What should I do about a brilliant but unreliable employee?

[Kenneth11]

I’m struggling with how to handle a key employee who is technically brilliant but consistently misses deadlines, which is starting to affect team morale and project timelines. I know their work is valuable, but the lack of reliability is becoming a real problem for our department’s workflow.

[AaronZH]

I had a key player who was unbelievably sharp but deadlines slipped every week. We tried a weekly check in and a visible kanban board, but the pace stayed off and the mood frayed.

[Jerry4]

We tracked time to first deliverable and final delivery and it showed the delay pattern, which helped but did not fix the habit.

[Scott_R]

I did not want to remove them fast because the value is real, so we experimented with small paired tasks and reassigning non critical pieces, it helped a bit but not enough.

[AdamBJ]

Do you feel the real issue is workload or direction or something else entirely?