Do you have an A-Team?

Today we have a guest blog from Marty Vondrell:

When I work with CEOs and business owners I always like to ask them:

Of all the people you have working for you, how many are A-players?

This usually brings on a conversation about the talent of their employees and staff. Questions like: what is in A-player? What is a B-player versus a C-player? And do you have any employees that aren't even C-players and should be fired?

I would ask you to get a print out of your employee roster and take some "alone time" and quickly label each employee as an A, B, C, or below. If you have marked any below C, figure out how to legally manage them up or out as quickly as possible.  These people are a huge drain on your company in so many ways.

Now calculate the percentage of A players, B players and C players.  What does this ratio look like for your company? How is these ratios related to your compensation strategy? Are you hiring expensive talent in getting the most out of them? Are you hiring cheap talent in getting the least out of them? Or possibly the worst of both worlds ­— hiring expensive talent and getting the least out of them?

It is possible to have 90% A-players but your hiring procedures need to be in structured with that goal.  I promise you that your business and your life in general will look a lot different than a CEO who has 10% A-players. 

When you have only 10% A-players you have either done a poor job of selecting talent for the job or you have such a high percent of C-players that the culture will force your A-players from the company.

A-players DO NOT like to play with C players and they will either leave the company or gravitate down to a B-player at best. All of this works together to create a high or low performing culture.

I believe this is one of the most fundamental and important exercises you can do to promote and improve the success of your company. It is exponentially easier to manage people that are a good fit for the job they possess and the company they work for. If their behavioral communication style, inherent motivators and skills/competencies are not a good fit for the job they hold, they will not be a high-performer.

And you will spend much more time "managing" poor performers than needed. This will be a huge factor in your success as a CEO.

I believe the amount of talent you have in your company (A-players) is directly correlated to the success of your business assuming you have a healthy organization, as described by Patrick Lencioni in “The Advantage”.  There are other factors that play a role in your business being successful such as your strategy and execution. But all of these are greatly determined by the talent of your employees that are executing and in some cases strategizing to promote your success.

Peter Drucker said ~ “The ability to make good decisions regarding people represents one of the last reliable sources of competitive advantage, since very few organizations are very good at it”

The ultimate question I asked you is: How good is your team?