About the Author
Simon Lenoir is the Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Budgetly. A seasoned business leader with a passion for building high-performing teams, Simon brings a practical lens to finance, operations, and technology. He writes regularly about leadership, innovation, and simplifying business systems to drive impact.
For years, performance reviews were simple: did you hit your numbers, ship the feature, or reconcile the accounts on time?
But AI has shifted the baseline. Skills are easier to learn, output is easier to automate. Doing your job well is no longer the only differentiator.
Performance isn’t enough anymore
What sets people apart now is impact. Not in a vague “culture fit” sense, but in visible behaviours:
- Do they lift others up?
- Do they share knowledge openly?
- Do they help colleagues succeed, not just themselves?
Impact shows up in behaviours
At Budgetly, we’ve seen junior hires who weren’t technical experts yet, but leaned into learning, asked questions, and quickly became trusted problem-solvers. Their impact extended beyond their own work.
At Rezdy, a support rep went beyond ticket resolution. They documented answers, built templates, and gave the whole team more leverage. Their performance wasn’t just about speed, it was about multiplying others’ output. That same employee has now been working with me for 11 years across two businesses.
The leader’s responsibility
The danger is to confuse focus on impact with policing personality. That’s not the point. Leaders should measure observable actions: collaboration, respect, curiosity, consistency with customer values.
AI will keep levelling up skills. Impact is what makes people irreplaceable.
The real question for leaders: are you recognising the people who only hit targets, or the ones who make the whole team better?
Download the companion PDF: “AI levels up performance. People create impact.”
