Talent Assessment and Development

All right. If you want to grow your business and make it fun, good experience, right? Not have it suck so much, survive the process. You want your team working together well, and that means you need to develop the right people, hang on to the best people, get rid of the people who aren't performing, and root out the people who are actually damaging the organization. And that is where our talent assessment tool and process comes to play. So in the world of talent assessment, we're really most interested in these two things. Two things only. And that gives us a very clear picture of what to do with each person on the team. And as you grow, things change, right? Somebody who was a fit at one point isn't a fit later. I like to call this the Goldilocks principle. Right? If you know the story about Goldilocks and the Three Bears, there's always something that's changed just right and some other things that don't quite fit. And that's often true with our people in our organizations over time. So the first thing that's most determinant is how they fit the values and culture of your company. When somebody really doesn't fit your company, your environment, they don't fit your values. There's almost nothing that you can do about that. Sometimes there's a lack of clarity around that. But if somebody just doesn't match your kind of a company, the way you do things, the spirit, the underlying thing, pretty much, we can't help them. So that's probably the most determinant thing. And, and we would put that, say, on the left side of an axis of a two by two matrix, and we would say somebody who really fits the values goes in the top, and somebody who doesn't fit the values goes way in the bottom. And so that'd be the first thing. Second thing we'd look at is performance in their current role. So are, if you're in service, are you taking care of people and hanging on to people, are you losing customers even in and resolving situations in sales, are you making your numbers and selling for a profitable amount? Like not discounting to get the sales, making your quota, exceeding quota, that kind of thing. So how well are you performing in your current role and how well you fit the company? People who are both performing in their current role at a high level and really, really fit the values, the culture of the company, we call those people a players. And you want more of those people, you want to handcuff them, you want to hang on to them, you want to clone them, you want to find the people Others that are like them, you want to figure out how to keep them around and keep them happy. And like that A players seems obvious, right? The next thing that we say are people that really fit the company but aren't performing in their job. These are B players we call them. And the people who are above the fold in terms of company fit but aren't quite working. There's a couple of things to consider. One of them is they just don't know how to do their job right and they haven't been trained yet. And so you got some basic training and development to do. The other one is around fit. It could be. And I think of one person in particular who worked for me years ago in another company and person was great. They had a great resume, they really fit the company, they knew the industry, but they weren't driving sales the way they were the way that we wanted them to. And so in sitting down in a conversation with them and talking about how it was going, one of the things that I discovered is that they just didn't have the drive anymore that they'd had earlier in their life due to some major life events and things like that. What they really cared about now at this stage was taking care of people not making numbers, not achievement, accomplishment, money, things like that, that, that are really important for high achieving salespeople. So we move them from sales to service and they thrive. They did fantastic. And I'm reminded of that on the regular and mini teams, sometimes somebody just needs training a B player. Other times they just need to find a different job. And if you're small, it's possible that you don't have a job that suits kind of their temperament. But many times you can move somebody into a different role and, and they're happy. The next role, and maybe the most important one are these people who are performing really highly, right? They're high performers in their role, but they really don't fit your company. They're toxic for some reason. You're not sure why. The thing that we discover again and again is that those people are doing damage internally and externally to the company in huge ways because their performance is so high, because you so depend on them. And if they're in sales, they're outselling you in a way that's not consistent with your values and that will come back to bite you in customers who are unhappy. That happened to me. Once I had somebody, I loved their numbers, they were a little toxic, but I took it because I liked the numbers. And then a year later, all those people that they'd sold. Were unhappy with our company because the person had misrepresented the company more consistent with their own values than our company values. So people were expecting things that we just never ever were going to do, weren't even working on doing and they were unhappy. Right. Created huge mess internally. Somebody performing really well but isn't a team player or doesn't have some other thing. Those will also create problems in discord, disharmony messes within the company because they don't have the core values that are important to you and your company. The last category. So you got to get rid of either of those people. High performers, you got to get rid of them if they don't fit your company. Really, really important. Last one, the fourth of the BC players, D players, whatever you want to call them here, we generally call them BC players, but these are people that aren't really performing well and don't really fit the company. And yet most of us have people like this. And what happens is we tell ourselves, look, I'm really busy right now. They could still fog a mirror. I'll deal with that later. I got bigger fish to fry. You say some variety of thing like that to your and the problem is that that is true for you, but it's not true for the rest of the team. Those A players that you really want to hang on to, they're really irritated by the people that don't fit and aren't performing. In many cases you can just get rid of the the people who don't fit and aren't perform and and aren't performing and the rest of the team will pick up the slack and carry it just fine and so glad to be unburdened with their negativity or lack of fit. Sometimes you need to hire an interim person, an outsource, a contractor, do something to bridge the gap. But in general, if they aren't performing in their job and they really don't fit the company, you got to get them out as quick as you can. So the fastest ones to get rid of are the people that don't that are high performing and don't fit the company. But you also need to get rid of the other people who don't fit the company and aren't performing at all because it's just bumming everybody else out. Now here's the thing with all these things. This is like you could do this on a pencil and paper right now and be pretty clear about your company, but if you'll take the time to bring some rigor to it. Make sure that you don't go firing people that are actually a fit for the company. They just don't look it on the surface. So you got to go inspect and make sure that you're right about the performance and the fitness, that kind of thing. So after you do your quick assessment and you create your game plan for people, then start to go and check your facts and your assumptions and make sure you're you're right about it before you take that action. I hope that's been helpful. I hope your team is a team of A players and your A player ratio is increasing every day, every week, every month, every year, and that you keep scaling. Talk to you again next time. Thanks.