The ‘A’ Player Myth

There is quite a lot of chatter on the paradox of hiring ‘A’ players in a downturn.  Briefly summarized, hiring is harder today because the number of schmucks has dramatically increased while the true talent has remained constant.

While I can’t deny there is more noise I frankly think it’s the wrong conversation to have. The mantra of hiring only ‘A’ players is a fallacy that has gotten us into trouble.  To lay my biases on the table early, they are:

1. We have a totally misguided perception of what ‘best’ means so hiring the ‘best’ isn’t really doing us any favors
2. A team comprised strictly of ‘best’ people isn’t a team
3. A concerted need to hire ‘only A people’ means you’ve given up on developing talent
4. (More like 3a.) Hiring ‘only A people’ means you see people as cogs in a wheel – true A talent probably shouldn’t work for you

To set the table, I think there are two viewpoints on this topic:

photo by Fred Armitage

The first advocates the traditional ‘A’ player mantra and sees a fixed world.  We all have a fixed ability and what we’ve have shown in the past is all we’re capable of in the future.  What you see is all you get.  The onus for being engaged and kicking ass at work falls squarely and solely on the worker.  They get a paycheck, it’s up to them to earn it.  If they can’t, we’ll find someone who can.

The other view sees a dynamic world.  Where actions do indeed have equal and, in this case, not-so-opposite reactions.  While we may have ceilings on our potential, we are not limited to what we have done in the past.  After a certain level of basic intelligence (a hurdle many – but certainly not all – knowledge workers will clear) we can flourish when properly utilized and engaged.  Engagement and ass kicking is a two way street.  The worker must bring the right abilities to the table, but those abilities won’t be fully utilized unless the worker’s needs are met.

Needless to say, I’m in the latter camp.

Now to expand upon my three and a half biases above.

First, how we currently define ‘best’ only evaluates one’s skills.  It doesn’t credit people with having an appetite for learning.  It doesn’t acknowledge that people can be good at something other than what they’ve already done.  It accepts ‘any means necessary’ in order to accomplish a task.  It rewards the hoarding of information and the loud, chest-thumping, spotlight-seeking blowhard.  Skills and knowledge are only part of the equation in most corporate situations.  And you can get by with them if you have a bunker to isolate these lone wolf geniuses.  But if you expect them to contribute on a team you also have to add how they work with others to the evaluation.

photo by ooOJASONOoo

Dovetailing into my second bias, the attributes that make our teams successful are the antithesis of how we reward individuals.  I’ve worked with several ‘A’ players who I’d politely classify as assholes.  They only cared about the greater good of the team in the sense that they could take credit for something and use it to feed their egos and propel their careers.   Who wants to work with that guy?  Who wants to actively work against that guy?  He may be good at what he does, but he brings down the effort and talent level of the people around him.

Teams are successful when information flows freely, people trust the team not to use their idea larvae against them and there is mutual respect that allows those larvae to breathe another breath and potentially bust out of the cocoon.   Not exactly what jumps out at us on a resume or at the heart of the questions we ask in an interview.

photo by DavidDMuir

Finally, the idea of player development goes out the window if you’re only look for ‘A’ players.  You believe rewarding these people is a matter of throwing more money or a bigger title at them.  You’re rewarding the selfishness and ever-ballooning ego by throwing gas on that fire.  Under our current evaluation system, you haven’t hired ‘A’ players that care about your business, you’ve hired mercenaries that care about themselves.

True ‘A’ people are motivated by more than extrinsic rewards. By not taking the time to understand that you’ve essentially cut off the long-term, sustainable avenues for true ‘A’ players to get rewarded.  True ‘A’ players are the intellectually curious who want to tackle new challenges.  Yet, you haven’t taken an interest in them, their career or their goals.  You don’t have the inclination to help them acquire new knowledge or skills because you believe those are fixed.  You haven’t set up the structure by which ‘A’ players can challenge themselves in an unfamiliar role or the support for them to succeed should they happen to accidentally get there.

This is already too long so I’ll end with this.  How many championships have the Yankees been able to buy with the ‘A’ talent on the free agent market in the last decade?  Their string of championships in the late 90s were the result of the players they had taken the time to coach/mentor through their minor league system. The business of hiring the best of the best doesn’t win when we incorrectly define ‘the best’ and wind up with people unwilling to do the little things that help the team, but hurt individual stats.

I’ll hedge my bets by saying that these aren’t wholly universal truths, but our current behavior is prevalent enough that I don’t feel badly making these blanket statements.

The morale of my soapbox rant is to reevaluate what it means to be great.  Judge not just the on skills on brings, but how they affect those around them.  And put the effort in to elevate the game of your existing team.  They may not all have the motivation and intellectual horsepower to go from a B to an A player, but you can’t expect them to get there on their own.  It takes two to tango.  An ‘A’ leader understands that.

Feel free to set me straight.

Hiring For Engagement

In the last post I stated a case for engaging employees.  In a nutshell, competitive advantages for knowledge businesses come from ingenuity which can only be fostered when an employee is engaged.

The first step is making sure we get the right people on the bus.  My starting point is to focus on fit.  Engagement comes from a number of sources, but how well someone fits into our company is step one and within our control.  If you aren’t in an environment that can leverage your strengths you’re going to be wasting your energy conforming instead of innovating.

Our current thinking is that we need to find the best and the brightest. Exclusively hiring ‘A’ players makes sense, right?  We should all be so judicious.  Why then do we keep getting it so wrong?

Working in Silos. Photo by Rachel R.

Let’s change how we identify ‘A’ players.

Unless everyone works in a silo, stop looking for the smartest, most accomplished applicants for a position.  Seriously.  It’s killing your business.

A simple, illustrative example:

Allen Iverson cements his ‘A’ player status based on his 10 all-star appearances.  Looking at his accomplishments (i.e. stat line.  A resume for you and me.) it’s a no-brainer.  But he hates practice, takes too many shots and looks to get his before involving his teammates.  Not surprisingly, his teams have never won a championship.  Not many coaches and ‘teams’ are set up for one man circuses that only come to town on gameday.

Would working with that type of co-worker bring out your best?

How we accomplish something in the workplace is as important as what we accomplish.  Your actions define you and influence others.  If we merely tolerate each other, what are the odds we can create excellent work that drives our businesses forward?

Being a selfish star or a lone-wolf genius may work for the short-term, but it’s not sustainable.  By virtue of how we’ve created our current work systems we win and lose as teams.  Most of us are symbiotically dependent upon others in order to do our job well.

Some suggestions on how we change our identification of ‘A’ players:

1. Recognize that you’ve developed a unique company culture, processes and ways of interacting whether you’ve consciously thought about it or not.  Be honest with yourself about what that is.  Highlight both the positive and the negative.  Then start looking for the smartest applicants who best fit your entire ecosystem: company culture, the hiring ‘manager,’ and the team.
2. Describe the traits needed for a job rather than the tasks that will be performed. Hire those before hiring for experience. 
   
3. Don’t mistake delivery for substance in the interview.  We’ve trained the shit out of people for how to answer our ‘trap’ questions in an interview.  You need to know what they really believe and how they really act rather than whether they can remember the best answers.
4. Look beyond the resume.  Dig deeper than ‘A’ accomplishments for ‘A’ methodology.
   

The two best ways to do this would be to 1) put applicants through a day of situational collaboration with their would-be team in lieu of the series of interviews and 2) shameless self-promotion alert – wait for RoundPegg’s solution to come on-line in the next month or so.

The Worst Interview Advice…Ever

A friend was recanting an interview she had last week and was disappointed about stumbling over a question about her weaknesses.  She was honest.  But, the prevailing “wisdom” says that we should turn our weaknesses into backhanded strengths.

Bullshit.

If you’re asking this question you’re trying to gauge the emotional intelligence of the person interviewing.  And if you’re not, you should be.  Hearing somebody spin the question should frustrate you and ding the candidate.  At least it does for me.

As the one asking the questions you want to know if the person sitting in the chair across from you knows what they don’t know, if they are confident enough in the areas they excel that they can admit their blind spots and whether they know they aren’t perfect and, thus, can collaborate with others.  You are also looking to fill the gaps on your team.  You want to know if you have someone on the bench who can make up for the next hires deficiencies.

But how many times have you heard, ‘turn the question on it’s head and start talking about your strengths as soon as possible?’

George Washington: "I cannot tell a lie."

Just tell the truth.

And don’t be ashamed.  We all have our weaknesses.  We only compound them by not admitting them.

Granted, this economic environment is difficult and sometimes you need any job that will do.  But, you want to be able to opt out of jobs that aren’t going to be a good fit.  You’ll just wind up being miserable.  Often you alone can’t always tell which job that is.  Sometimes it takes a little honesty to let the hiring company do the selection for you.

The upshot is that if you are great and you admit your weaknesses you have the opportunity to mold your job so that it plays to your strengths.  Put yourself in a position to succeed by placing the stakes around the job you want rather than trying to awkwardly fit the job they’ve described to who you are.

It won’t always work, but you’re better off if you know that before accepting the job.

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Photo credit: Benjamin Edwards