com/et-ee/insights/helium-and-sand fi-FI: https://performia.com/fi-fi/insights/helium-and-sand fr-FR: https://performia.com/fr-fr/insights/helium-and-sand de-DE: https://performia.com/de-de/insights/helium-and-sand el-GR: https://performia.com/el-gr/insights/helium-and-sand es-GT: https://performia.com/es-gt/insights/helium-and-sand hu-HU: https://performia.com/hu-hu/insights/helium-and-sand en-IT: https://performia.com/en-it/insights/helium-and-sand ja-JP: https://performia.com/ja-jp/insights/helium-and-sand ru-KZ: https://performia.com/ru-kz/insights/helium-and-sand en-MU: https://performia.com/en-mu/insights/helium-and-sand es-MX: https://performia.com/es-mx/insights/helium-and-sand nl-NL: https://performia.com/nl-nl/insights/helium-and-sand no-NO: https://performia.com/no-no/insights/helium-and-sand ro-RO: https://performia.com/ro-ro/insights/helium-and-sand en-RW: https://performia.com/en-rw/insights/helium-and-sand sk-SK: https://performia.com/sk-sk/insights/helium-and-sand es-ES: https://performia.com/es-es/insights/helium-and-sand sv-SE: https://performia.com/sv-se/insights/helium-and-sand de-CH: https://performia.com/de-ch/insights/helium-and-sand zh-TW: https://performia.com/zh-tw/insights/helium-and-sand tr-TR: https://performia.com/tr-tr/insights/helium-and-sand uk-UA: https://performia.com/uk-ua/insights/helium-and-sand en-GB: https://performia.com/en-gb/insights/helium-and-sand es-VE: https://performia.com/es-ve/insights/helium-and-sand --- [Performia](https://performia.com/en-it) › [Insights](https://performia.com/en-it/insights) › [One heavy weight can hold your whole company down](https://performia.com/en-it/insights/helium-and-sand) [Back to Insights](https://performia.com/en-it/insights) Helium & sand · a complete guide # One heavy weight can hold your whole company down A single person, carrying enough of the wrong kind of weight, can quietly keep an entire team on the ground. The unsettling part is how normal they look while they do it, and how often they seem to be the most important person in the room. This is the picture that explains why. Once you can see it, you can act on it, and the whole group starts to rise. > “When you know that one weight is holding the whole group down, don’t hesitate. Act, and the faster you act, the better it is for everyone who stays.” — Mårten Runow · Founder & Chairman, Performia International Start with one person ## Every person is a balloon Picture a single person as a balloon filled with helium. There is a lifting power in them: a will to survive, to do well, to build something that lasts. That lift is real, and it points up. The same person is also tied to some sand. The sand is everything that pulls the other way: the worry, the old habit, the bad week, the part of any of us that is not fully rational. Every single person carries some. It is simply part of being human. In plain words · Lift **Lift** is the productive drive in a person: the genuine wish to get things done and to build something worth keeping. It is what makes someone an asset to the people around them. In plain words · Weight **Weight** is everything in a person that pulls against their own lift, and against the group: distraction, cynicism, the need to look important, the habit of making things harder than they are. A little weight is normal. Enough of it changes everything. While there is more lift in the helium than there is weight in the sand, the person still flies. That balance, **lift against weight**, is the whole story of this guide. Hold on to it, and the rest follows. The shape of a company ## A company is a cluster of balloons Now put a lot of these balloons together and you have a company. Each one carries its own bag of sand. Some bags are light, some are heavy. Most of the time the whole group lifts, because between them there is far more helium than sand. Helium and sand: lift versus weight in a team 1. Each of us has lift, the drive to build and produce, and a bag of weight that pulls the other way. While the lift is greater, we fly. 2. Put people together and you have a company. Most of them lift. But one carries an enormous weight, and the whole group floats far below what it could reach. 3. Cut that one weight loose and the rest rises, often higher than before, and often with no replacement at all. Watch the one balloon carrying an enormous weight. It does not just sit quietly in the corner. It ties into the group, and it holds down the altitude of everyone around it. The team is still flying, but far below where it could be, and most people have long since stopped noticing that the ceiling was ever higher. The move that feels wrong ## Cut the weight, and the rest goes up Here is the part people find hardest to believe. Take the balloon with the huge sandbag and cut it loose. It drops, and the sand drops with it. And the rest of the group? It does not sink with them. It rises. You can remove the person who was holding everything down and not replace them at all, and the company does better. So you do not have to lie awake worrying about who fills the gap. If you know that one person makes the whole thing go down, cutting that weight is the gain, all on its own. In plain words · A heavy weight A **heavy weight** is a person whose overall effect on the team is negative. Not someone simply having a quiet month, and not someone who is merely unproductive, but a person who makes everyone around them slower, and whose removal lifts the group even before anyone takes their place. This is not about being hard on people. Almost everyone is lift. The point is narrow and specific: now and then, one person is carrying enough weight to ground everyone else, and seeing that clearly is a kindness to the whole team, not a cruelty to one. How the weight hides ## The ‘I’m the only one who knows’ trap A person like this almost always makes themselves look important. *I am the only one who knows this. I am the only one who can do that.* They arrange their corner of the company so that it looks as though the moment you take them away, the whole thing tips over and you will never recover. It is very rarely true. Take the weight away and you quickly see how little of what they were doing actually carried value. All that knowledge only they were supposed to hold: go and look for yourself, and you often find it was thin, or that it had been kept tangled on purpose. > When you know that one weight is holding the whole group down, don’t hesitate. Act, and the faster you act, the better it is for everyone who stays. The reason to act quickly is simple. Every extra week the weight stays tied on is another week the whole team flies low. Kindness to the group and clarity about the one person turn out to be the same decision. Why it stays hidden so long ## The backpack full of stones It is a little like running with a backpack full of stones. At first you feel every one of them. But carry it long enough and you stop thinking about it. It becomes part of the normal routine. *This is just how heavy the work is.* Then one day you take the backpack off, and you realise how much faster you can run, and with how much less effort. That is exactly the feeling when a real weight leaves a company. Everything becomes simpler. And simplicity is the tell, because these situations are very specific in how they work. One of the things a heavy weight reliably does is make everything more complicated. Simplicity is not what they are interested in. They are interested in complication and difficulty, and complicated things always move slowly. What a heavy weight quietly manufactures Complication Simple things are made to feel complex, so little moves without them in the loop. Delay Work and decisions slow down, and no single reason is ever quite to blame. Dependence Only they seem to know how things really work, and they take care to keep it that way. A lower ceiling Good people quietly lower their own effort to match what the group now allows. Confusion Facts get tangled, so problems are hard to pin down and easy to explain away. Lost momentum The next real project keeps waiting, because today's firefighting never quite ends. Now, the harder question ## Why a great hire can look exactly like a poor one The same trap runs straight through hiring. We take on a person who looks good, put them on the team, and they produce beautifully. A perfect hire. Then we take on a second who looks just as good, and nothing comes of it. Here are four hires, side by side. You have met all four. | The hire | How they looked going in | What actually happened | Result | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | The first | Looked perfect, and we felt completely sure. | Produced beautifully. A genuinely great hire, and it really was. | Produced | | The second | Looked every bit as perfect as the first. | Nothing came of it. The output simply never arrived. | Didn't | | The third | Did not look as impressive, but the seat was empty and we needed someone. | Did not work out either. | Didn't | | The fourth | Did not look impressive at all, and we were almost desperate. | Was sensational. Produced beautifully. | Produced | Two people looked perfect: one produced, one did not. Two looked unremarkable: one produced, one did not. Read straight down the column of appearances and it predicts nothing at all. That is the whole lesson in four people: how a person looks has very little to do with whether they will produce. The nice one is the tricky one ## Charm is not the danger. Your certainty is. Think of the person who may not be very social, but when you hand them a job it gets done. Not Mr. Nice or Mrs. Nice, but they take the work and they finish it. You would hate to lose them. Now think of the other one: warm, social, always at the party, lovely to have around. Give this one a job, and you are honestly not sure it will get done. Here is the trap, and it is not the charming person. It is what their charm does to your attention. ### The candidate you feel sure about Warm, social, easy to like - You relax, because you have already decided this one is good. - You stop watching closely. Why would you check a sure thing? - If the production never comes, it can hide for months behind the warmth. - By the time you finally act, a lot of time and trust is already spent. ### The candidate you are unsure about Quieter, harder to read - You watch from day one, because you are not certain yet. - You check the early work carefully, one step at a time. - If they do not produce, you see it almost at once and react fast. - If they do produce, you have quietly found someone you would hate to lose. When we are sure, we relax our guard, and a charming non-producer can coast for a long time before anyone reacts. When we are unsure, we watch, and we catch it fast. So watch both the same way, and better still, measure both the same way, so that being liked and being able stop getting confused with each other. What to look at instead ## Measure what actually lifts a team If appearances predict so little, what do you look at instead? You look at what a person actually produces, and at the handful of things that genuinely drive production. Those are the four points of the Performia emblem, and not one of them shows up on a CV or in a warm conversation. - **Knowledge (Can they?)** What the person actually knows and can do. It is the easiest of the four to check, and the one most hiring stops at. - **Production (Have they?)** Their real productivity: the record of what they have produced, not the titles they have held. - **Motivation (Will they?)** What actually drives the person, and whether it points the same way as the job. - **Personality (What is it like?)** How they behave under pressure, alongside colleagues, and when no one is directing them. Taken together, the four tell you whether a person is *lift* or *weight*, long before their effect ever shows up in the team. Measure the four and the guessing stops. You are no longer asking whether you liked the person. You are asking what they will really produce, and what it will be like to work alongside them while they do. Which brings us back to the only question that was ever the point. The real question is simple: can they help you? If they can, you will be glad they are on the team. Whether they do it in a smooth way or a rough one, they did it, and that is what you needed. A weight held the whole group down, and cutting it let everyone rise. Appearances hid the real producers, and measurement brought them into view. Both are the same skill: seeing who truly lifts your team, and building the team around them. At Performia that skill has a name. It is what it means to be a Team Builder. Before you ask ## Questions about lift, weight and hiring ### Isn't it harsh to call a person a “weight”? It is the opposite. Almost everyone on a team is lift. The idea is narrow: once in a while one person's effect on the group is genuinely negative, and naming that clearly protects everyone else who is doing the work. Judging people by their real effect, rather than by how much you happen to like them, is the fairer way, not the harsher one. ### How can removing someone, without replacing them, leave the team better off? Because a heavy weight does not only fail to produce. They also slow, complicate and discourage the people around them. Take that drag away and the existing team recovers the altitude it always had. The lift was there the whole time; it was simply being held down. ### What if the person really is the only one who knows how things work? That feeling is exactly how a heavy weight protects their position. Almost always, when you actually look, the knowledge is thinner than claimed, or it was kept deliberately tangled. The way to find out is to look for yourself, calmly, before you decide anything. ### If appearances mean so little, why interview at all? The interview is still worth having. It simply is not where the decision should be made. You meet the person, but you walk in already knowing what they have produced and what drives them, so the conversation confirms rather than guesses. ### How do you avoid being fooled by a charming candidate? By watching every candidate the same way, and measuring every candidate the same way. Charm lowers your guard; a consistent process keeps it up. Once you measure production directly, being liked and being able stop getting confused with each other. ### Does this apply to any kind of role? Yes. Every role produces something specific, from a nurse to a driver to an accountant, and any seat can hold a lifter or a weight. The method measures production wherever it is, in more than 26 countries and over 25 languages. ### What is the first step? A short conversation with your nearest Performia office about your own team and your own candidates. That is the moment helium and sand stops being a picture on a page and becomes your own company. See who lifts your team ## The best proof is your own team The way to understand this is with your own people and your own candidates. Talk to your nearest Performia office, one of more than 26 around the world, and start telling lift from weight before it costs you a thing. [Contact your local office](https://performia.com/en-it/contact-us) [Back to Insights](https://performia.com/en-it/insights) --- ## About Performia Performia is an International company that deals exclusively in hiring, founded by Mårten Runow in 2001 and operating in more than 26 countries. **We help managers build productive Teams.** Building, maintaining and developing a team is probably the single most important skill any manager can have, and it is not something to delegate to some non-proven “expert”, because it is you, the manager, who lives with the consequences of a wrong decision. So we make leaders fully functional as Team Builders. Once you know how, you use that knowledge again and again and it never loses its value: instead of firefighting personnel problems, you keep your focus on the next project of business development. Once you have a real team built around you, what you really want to do suddenly becomes possible. And that is what Performia is all about. 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