Tweet

Barriers to Finding, Getting, and Keeping High Performers

Guest post by: Howard Shore

Article Overview: My partners and I recently devoted our weekly meeting to discussing an issue we encountered with our upcoming learning event for local owners: Building a Team of High Performers. We believed this would be an important topic for 2011 for 2 reasons

Barriers to Finding, Getting, and Keeping High Performers

My partners and I recently devoted our weekly meeting to discussing an issue we encountered with our upcoming learning event for local owners: Building a Team of High Performers. We believed this would be an important topic for 2011 for 2 reasons. First, every company that we have met that has a cash flow problem or was unsatisfied with their growth or profits also had a people problem. Growth problems attributable to bad strategy are also people problems because companies that choose the right people (including advisors, consultants, and coaches) are less likely to have strategy problems. 2) The people problems were self-inflicted. We were having trouble filling the learning event. This was stunning to us, given that the last two learning events each included C-level executives from over 100 companies. Both events were highly rated, and thus we expected to have a good following. What we had to figure out was why people were not signing up. Our combined work has spanned hundreds of companies, and we have yet to meet a company that could demonstrate that at least 50% of their employees were "A Players" - most have 25% or less. Research shows that replacing even one "B" or "C" player with an "A Player" has a big impact on a person's business. Anyone you ask would agree. So what was the problem?

Our research indicated that people were not signing up for the same reasons that they had a low percentage of high performers. While most executives will give lip service to the need for finding, getting, and keeping high performers, they are not willing to commit to that goal. They are not willing to make their goal an organization-wide mandate! They like the concept, but they make only minimal efforts toward implementing it.

Just as we do with our healthcare system, we spend a lot more money to deal with the illnesses we know can be prevented than we do to prevent them from occurring. The costs of mis-hiring, promoting the wrong people, and not removing poor performers is far more than the cost of finding the right person. However, people do not put maximum effort into finding the right person and making it mandatory to have a top performer in every seat.

The most important issue we found as to why people did not sign up was their illusion that everything was fine. Too many companies have not created key performance indicators for every position in their company. Some have created indicators, but do not hold their people accountable. Not having or ignoring performance indicators leaves no way to know for certain whether you have "A," "B" or "C" players at work. As a result, performance ratings are based on how the evaluator feels about the subject. Typically what happens is that people who are a good cultural fit and communicate well are considered "A Players." Their actual performance could be horrible, but that goes unnoticed.

Recently I asked the CEO of a bank to attend our workshop. He said there was no need because 100% of his employees were "A Players." I asked him how he knew this and he said it was the discipline that they had put into their culture over the last 25 years. My observation of the performance of some of his "A Players" in a membership organization we all belonged to rates them as less than stellar. In the last 12 months their "A Players" missed 3 deals (that I know of) that were right in front of them. Their bank never even had a chance to get the business because their people did not do a good job of getting in front of the prospects the way members from other banks did. Ironically, the CEO recently stopped his firm's involvement in the organization because he deemed it a bad investment. What he did not realize was the bad investment was his people and not the organization.

Another issue is misunderstanding of what would happen if a company made the commitment to do what it takes to put top performers in every position in their company. Some of these include:

• There are not enough "A Players" out there.

• It will take much longer to hire people.

• It is too complicated.

• It takes too much manpower.

• It can't happen in our industry.

• It is too costly.

These are all myths. Building a high-performance organization can be achieved and learned by any company. When implemented properly it saves time and money. People are already spending time interviewing candidates and just need to learn the right techniques and processes to determine whether people they interview are the right choices for the positions. The real challenge is having an organization-wide commitment to a high-performance standard, and practice makes perfect.

Related Articles
  Be A Top Performer
  MANAGING NON-PERFORMERS
  Creating Deeper Client Relationships
  Carol Quinn's Interviewer Tip #2
  1. Penetration Selling -- The Five Steps -- An Overview
  Global Trade and its Barriers
  The Coaching Imperative
  High Goals, Outstanding Performance and Success
  Why Aren't Blogs Like Mine Worth Anything?
  Managing High Flyers
  I’m Looking for a Hero
  Recommendations
  How to Make it Easy for Prospective Clients to Say Yes
  2.1 Growth performance IV: Economic Report on Africa 2007
  So where are all the Elite Sales Performers?
  Three Core Work Habits of High Performers
  Pay for Performance - in this Economy?
  How To Identify Your Marketing Barriers, Tips From Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach
  Employees At Risk
  TRUTH IN INTERVIEW - Part I

Article Tags: A Players, Building a highperformance organization, interviewing candidates, key performance indicators, right techniques



Related Forum Posts
Re: How many nationalities are on the forum? - Hi there, It is amazing the languages have come into the posts. Now Jude was asked, how many languages she speaks. Please, come and tell us. I speak English, German and French. German is my mother tongue. Some thirty years ago I spoke fluently French. Now English has taken that place and I can better understand French than speaking it. English is now my daily used language. German in second place. However, I never grasped the German grammar very much. Why? The Swiss German Dialect is nothing to be compared with High German. At that time hardly anybody wrote the Dialect. Today it is the 'in thing' to write the dialect. (Letters, stories etc) But we have to be able to read High German, because every book, newspaper etc is in High German. Finally, I guess there are a few more who can vote for their nationality.
Re: Can someone explain Search engine optimization to me? - Search Engine Optimization (SEO) could be compared to a big popularity contest: A High School Computer Geek and a High School Football Captain who are trying to promote a party. The computer geek tells everyone in school & even hands out 100's of flyers about his party Friday night...what happens? his friends end up showing up and a few new people...even the new people leave right away because it is not what they are looking for. The High School Football Captain ends up just telling a few good buddies, and within hours the entire school not only knows about it, but everyone wants to come, and everyone does come & stay. One defenition of "optimize is "To make as perfect or effective as possibe." How effective are your article marketing campaigns? Could you be distributing content (that is what search engines index) more effectively? In a perfect world, who would you want promoting your website, web pages, and web content? Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is determining this perfect & effective way to do this. Jeff
Re: How to Stay Motivated - Thanks for posting this, Matthew. Keeping the motivation strong is something I've really been struggling with. Donna, I think I was just not pushing as hard as I need to and getting maintenance instead of progress.
Re: FILL IN THE BLANK: One thing I did to grow my business today - Congrats guys! High five from the jungle cat!
Re: Tactics for Blog Traffic - Keeping up with your blog with a new post at least once a week should be atop every blogger's to-do list. The Google "Freshness" approach rewards new, original content.


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Unspoken Yet Important Rules for Book Proposals

Hypotheticals, Scenarios and Foresight

Coaching Tip: Identify Your Core Values

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.