Assessing Your Team's Talent

When I start working with a new client, I typically start the leadership team off with a simple question: if you had to do it all over again, if you started with a blank sheet, would you enthusiastically rehire everyone on your team? Normally, I get some smirks. uncomfortable looks, and sometimes laughs. But the answer to that question, the honest answer to that question, could have a revolutionary impact on your business.

Your company is only good as the people you surround yourself with. So what I'm going to take you through is a simple way, each quarter, to assess the people on your team, figure out who needs coaching, who needs development, and who maybe needs to go work for your competition.

Let me take you through what I call the quarterly talent assessment. On the quarterly talent assessment, we could rate our folks either A's, B's, C's or what I call toxic C's. The important part here is it's not just based on productivity. Notice on this slide, there are two axes. One is core values. How well are they living the core values of your organization? Are they adding to your great culture, or subtracting from it? Then there's productivity, which is how well they are meeting their goals.

If someone is at a high level, a 9 or a 10 out of 10 on both core values and productivity, those are your A players. The folks that are not living your core values, they're a 7 or below out of 10 on core values, those folks are your toxic C's. Now, that sounds kind of harsh, but if you've defined your core values in the right way, core values are a set of nonnegotiable behaviors that drive your company, drive your culture. So if you've got someone who's only living your core values 70% of your time, they're actually toxic to the organization. Also, notice that line goes all the way across - It doesn't matter how productive they are. If they're not living the core values, they're toxic.

We then have our C players on the left. If you've got someone - even if they're living the core values - but they're not productive enough, if they're a six out of ten or below on productivity, those are your C players. Those are folks that may be living the core values, but their productivity is so low that it's hurting the organization. Then the rest of the folks are your B players.

So let's talk about what you do for folks that are categorized in each one of those ways, starting off by talking about the A players. We have a tendency as leaders to focus most of our effort on our low B and C players, but I would argue that you should be spending most of your time with your A players. Your A players are folks you could leverage to become great. Your A players, frankly, are the folks most likely to get a great job offer somewhere else and leave. So what should you be doing for your A players? Well, when you look at this every 90 days, you should come up with an action plan for each A player. That may be some combination of challenging them more, increasing their responsibility, rewarding them, etc. Maybe they should be getting a promotion. Maybe it's about recognition. Maybe they're a manager who would love getting some exposure to the leadership team or the board. Maybe there's some career planning you should be doing with them. Maybe you need to do something to re-recruit them. Don't wait for an exit interview to find out why they left. Re-recruit them.

Now let's go to our B players. B players are B players because they need to improve either their ability to live the core values or their productivity. So very simply, for your B players, again, you should come up with a 90-day plan. How are you either going to coach them on productivity or coach them on core values? If there's someone who's living the core values, but their productivity isn't quite where you want it to be, maybe they're in the wrong role. Is there a way to better leverage their strengths? Maybe they're not a great salesperson because they don't have that killer instinct to close sales, but maybe they'd be great in service. So you're either going to coach them on values, coach them on productivity, or shift their role.

Then you've got your C players. Your C players, again, are very low in productivity and it's hurting the organization. So you've got to decide, can you coach them on productivity to improve their productivity? Can you move them into a different role to improve their productivity? Or is it time to cut the cord because they're hurting the company, hurting themselves, and maybe they and you would be better off with them being somewhere else?

Lastly, let's go to the toughest ones, which are the toxic C players. Toxic C's are folks that may be low productivity, may be high productivity, but what's most important is they're not living your core values. Very simply, you've got two choices there. You can either coach or cut the cord. Here's the tough part, it's very difficult to coach someone to live the core values. If you've got someone who's low in productivity, you can typically coach them or develop them to improve their productivity. But getting someone to live your core values who's not already living your core values is like trying to get someone to become someone they're not. They can do it for a short period of time, but typically once that threat of losing their job is over, they're going to go back to who they were - and by the way, who they are is not necessarily a bad person. They just might be a bad fit for your organization. Don't let anyone stay in toxic C territory longer than 90 days. I've seen too many companies have toxic C's in their organization for 12 months, 18 months, two years. And who does it hurt worst? It hurts your A players.

So, what are you going to do this quarter to answer that question, would you enthusiastically rehire everyone on your team? What are you going to do to put a process in place to evaluate, assess your talent every quarter, and come up with that important 90-day action plan?