employees, A player, B player, etc

Summary

everyone says hire A players. that advice is incomplete and it cost me money before I figured it out.

four categories.

1. D players. no drive, no follow through, not trainable. get them off the team fast.

2. C players. they save you time and they do the task. they will not anticipate problems. that’s fine. you need them for the work you don’t want to do.

3. B players. they save you time and they see the problem before it shows up. solid, reliable, the backbone of the team.

4. A players. high skill, high drive, they need a vision and a real challenge or they leave. expensive. demanding. worth it in the right seat.

the mistake is loading the team with A players in every chair. they get bored. they cost more. they need constant reinvention to stay. the smarter build is a mix. A players in the seats where their ceiling matters, B and C players running the rest. that’s a team that scales.

Transcript

introduction to the importance of team composition

The most impactful business is the business that genuinely improves another human, a better human business. And to grow a business like this, you have to continually improve yourself. This podcast is a documentation of that thesis, scaling businesses and also personal growth. My goal is for you to shortcut this journey. So if you’re ready to try hard, subscribe. If you like what you’re hearing, please share and enjoy. Let’s talk about employees. Which employees do you need on your team to continue to grow?

Is it always the a player that you need or is there room for other people on the boat? Let’s dive into it. This is the better human business podcast. I’m Jerred Moon. And I really feel like there’s this notion out there that all we should be doing is trying to hire a players. And I will also say that a lot of people think they have a players on their team. When they, when they don’t, you might think that you have an a player, but you just really don’t.

You might have a really solid employee. It doesn’t make them an a player and a player is very expensive and should be that title should be reserved for a specific a player. But I, here’s what I want to want to let everybody know. There is that notion. There’s this idea that we just need the best possible people on our team. And that’s, that’s fine. That would be great. I would love to have that team, but I just don’t think that it’s realistic.

breaking down the categories of employees from d to a players

Okay. I don’t think that’s realistic. So it’s not something that you should be achieving or striving for, but you do want a good solid team. So let’s talk about all the different types of employees and I’m going to talk more about attitude and not necessarily skillset. So if we were to break it down, a player, B player, C player, D player. Now we can start from the bottom. Okay. So a D player just, I mean, to be honest, I think that you should be able to weed out D players before they get on your team.

If you find out that you have a D player, maybe you got duped in the interview process somehow, or whatever, a D player needs to get cut. A D player has no drive, no follow through, lacks skillset, and they’re not very trainable. I mean, you see how bad, like I just compounded like so many things. Like who would want that person on their team? They don’t, they don’t learn from their mistakes. They don’t really care if they made their mistakes.

discussing the implications of having d players on the team and the necessary actions

They’re just going to be there. They might show up late, leave early. To me, a D player is the worst imaginable thing. And I don’t think D players should really even make it on your team because if you have a decent hiring process, somewhere along the lines, you would have sniffed it out. Like either in their references or your interview, your second interview, whatever it is, they should have never made it on your team. But if they did make it on your team somehow, and they fit any of the traits I just mentioned, fire them.

I don’t care. I don’t care. Fire. Get rid of your D players. And we can move on from that one pretty quickly. But let’s move to C player. A C player, in my opinion, saves your time only. They only save your time. That’s it. That’s all they do. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. You see how when I’m talking about D players, I’m almost a little like angry about it. And I want you to fire them.

the role of c players in saving time and supporting business operations

I want to fire them. But when I’m talking about C players, that’s not my attitude. I’m saying, hey, you can have a C player on your team. That’s not necessarily bad. But you have to know that a C player will only ever save you time. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Again, to me, this ABC in my own, this is my made up system, right? So I can do whatever I want. But ultimately, a C player is someone who can stick around.

But I have to know that they only save me my time. So a C player is just that. Like I said, they save you your time. So you could say like, I don’t want to say like an administrative assistant or whatever is always a C player. But someone who only does administrative tasks might fit in the C player category. But that’s if that’s all they do. So we’ll go up from there. You can have like a front desk person and administrative tasks who can be C and B player because they might do other things.

the value b players bring with their reliability and foresight

But ultimately, the C player, they save you time only. They’re pretty good at saving you time. But you realize there’s, if we get into the attitude traits, there’s really no drive, there’s no ambition, but they will save your time. So if you are like, just have a ton of tasks, you offload the tasks, they might do the tasks, they might not, C player might not do the tasks incredibly well. But they will do them well. They don’t go above and beyond on any of the tasks.

But let’s say they save you 5-10 hours a week, 15 hours a week, whatever it is they save you. They, their salary is worth it because you, your time being freed up means you can go make more money. And that’s what you should be doing with your time in this situation. And C players are typically always your first hire anyway, because all you need is more time to go make more money, and your time is worth more than their time.

characteristics of a players and the challenges of keeping them motivated

And so it should equate to working out, there should be an ROI. But the only ROI is my time has been freed up. So now I can go make more money. So it’s really more work for you, right? So that’s the C player role right there. They save your time. That’s all they do. You don’t have to fire them. But you also don’t have to keep them around. I mean, you don’t have to keep them around forever is what I mean.

Like you could have a C player for a while and then realize, hey, we need, we really need to upgrade this position. You saved my time. But I need someone who can think above that. Now B player is kind of like a C player. They save your time. But they’re also looking forward. They are trying to get ahead of problems and situations. They aren’t just taking tasks and you’re like, hey, I said do A, B, and C.

conclusion on the necessity of a diverse team for sustainable business growth

The C player is like, okay, I’ll do A, B, and C. A B player will at least be like, hey, I’ll do A, B, and C. But did you think about D? Or I see D and E coming on the horizon. They will start to think of those things. And they are really good, really solid employees, the B players. And they’re definitely people you want on the team. And I mean, I think B players are amazing.

There’s nothing negative about a B player. An attitude, a B player is typically someone who they do want to work, but they pretty much want to work within the confines of their personal life, right? They want to be done at a certain time. They don’t want to work the weekends. And we, in all my companies, we’re really big on work-life balance. That’s not normally a challenge for anybody. And A players can have that balance. But a B player, the difference in attitude between A player and a B player is, if I say don’t work on the weekend, an A player will be like, but I want to.

And a B player will be like, sounds great. I don’t, I didn’t want to anyway. You know, and you could probably get a B player to work on the weekend. Like B players are really solid. You want a B player. So that’s kind of the attitude is like, they will do things, they will get ahead of problems, they can critically think, they save your time, and they can even go into the realm of, you know, coming up with solutions and possibly even making you some money.

B players, really solid. They do enough. They do enough. And I already talked about their attitude. Like I said, they, they want to be done. They don’t want to keep going beyond. And they, they’ve honestly think that they’ve done a really good job. They’re actually very aware, like, hey, I’ve done a good job. And like, you know what? This is good. And that is a solid B player. That’s the best way I could describe them. You want B players, C players, maybe only for a certain amount of time, but you can keep them on the team.

Maybe you’ll always have them on the team, especially if the salary, their salary is far below the ROI you’re getting with your time being freed up. You might keep a C player around forever. And then a B player, you know, they have to basically justify their existence on a regular basis, but they’re, they’re really solid and you want them on the team. Now when we get to an A player, an A player, they are tough and they’re tough in their own, own way is that you have to constantly be like setting opportunities in front of them and casting a vision.

And the best way I can describe this is my, my dog. So if you’ve been listening to podcasts, you know, I got a German shorthaired pointer GSP, but I also have a Chihuahua. And my Chihuahua is a solid, like if I had to put it in context, like a C or D player doesn’t, you know, I’ll call it a B player, you know, doesn’t really need any stimulation or whatever. Just cool doing, chilling. But my GSP, like we just have to make stuff up for this dog to do.

Like we have to do scent training and take it on walks and runs and like all this stuff. We have to do so much stuff for this dog. And I really enjoy it. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. her, training her, getting her to learn things, all those kinds of things. But stepping away from the dog is if I just didn’t do anything with my dog, I was like, no, I need you to act more like a Chihuahua.

You know, I need you to act more like a B player that GSP would rip my house apart and just tear everything to shreds because I’m not stimulating. I’m not giving her enough opportunity to be what she is, which is this incredible athlete capable of so many things. If I’m just like, no, no, no, no. I don’t want you to do all those things. I want you to do simple stuff and just never, never be awesome.

If you do that to an A player, yeah, I’m not going to say they’re tear your business apart, they’ll probably quit. You have to actually put really strong opportunities in front of an A player. But here’s the biggest personality trait that I’ve realized in an A player is that they will never actually think that they’re doing enough. They will think that they haven’t done enough, that they need to do more. They want to work on the weekends.

They want to work nights. That is the mentality I see in A players. It’s not only this phenomenal skill set and the fact that you are managing raw talent that you need to guide and mentor, but it’s the attitude they bring of like, they’re already doing so much and they’re so amazing, but they still come to you and they’re like, I’m not doing enough. What more could I do? How do I need to be better for the team?

That’s incredibly rare. And like I said, it’s, it’s also incredibly expensive to keep A players on the team and to keep them engaged with your vision. You have to constantly cast that bigger vision for them. So again, aside from the D player, I think A, B and C players all fit on your team in some degree. They all have their place and they all have their different challenges when it comes to a leadership and management position.

But you don’t have to, you don’t have to have this team of all A players. And if you think you have all A players, you really don’t, unless you’re just a phenomenal leader with like a high growth company, you have really solid A, B and C players. You’re probably the A player on your team. If you’re a partner, you probably have another A player. And then, you know, you might, maybe you have hired an A player, but ultimately in the businesses I talk to, the entrepreneur is the A player and then they have some solid Bs and a lot of Cs and that’s okay.

Now, when we’re getting to growth, and this is where I will leave you and end of the podcast, when it is time to press the gas, it is time to go, it is time to scale, and if that is your goal, if that’s what you want to do, you will very quickly find out who truly is an A, B and C player, and then you might have to make the tough decisions on who do I need to cut, who can stay, and who do we need to hire.

But you won’t ever really realize that until you start to press the gas, but when you press that gas, you’ll realize who’s on the team and who needs to be on the team. And I think it’s one of the greatest leadership opportunities for any entrepreneur is to really find out who’s on the team and see if there’s still a place for them in the future, and if there is, continue to foster that. If it’s not, do the hard things and cut who doesn’t need to be there.

Try harder.