Here's the truth: Most businesses are run by B & C Players who are supervised by B & C Players hoping for A Results. Good luck with that math.
I was working with a CEO last week (in one of my Board of Directors group meetings) who couldn't figure out why his team kept dropping the ball. "Keith, I've got good people," he said. "They're just not performing. How do I get them to produce results? I feel like I am begging them to do their job."
Wrong diagnosis. He didn't have good people. He had warm bodies filling seats. There's a difference.
If you want A Players, you need an A Process. And that process starts with understanding this fundamental principle: You can’t manage what you can’t measure, and you can’t hire who you can’t define.
The Framework That Changes Everything
I told my Board member this: If I had your "people problem", here's exactly what I'd do:
1. Define the Standard and Outcome
Every job in your company exists to produce a specific outcome. Not activities. Not effort. Outcomes.
What's the standard? What does winning look like in this position? If you can't answer that question with a number, you don't have a standard… You have a wish.
2. Identify Critical Drivers
Critical drivers are the 3-5 activities that CAUSE the outcome to happen. Not the 47 things on someone's job description. The critical few that actually move the needle.
Think about it like this: A pilot has hundreds of gauges in the cockpit, but only a few will kill you if they're wrong. Those are your critical drivers.
3. Build the Process (The Playbook)
Here's where most businesses screw up. They hire first, then figure out the job later. Or they have a “job description” but no playbook. That's like drafting a running back when you need a defensive tackle.
Process before people. Always.
Create a step-by-step playbook that says: "If you do it THIS way and follow THIS process, you'll execute on THESE critical drivers and ACHIEVE the outcome."
This isn't a job description. It's a recipe for success. Your “Yellow Brick Road”.
4. Now You Can Hire A Players
A Players have two things in common:
- A high internal emotional need to succeed.
- A love of being measured.
They don't need pep talks. They don't need motivation. They need a scoreboard and a way to win.
The weaker your people, the stronger your supervision needs to be. Weak players need strong bosses who are hands-on, full-time mamas. A Players need coaches, not babysitters.
5. Train Like You Mean It
Training isn't sending someone to a seminar. That’s exposure. Real training has four parts:
- Curriculum: What they need to know
- Repetition: Until it becomes muscle memory
- Practice : Not theory, actual doing
- Accountability: Ownership of the process, outcomes and deliverables
Want to know if someone really knows something? Have them teach it.
6. Measure and Report Daily
Every player needs a dashboard. Daily or weekly. Not monthly. Not quarterly. Daily/weekly.
End of every day/week, they report:
- How they performed against standard/metric
- Which metrics they missed
- Why they missed them
- What they're doing about it
Miss the standard and don’t know what to do to fix it? Time to coach, not prosecute. Too many leaders put on their sheriff badge when they need to put on their coaching/training hat. After all, if you are the boss, your primary job is to support your team in winning.
7. Compensation That Works
Your comp structure needs three things:
1. Enough to attract and retain A Players (You get what you pay for, and A Players typically command a premium)
2. Upside for excellence (Winners need a way to win bigger)
3. Downside for underperformance (Like taking away car keys from your teenager, not abandoning your kid)
The Leadership Multiplier
Here's what nobody tells you: The visibility of leadership matters. When things are broken, leaders need to be more visible, not less.
Remember George W. Bush after 9/11? He could have addressed the nation from the White House. Instead, he stood on the rubble with a bullhorn. Visible leadership in crisis.
Your Action Items
Stop pulling on loose threads. Look at your entire machine:
1. Where are you missing outcomes and standards? Fix that first.
2. Are your critical drivers defined and measured? If not, you're flying blind.
3. Is your process documented? No playbook means inconsistent results.
4. Do you have A players or warm bodies? Be honest.
5. Are you training or exposing? Repetition, Practice and Accountability matter.
6. Are you measuring daily/weekly or hoping monthly? Hope is not a strategy.
7. Does your comp structure reward excellence? Pay peanuts, get donkeys, not racehorses.
The Bottom Line
If you're missing your numbers, it's not because your people need another motivational speech. It's because something in your machine is broken.
Find the break. Fix the break. Stop managing problems and start building the machine.
Because here's the truth: Businesses don't run themselves. But with the right machine and A Players, the results are astonishing.
Do Your Job!
