ABC's Oh Baby Now

A lot of factors impact the long-term success of a business entity, and achieving success is complex. As businesspeople, we cannot control the economy, our competition, taxes, healthcare plans, or national events. However, I think we can agree that the quality of employees within an organization directly affects that organization’s performance. Even with unions, executives and managers do ultimately control who works in the company. Leveraging the “people piece” is essential to enhance a company’s performance advantage. People are one of your most important business assets. By calling people “assets,” I do not mean to objectify them—but maximizing resources is one of the responsibilities of business leadership. The “ABC” process I’m going to tell you about is designed to give your company both a people and a performance edge.

An article called “A New Game Plan for C Players,” by Beth Axelrod, Helen Hadfield-Jones, and Ed Michaels, helped crystallize my ideas about working with management teams. The article also reinforced solutions that I am successfully implementing with my clients—namely, improving companies by driving out mediocrity. By raising the bottom of a company, you automatically raise the top.

Before we go on, let me make a disclaimer. Management’s ranking of employees is controversial. Forced ranking is something that many large, publicly traded companies do. I am not endorsing this methodology or that of Jack Welch, who supposedly advocates culling the bottom 10 percent of the GE herd each year. What I am endorsing, and heartily proposing, is that you only have truly outstanding and incredible employees in your company. Now there is a radical thought. If you have this attitude, then process I outline in my next couple posts will be of significant value.