The Quarterly Talent Assessment
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How to create a flourishing organization/business by identifying and assessing the different types of employees you have through a quarterly talent assessment.
Biggest Mistake Leadership Makes
Organizations keep underperformers for too long; employees who are underperforming, from a productivity standpoint and or toxic to the company's culture. Organizations keep them for 6, 9, 12, 18 months, sometimes years. This is by far the biggest mistake organizations make that holds them back.
And the second biggest mistake leaders make is not taking care of the employees in their organization that are performing at an A level: their A Players. They keep their C Players. They don't take care of their A Players.
The objective of the Quarterly Talent Assessment
The objective of the quarterly talent assessment is coming together as a team and look at your direct reports to:
Assess talent
Discuss talent
Challenge people
Establish Accountability
Purpose of Quarterly Talent Assessment
A quarterly talent assessment is to increase your talent density (the more A Players you have, the fewer C Players you have, the more talent density you have) and, through that improve:
Product
Culture
Organizational value
Accelerate your profitable growth
How a Quarterly Talent Assessment Works
In the talent assessment model, there are two axes.
Horizontal Axis (X): Productivity on a scale of 0 to 10
Are they meeting or exceeding the goals you have set for them? The more clarity you have around the measures of success for someone's role in the organization, the better chance you're going to measure their productivity accurately.Vertical Axis (Y): Core Values (or culture) on a scale of 0 to 10
How is someone living, breathing, and modeling your core values within your organization? Core values: a small number of non-negotiable behaviors within your organization. It’s good to have a documented and communicated set of core values.
What is an “A Player”
How well does someone fit within your culture? As you go up and to the right of the diagram, you have a high core value score and high productivity; that's how you become an A Player. High score in culture/core values + productivity = A Player
They are not necessarily a salesperson but living the culture, living those core values at a high level as well.
What is a “C Player”
If the culture is at a pretty good level, but productivity is super low, that is a C Player: underperforming as it relates to the measures of success in the role will hurt the organization. Average score in culture/core values + low productivity = C Player
What is a “Toxic C Player”
Below the horizontal line on the diagram is your Toxic C Players. Even if they score high in productivity, it doesn’t matter because if they are not living the core values, then they are toxic to the culture of the organization.
Scoring
A Player: 9+ in core values and 9+ in productivity
B Player: 8 in core values and 8 in productivity
C Player: 8+ in core values and 6- in productivity
Toxic C Player: 7- in core values. Productivity irrelevant
Action Plan for Players
What matters is the actions that you plan to take and that you’re being held accountable to take, for those folks on your team. Remember, you’re not going back and telling people what they scored. That’s not the purpose.
The purpose is to:
Assess talent as a team
Discuss
Debate
Hold each other accountable
Focus Your Action Plan on “A Players”
You’re A Players are the ones that are going to attract other A Players. And you’re A Players are the ones that have the most opportunity to make more money and find better opportunities. When A Players, do their job, you can do a better job at doing your job and step back from the day-to-day and be more strategic
But more A Players leave out of boredom than anything else, so you need to nurture these high-performing employees.
How to nurture A Players?
Challenge mentally
Increase responsibility
Promote
Reward
Recognition
Exposure
Career Planning with A Players
Sit down with your A-player and talked to them about:
Where do they want to go in their career
How can you help them get there
Re-recruit: don't wait for an exit interview to find out why they left. Find out now on what it's going to take for them to leave and give them whatever they need to stay.
Action Plan for “C Players”
Coach them on productivity
Change their role to a role that may better leverage their strengths
If all else fails, time to cut the cord
Action Plan for “Toxic C Players”
Coach them: But if in 90 days, nothing changes, and they're still a Toxic C Player that needs more coaching, THEN you might be the C Player.
Cut the cord: everyone can be an A Player somewhere. By keeping someone on your team who is never going to be an A Player, you're not only hurting your team, but you’re also hurting them. Good leaders don’t shy away from difficult conversations. As a leader, you need to be comfortable having difficult conversations and coaching your heart out, and then cutting the cord when you need to.
Remember, Toxic C Players are C Players cause they're not living your core values, which makes them a bad fit for your company and your culture, not bad people. Toxic C Players are typically not coachable to consistently live the core values.
Make the Quarterly Talent Assessment a Consistent Discipline
The quarterly talent assessment should be a consistent discipline every quarter. And as your talent improves, you don’t stop. Your talent is improving because of the quarterly talent assessment.
In your quarterly planning meeting, set aside 60 minutes to do this talent assessment for the next level down.
If you are the CEO, work with a coach and allow them to perform the talent assessment with you, so your leadership team is also evaluated.
Talent Density
Talent density is the percentage of A Players minus the percentage of the combination of your C and Toxic C Players. Start by creating an ideal benchmark for performance to hold yourself and the team accountable.
A Player % - X% (C Player% + Toxic C Player%) = Talent Density
In time, you may raise the bar on productivity and get stricter around core values, and you may see that talent density decrease, but not because your talent's gotten any worse, just because you're raising the bar on the organization.
This will improve:
Productivity
Culture
Value
Profitable growth
Time management
Efficiency
Strategic direction of the business
Mental health
Thanks for listening!
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[00:00:00] Intro
The biggest mistake I see leaders make is keeping underperformers too long. Keeping people who are, underperforming, from a productivity standpoint and or toxic to the company's culture. Keeping them for 6, 9, 12, 18 months, sometimes years. By far the biggest mistake I see organizations make that hold them back.
And the second biggest mistake I see leaders make is not taking care of the folks in their organization that are performing at an A level: their A Players. They keep their C Players. They don't take care of their A Players. They think, “Oh, Julie's an A Player. I don't have to worry about her, I can go focus on my problem children.” Well, as you'll hear later in this episode, that's the worst thing you can do for your A Players.
So, because of those two biggest mistakes, keeping underperformers too long, not taking care of your A Players, I've created something I call the Quarterly Talent Assessment that I use with all of my clients.
And let me start by talking about the objectives of that assessment. Then I'll get into what it is and how you can use it. And I'll start by talking about what it's not.
[00:01:28] Objective of Quarterly Talent Assessment
The objective of the quarterly talent assessment is not so that every quarter you can do the equivalent of an annual performance review with your people and sit down with them and say, "Oh, congrats. You're an A Player, you're a B Player. You may wanna get your resume ready." That's not what it's about. It's not about, replacement for an annual or a semi-annual performance review. What it is about is, as a leadership team or as you cascade down as an operations team, as a sales team, as a finance team, but it's as a team taking a look at your direct reports.
That next level down, so if you're the CEO, it's looking at your leadership team, but it's as a team, assessing the talent within your organization. How are we doing? Is our talent helping us achieve our vision and an accelerated way, adding value or is our talent holding us back?
So, it's to assess talent, it's to discuss that talent. It's to challenge each other.
What do you mean Joe's an A Player? You know, I just saw him chewing out the sales team and being totally disrespectful.” It's only in challenging each other on talent that you get kind of a truth serum, and you don't have hard graders and easy graders.
It's in that challenge that you all come to some level playing field and how you're assessing talent. So, it's about assessing talent, discussing talent, challenging people on their assessments, and maybe more than anything else, it's about holding each other accountable for the level of coaching that may be required of your talent, the level of development, the level of re-recruiting, and sometimes the hard decision to cut the cord and send someone off to become an A Player somewhere else. So, that's what it's all about.
It's not about semi-annual or annual performance reviews. It's about you as a team discussing challenging, debating, holding each other accountable for improving your talent. And the whole idea around it is to increase your talent density. Your talent density is, the more A Players you have, the less C Players you have, the more talent density you have.
A little later in the episode, I'll share a specific formula for that. But the whole idea of the Quarterly Talent Assessment is to increase talent density and through that improved product. Improve your culture, improve the value you're adding inside and outside the organization, accelerate your profitable growth. That's what it's all about.
[00:04:15] How Quarterly Talent Assessment Works
So, let's talk about how it works. I'm gonna explain the model, and if you're watching this on YouTube or on video on my website, you'll be able to see this. If you are not, that's okay because in the show notes, I'll have a document called the Quarterly Talent Assessment that'll take you through this model and all the instructions for the model. But hopefully if you're listening, as I know most of you are, I'll be able to help you visualize this.
So, in this talent assessment model, there are two axes. One axis: picture this axis going kind of along the bottom of the chart. One axis is productivity. Productivity on a scale of zero to 10, that means are they meeting, exceeding the goals you have set for them? The more clarity you have around the measures of success for someone's role in the organization, the better chance you're gonna have it um, accurately measuring their productivity.
So, imagine on the bottom, and if you're watching this on video, you don't have to imagine you should now see it on the screen, but imagine at the bottom you've got productivity from left to right, from zero to 10, and then the vertical axis is core values, on a scale of zero, zero to 10. How is someone living, breathing, modeling your core values within your organization? And again, that's on a scale of 0 to 10. If and if you have a documented and communicated set of core values, great. Then you get it. And by the way I define core values is they are a small number of non-negotiable behaviors within your organization
So, it's a big deal if you are not living those non-negotiable behaviors. Now, if you don't have a documented set of core values, and at some point, I will do a whole other episode on core values, but if you don't have a documented communicated set of non-negotiable core values, that's okay. Think of this vertical access as culture.
[00:06:37] What is an “A Player”
How well does someone fit within your culture? On a scale of 0 to 10? So, if you're picturing this bottom to top core value, 0 to 10, left to right, productivity, 0 to 10, then you start to see that as you go up and to the right when you have a high core value score and a high productivity that's how you become an A Player - what I would call an A Player.
An A player is not just a salesperson that's doubling their sales goals. They've gotta be living the culture, living those core values at a high level as well. So, if you're both high in culture or core values and productivity, then you're an A Player. If you are low in core values, I don't care how productive you are if you're low in core values.
[00:07:30] What is a “C Player”
If you're looking at the video, you see this as a horizontal line going across the model for your low and core values. You are what I call a Toxic C Player. I don't care if you're 150% of your goals or at 5% of your goals. If you're not living the core values, the non-negotiable core values, you are toxic to the culture of that organization.
We'll come back and talk about that a little bit more. Now even if you're living the culture at a pretty good level, if your productivity is super low, that makes you a C Player, you may not be toxic to the organization, but you're performing at a C level. You're underperforming as it relates to the measures of success in your role, and that's hurting the organization.
[00:08:19] What is a “B Player”
Now everybody else, we haven't mentioned, folks who are not high enough to be A Players but not low enough to be performing at a C or a toxic C level. Those are the folks performing at a B level. You're B Players. Those are folks that are a little bit lower than you'd like them to be in core values and or productivity.
[00:08:39] Scoring
So hopefully you get the picture.
Let me put some numbers to this because I said 0 to 10, and then I talked about high and low but what are the actual numbers? I believe to be an A Player; someone needs to be at least a 9 in core values and a 9 in productivity.
So, they need to be a 9 and a 9 and a 10. A 10 or and a 9 or a 10 and a 10. And if you're looking at the video, you'll see that I put 8.5 on each of those lines. That's because I'm gonna suggest when you score people on a scale of 0 to 10, there's no fractions round up. Round down, so nobody's on the line. You haven't scored anybody in 8.5, and therefore they're on the line. They're either, they're an 8, a 9, a 10, and if they're an 8, you know or below, they're not an A Player.
So, to be an A player, you gotta be at least a 9 in both core values and productivity.
Next if you are a 6 or below in productivity, you are a C Player. Six or below in productivity means you're so far off the goals, your measure of success that you're hurting the organization.
Next and last and where I normally get some oohs and ahs and dams and things like that I believe if you are a 7 or below in core values, I don't care how productive you are. If you are a 7 or below in core values, you are a toxic C Player. Now, that's a pretty tough score. A 7 outta 10 doesn't seem all that bad.
Well, Mike, isn't that mediocre? Why would that be toxic C?
Remember, if you define as I do, your core values as a small number of non-negotiable behaviors? If they're down at a 7, outta 10 or below, which you may interpret as they are not living the core values 30 plus percent of the time. If they're non-negotiable, that's not acceptable. So, I believe no matter how productive they are, those are toxic C Players.
Now everybody we haven't mentioned yet, those would be folks performing at a B level again. So, if they're not, at least a 9 and a 9 in productivity. If they're not, 6 or below in performance, and if they're not a 7 or below in core values than those are your B Players.
[00:11:03] Action Plan
Now let's talk about actions for all of those folks, because what matters is not whether you believe they are A, B, C, toxic C. What matters is the actions that you plan to take, that you're being held accountable, to take for those folks on your team. Remember, you're not going back and telling people what they scored. That's not the purpose.
The purpose is to assess talent as a team, discuss it, debate it, and hold each other accountable for the actions you're gonna take. And by the way, how you actually step-by-step do this as a team, again, I will put in the show notes. Which is at my website, mike-goldman.com. Click on Breakthrough Leadership Team Show.
If you click on this episode, you'll see the show notes and there'll be a whole step-by-step set of instructions that'll go deeper than I'm going right now. But most importantly, let's talk about actions for all these folks and the biggest mistake people tend to make in this assessment is they believe that the most important actions they need to take is for their C Players and their toxic C Players.
[00:12:17] Focus Your Action Plan on “A Players”
That's critically important, but I believe very strongly that the most important folks you need to take action on are your A Players. As I said a little bit earlier, the worst thing you could do for your A Players and say,” thank God for them, they're A Players. Thank God for Joe. He's an A player. I don't have to worry about him. I can just let him do his thing.”
Well, here's the picture I want you to get in your head that the folks who are your superstars, your A Players, while you are watching or listening to this, there's a really good chance they're on the phone with a recruiter offering them 50% more than what they're making today to go work for your competition.
On top of that, I've seen more A Players leave out of boredom than anything else. So, we need to take actions for A Players. Your A Players are those folks who you're gonna leverage to be great. They're those folks who, if they do their job, you can do a better job at doing your job and step back from the day-to-day and be more strategic.
Your A players are the ones that are gonna attract other A Players. And your A Players are the ones that have the most opportunity outside your company to go leave and make more money to find a better opportunity. So, you better take damn good care of them.
How do you do that? Well, number one, you need to challenge them.
I've seen more a players leave out of boredom than anything else, and boredom doesn't mean they're not working hard or working long hours. Boredom means they're not being challenged mentally. So how could you challenge your A players?
Number two related to that, are there ways to increase their responsibility again, by doing that, that's really satisfying to them, that's challenging to them, that's helpful for you and helpful to the rest of the team. So, can you increase their responsibility? Is it time to promote them? And that was number three. Number four is rewarding them. Could be more money. Doesn't need to be more money, but do they need to get rewarded for the work they've done? Number, what am I up to? Number five. Can you give them more recognition?
Recognition could be giving them a pat on the back, writing them a thank you note. It could be in a town hall, pointing out the great work they've done. Could you give them more exposure, maybe exposure to the leadership team. You may be in leadership team meetings every single week.
And you may be bored of being in those leadership meeting team meetings, especially if they're not great meetings. It's nothing big for you. But if you take one of your direct reports and say, “Hey, I'd love you to come to our next executive team meeting and present some of the work you're doing, they love that.” They're excited about that. They're gonna tell their mom, their dad, their brother, their sister, their spouse, their kids. That's exciting for them. So number, I think it was five. Give them more or maybe six . Give them more exposure. I'm gonna stop numbering them. I don't remember what number I'm up to.
Next is career planning.
When's the last time you sat down with your A-player and talked to them about where they want to go in their career and how you can help them get there? And then last is re-recruit. Don't wait for an exit interview to find out why they left. Have a stay interview now. Find out what it's gonna take for them to leave and make sure you're giving them whatever they need to make sure they stay.
So, there's a lot of work you should be doing for your A players and for folks you believe are performing at an A level you ought to be taking specific action over the next 30, 60, 90 days to challenge, promote, reward, increase responsibility, re-recruit, all those things.
Now let's talk about what may be the next important folks to focus on which are your C and your toxic C players. And then last, we'll get to the B players.
[00:16:06] Action Plan for “C Players”
For your C Players, those folks who are underperforming from a productivity standpoint, even if they're doing a decent job, living your core values, there are 3 things you should be doing to take action on your C players. Number one: pretty, obviously you need to coach 'em on productivity. Is there a way to get them up from being a C Player to a B Player or even an A Player? Number two, if they're living the core values at a good level, but they're underperforming from a productivity standpoint, maybe they're in the wrong role, so maybe you need to change their role to a role that may better leverage their strengths.
Maybe they're in sales, but they can't close a deal. If they don't have that killer instinct to close a deal, but man, they're great at building relationships, maybe they'd be much better in a service role or a business development role. And lastly, for a C Player, if coaching on productivity hasn't worked, if there's no other role for them, it may be time to cut the cord and send them off to go work somewhere else. And I'll talk more about cutting the cord after we talk about the toxic C Players, which is where are we're gonna go next.
[00:17:15] Action Plan for “Toxic C Players”
For your Toxic C Players? You've got two choices: Your coaching or you're cutting the cord. Now why didn't I say maybe it's a role change here like I did with C Players.
Remember, toxic C Players are C Players cause they're not living your core values, which by the way, does not make them bad people if they're not living your core values, that makes them a bad fit for your company and your culture. Doesn't make them bad people just makes them a bad fit.
The other interesting thing about folks not living the core values as opposed to folks who are not as productive as you'd like them to be, is if you've got someone who's doing a great job, living your core values, great attitude, they wanna be there, great cultural fit, but they're not as productive as you'd like them to be.
I typically find, and I'm gonna guess, you typically find that those folks can be coachable. Are they always coachable to improve productivity or to change their role? Of course not. I wish they were, but they're not Some folks who just don't have the capability to do what you need them to do.
But folks that are living the core values are more often coachable at some level to improve their productivity. But here's the tougher message and the bad news. The bad news is if someone's a toxic C Player, if someone is not living your core values way more often than not, I just find they're not coachable to consistently live the core values.
And to live your core values is like coaching them to become someone they're not. If you have a core value around teamwork and collaboration, and you have someone whose style and their life is just about, sitting in a corner all by themselves, coming up with the next cure for cancer, of course that doesn't make them a bad person.
But if they're all about working individually to get stuff done and they can care less about collaborating. Cure cancer or not, they may be a bad fit for your team, and the chances of getting them to be more collaborative are pretty low. That's not who they are, and that's probably not who they want be.
So, for the toxic C Players, the question I will ask you is, are you coaching or are you cutting the cord?
Now of course, it's ok to say the answer is coaching. These are human beings. You hired them. You have some responsibility to take care of them, but here's where I wanna hold you accountable, and here's where I will coach you to hold your team members accountable. Is if you've got someone who is not living the core values working for you, and you believe they're coachable, wonderful, maybe they're going through a difficult time, coach them. But this is called the quarterly talent assessment, which means you're gonna do this again 90 days from now.
And I'm gonna suggest in that room where you do this, that your team holds you accountable to this. Go coach them. We'll help you however we can. But 90 days from now, we're gonna come back here and do this again. And if they're still a Toxic C Player and you still believe that they need more coaching, you might be the C Player.
I know that's tough, but you can't afford a C Player, or especially a toxic C Player, to be hurting the team for 6 months, 9 months, 12 months, 2 years. And you've all seen it. I see it.
I work with new clients, and they say, “This person is a toxic C.”
And I say, “Well, are you coaching or cutting the cord?”
And they say, “I've gotta coach him because we haven't really talked to them about it yet. I haven't coached them on yet.”
Oh, I get it. “Well, how long has this been going on?”
“About a year and a half.”
Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? That’s a year and a half you haven't coached someone who's been toxic to the organization or someone who's been underperforming from a productivity standpoint for a year and a half.
It happens all the time. It's unacceptable. You get what you accept, you get what you tolerate. You need to hold yourself. You need to hold others on your team accountable for coaching as best they can. But 90 days later, you gotta make a decision. And by the way, I don't believe that's harsh. Cutting the cord on someone isn't harsh.
I understand it's not easy, but I believe that everyone has the ability to be an A Player somewhere. By you keeping someone on your team who is never gonna be an A Player, you're not only hurting your team, you're hurting them. I also believe that the reason why you're not coaching them, the reason why you're not having the difficult conversation is not because you're too busy, it's not because you're worried about being understaffed. If you need to cut the cord. I know that's part of it. It's not even because you're worried about them. It's because you are scared of having the difficult conversation. Get over it. As a leader, you need to be comfortable having the difficult conversations and coaching your heart out and cutting the cord when you need to.
[00:22:10] Make it a Consistent Discipline
You need to make this whole process of the quarterly talent assessment, a discipline every quarter. And as your talent improves, you don't say, now we can stop doing it, because the reason your talent's improving is because you're having these discussions
In your quarterly planning meeting set aside 60 minutes to do this talent assessment for the next level down. If you are the CEO, I hope you're working with a coach. And if you're working with a coach, have that coach do this talent assessment with you so you can talk through your leadership team so they can get evaluated as well.
Cause remember, when you're with the leadership team, you're really only evaluating one level down, and then you should cascade it down through the organization so everybody is evaluated in that way.
[00:22:58] Talent Density
From doing that, you are gonna be able to calculate, come up with a number of benchmark that I call talent density. Talent density is your percent A players minus the percent of the combination of your C and toxic C Players.
So, two extremes: if you're at a 100%t A Players, your talent density's a 100%. If you've got no A Players, no B Players, and all of your folks are either C or toxic C Players, you're at negative 100% talent density. So that talent density goes from negative a hundred to positive a hundred.
And what you wanna do is create a benchmark and you wanna see that number rise every quarter. Now in time, you may raise the bar on productivity and get stricter around core values, and you may see that talent density actually decrease, but not because your talent's gotten any worse, just because you're raising the bar on the organization and that's wonderful. That's not a problem.
But use talent density as a benchmark to hold yourself in the team accountable for improving your talent every single quarter. I promise you, if you focus on improving your talent every single quarter, it's not only gonna help you become more productive in as an organization, it's not only gonna improve your culture, the value you're adding, your profitable growth.
It's gonna make your life a whole lot better. You are gonna be able to more effectively delegate those things that you shouldn't be doing. You're gonna be able to spend more time working on the business. And in the business. You're surrounding yourself with the right people. You're gonna get up every day and be excited to start work.
So, when are you gonna add that discipline of the Quarterly Talent Assessment? Again, for instructions, go to the show notes. You'll get a detailed set of instructions on how to do this with your team, but do it, I promise you, it's gonna make your life a whole lot better.