A trip to the coffee shop on a Monday for a serious discussion?

A conversation on Saturday made me think about "a quick shock" to address a performance issues.  Psychology Today has an article that gives a good coverage of what we discussed as a group on Saturday - yes make it quick and not on a Friday.

When leaders see performance that is substandard and when attempts at reform have not improved results, the only - and best - recourse is to act swiftly to remove the person. From my vantage as a consultant, it is one of the hardest things for a leader to do and the one omission in action that produces contempt for the leader among the workers and yields difficult, intractable organization-wide performance problems.

Link to the article is
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-wisdom-bees/201007/uncomfortable-conversation-about-merit-what-do-you-think