Short leadership talk by Donald Burns about recognizing differing skill levels within a team and assigning roles to match individual strengths. He argues against treating all employees identically (a “checkers” approach) and advocates strategic role placement and stronger talent management (a “chess” approach); also advises removing very poor performers (labeled “D players”).
Look at the people on your team right now, would you honestly say that they're all at the same skill level? Of course not. Now you probably have some A players, B players, and maybe a few C players. Now, you shouldn't have any D players working in your restaurant, and if you do, you need to fire them and give yourself a timeout for bad team selection. When you treat all your employees the same and you're trying to be fair, you're just basically playing a big game of checkers. Now, when you look at each individual on your team for their unique strengths and the position that you have them in and that you can use that position leveraged for their full abilities, then you're playing chess. Managers play checkers, leaders play chess.
If your restaurant only works because you work 80 hours a week, it doesn't work.
