It makes great headlines to talk about hiring “A” players. Guy Kawasaki makes the statement that “People need to hire people smarter than they are”, but the reality is “A players hire A players; B players hire C players.” In his book Topgrading, Brad Smart outlines an approach that is designed to ensure 90% of your hires will be A players in the role they are hired into. Few would argue that having great people doing the right things is critical for a business to be successful. To start this discussion, here are three realities for hiring A players.
1. Organizations have a tendency to transform A’s into B’s and C’s: What keeps A’s acting like A’s? The Gallup organization did extensive research that resulted in identifying 12 questions(Q12) to measure engagement, among other things. The first three questions say a lot about what keeps A’s acting like A’s: 1) I know what is expected of me at work 2) I have the tools and resources I need to do my job 3) I have an opportunity to do what I do best everyday. At the core of keeping A’s acting like A’s is communication. This includes keeping them informed about changes in the business and listening to their questions/needs/opinions.
2. Hiring people ‘smarter than they are’ is hard. It takes a tremendous amount of self-confidence and cultural support: This starts with the CEO, and their willingness to allow their executive team to lead, which might result in them not have all the answers all of the time. A key challenge to hiring smarter people is delegating the work (because they are better able to do it) and giving them space to make decisions. This will put leaders in a position to not know all the decisions being made all the time. So, the CEO needs to provide some space to bring information back and leaders need to be comfortable saying and allowing the comment “I don’t know, but let me look into that.”
3. Hiring – Do people really have the time to be that rigorous? Hiring the best people for a job takes a clear understanding of the role (job description), a vision of how this role will impact the direction of the company (operational/strategic objectives), and time to really get to know the candidates. In Topgrading, Brad Smart outlines a rigorous process that could easily take 6+ hours per candidate. Teaching managers the reason for these three pieces and the importance of spending time to find great people is critical.
If you are a CEO trying to attract and keep the best talent, it is worth a 2-3 hour discussion with your team to explore this topic and find ways to fine tune your hiring and onboarding of people so they are successful. Some questions to consider in that process:
- How do you define A players, B players, and C players?
- What do you see as impediments in your own organization to hiring A players?
- What are practical ways you have seen to make sure A’s do not get turned into B or C players? What are you doing? What should you be doing?