People perform better when they know their roles.

People perform better when they feel accountable for their performance.

Leaders can help their people understand their roles by clearly stating the top 7 or so action-things each person must do to succeed in each role. Those top 7 or so things will form the framework/guidelines for roles.

While that is common sense, it is not done at many small businesses.

Leaders can provide further help by working with their people to create goals linked to those top 7 or so things.

Again, few would argue the common sense of having desired goals linked to desired actions. Yet again, while it is common sense it is not common practice at many small businesses.

Desired goals and desired actions gel well when combined with planned performance-review processes. The key is creating performance-review processes that are closely tied to specific actions required to meet specific goals.

Common sense.

And you can make it common practice.