30 Nov 2018

Little Known Secret Most CEOs Don’t Know to Grow Your Business

As a business coach, I’ve worked with CEO clients from all across the United States on the growth of their companies. My clients are among leaders of some of the fastest growing businesses in their industries.

These CEOs are challenged with a litany of obstacles they must overcome to grow their organizations to the next level.

Out of my years of experience mentoring leaders, what is one of my top pieces of advice to CEOs?

..

Hire fewer employees. Pay them more.


Let me explain…

A large part of business is assembling the right team to meet the challenges of your business.

As a CEO, think of yourself as a coach of a professional football team. Every coach knows that you can’t win Super Bowl without great talent.

Just like in pro football, you can’t win the great game of business with mediocre players.

But how do you systematically get the best players on your team?

The first step is knowing the different levels of employees. A key to assembling a championship business team is understanding these categories and knowing what to do with them.


3 Types of Employees:

1. C Players:

These employees are the worse members to have on your team. They do not embrace your core values, they consistently under perform, and create chaos in your organization.

2. B Players

These members of your team do their jobs and meet goals. However, they seldomly do more than that. To a B player, their position is little more than a job. There is little or no passion or enthusiasm in their work.

3. A Players

These are your rock stars on your team. A Players embrace your core values and are enthusiastic problems solvers that go above and beyond the call of duty. They have a high internal motivation, a need to succeed, and don’t need to be constantly motivated.

Knowing the difference between A players, B players, and C players is half the battle. What do you do with them?


Employee Action Plan:

1. C players:

Get them off your team. C players are mis-hires. When you analyze the cost to your company with the time, energy, and effort of hiring, training, cleaning up messes of a mis-hire, it typically costs a company 15X their salary!

Do not fall into the C player trap. The vast majority of managers in companies spend more time with C Players one-on-one (200 hrs on average) than with A Players. This is often due to disciplinary reasons or requirements to address C Player behaviors.

The #1 reason why A players leave a company is their tolerance for C players.

Don’t try to train or fix a C player. It will not work. Transition a C player off of your team as soon as possible.

2. B players:

Work with B players and coach them to become A players. There may be several reasons a B player aren’t fully engaged in their work. Here are a few strategies to nurture a B player:

-Metrics and accountability: Your B player may not know what is expected of him. Make sure your management team has property communicated priorities, has assigned quantifiable metrics with the employee, and has set up a meeting rhythm to review those metrics. 

-Motivation: Find out what motivates them and offer incentives to reach goals.

-Analyze their personality and skill set. Your B player may be an A player who is in the wrong seat on your bus.

-Create an engaging core purpose: The #1 reason an employee engages in a business is if they believe in the company.

3. A players:

Keep them! Do everything you can to keep these members on your team. Since A players stand for excellence, they have a number of opportunities to work elsewhere. Ask yourself why would an A player want to work for your company and not your competitor.

A players will produce as much as three B players, so pay A players more. If you have an A player on your team, consider compensating them 1.5x the industry average salary. You will come out ahead in the end.

Once you get your C players off your team, hire more A players. Your current A players probably know other A players in their networks. Use these employees to refer other new A player candidates

Hire fewer employees. Pay them more.

Create a recruitment and retention strategy that understands the 3 different types of employees is a major secret I coach my clients to grow their company to the next level.

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