Hidden Costs of Not Having a Team of A-Players

One of the teams I work with was approached about a poten­tial, sec­ond-to-none acqui­si­tion that came with an impres­sive lead­er­ship team. As we dis­cussed that ben­e­fit, my client looked around the room and real­ized his team was not in the same league. So we had a frank dis­cus­sion about the seri­ous impact on his com­pa­ny if he made this acqui­si­tion. If his team wasn’t all A‑Players.

He’s not alone. Most orga­ni­za­tions to start with, only have 25% to 30% of A‑players on their team.

Defin­ing an A‑Player

Play­ers are defined accord­ing to their fit with core val­ues and per­for­mance or productivity:

• An A‑Player fits your cul­ture well and deliv­ers con­sis­tent­ly excel­lent results. In school terms, they would get a 90% or high­er grade on both. They are cre­ative and effi­cient, and you love work­ing with them.
• A B‑Player fits the cul­ture very well but doesn’t con­sis­tent­ly get an A grade on the qual­i­ty of their work or hit­ting dead­lines. They are pro­duc­tive­ly good.
• A C‑Player doesn’t achieve the expect­ed results and they don’t fit the culture.

And then there are the Tox­ic As who con­sis­tent­ly deliv­er out­stand­ing results but are a night­mare to work with because they cre­ate a lot of dra­ma or fric­tion. They’re often the hard­est peo­ple to remove, because are so good at what they do and a force to be reck­oned with. If they’ve stayed for a long time, they gen­er­al­ly have some sort of pow­er, or rela­tion­ship with the CEO or some oth­er weird dynam­ic, that has kept them in their role.

The costs of not hav­ing an all A‑Player team

1. More work for you

When you work with an A‑Player, there’s not much to do, beyond giv­ing a lit­tle guidance.

But if peo­ple are unable to con­fi­dent­ly take on and exe­cute tasks well and on time, you turn into a micro-man­ag­ing babysit­ter. You can’t trust that the job is going to get done as expect­ed. You know this is true if you are focused on a lot of short-term, day-to-day stuff.

With a Tox­ic A, you have to man­age con­flict or drama.

Caveat: Micro-man­ag­ing can also be the result of your bad habits and how you lead. When we work with a new com­pa­ny, we try to unpack if the CEO and lead­ers are involved too much, and if the team has more capa­bil­i­ty. Often, it’s a lit­tle bit of both — a solv­able prob­lem if peo­ple are coach­able into bet­ter habits.

2. Less achievement/​results

A‑Players give you more val­ue for mon­ey. A Tox­ic A- or B‑Player – who like­ly makes the same salary as an A‑Player yet doesn’t deliv­er the same results and takes more time to man­age – can drain your orga­ni­za­tion of its strength and abil­i­ty to achieve.

You are also unable to take on new projects. Imag­ine set­ting pri­or­i­ties and strat­e­gy, at an off-site annu­al or quar­ter­ly work­shop, with a team of few or no A‑Players. You have a big new project – say, to imple­ment a new CRM or to expand into a new area – and real­ize you have no con­fi­dence in any­one on the team. As a result, you take on no big projects, or few­er that take longer to achieve. The cost in resources, time and ener­gy is high­er and the results, low­er. You sim­ply achieve less and squan­der resources.

3. More stress for the whole team

Aligned A‑Players, head­ing in the same direc­tion, gen­er­al­ly only cre­ate healthy fric­tion. But a B- and C‑Player team who isn’t as capa­ble, or a Tox­ic A who doesn’t align with your val­ues, are less pro­duc­tive and cre­ate mis­un­der­stand­ings which com­pound. Even one C- or Tox­ic A‑Player cre­ates more stress and frus­tra­tion for the team.

Think of this as a relay race team. If you have one per­son who can bare­ly run, and can’t pass the baton to some­body else, or who cre­ates dra­ma and prob­lems, the whole team pays a price.

4. You have to fix more mistakes

Mis­takes and mess­es result from incom­pe­tence or medi­oc­rity and rela­tion­al ser­vice and qual­i­ty issues. And while A‑Players can make mis­takes, they gen­er­al­ly fix them quick­ly, with­out you get­ting involved.

High per­form­ers want to work with high performers.

5. Lead­er­ship becomes undermined

When you don’t deal with a Tox­ic A or C‑Player, your lead­er­ship is under­mined as peo­ple ques­tion why you don’t deal with them. If you keep these play­ers on the team, you endorse their behav­iour, and demon­strate that being a tox­ic jerk is okay in your culture.

6. B‑Players tend to hire low­er Bs or Cs

It takes a con­fi­dent per­son to hire some­one more capa­ble than they are. If some­one per­forms at a 78% lev­el, they’re less like­ly to hire some­one who’ll per­form at 110% level.

If Bs or Cs on your team are involved in hir­ing, they’re not going to hire an A. The more Bs you have, the more Bs and Cs you get, and the spi­ral down­ward continues.

If you drop an A‑Player into a team of Bs, and Cs, three things will happen:

• That employ­ee will either drop down to the lev­el of the B’s, and C’s, or
• They will be out quick­ly, because they want to be in a win­ning team, or
• They’ll voice their frus­tra­tion — and if you don’t fix it, they will leave.

No-one wins

Iden­ti­fy­ing and keep­ing some­one who isn’t an A‑Player does­n’t help any­one. Ignor­ing the sit­u­a­tion does­n’t serve your orga­ni­za­tion and it pre­vents that per­son from being an A‑Player at anoth­er com­pa­ny where they can be a bet­ter fit. Con­sid­er that, most of the time, C‑Players or Tox­ic As just aren’t happy.

The Chal­lenge

• Based on read­ing this arti­cle, you are going to be think­ing about a cou­ple of peo­ple sit­u­a­tions you need to sort out?
• What are those three situations?

Want to hear more? Lis­ten to Episode 88 of The Growth Whisperers.

We have a team of peo­ple who can trans­form exec­u­tive and lead­er­ship teams from 25% or 30%, to 70%, 80% and 90%. If you need help with this, please reach out.

Lawrence & Co’s work focus­es on sus­tain­able and enhanced growth for you and your busi­ness. Our diverse and expe­ri­enced group of advi­sors can help your lead­ers and exec­u­tive teams stay com­pet­i­tive through the use of var­i­ous learn­ing tools includ­ing work­shops, webi­na­rs, exec­u­tive retreats, or one-to-one coaching.

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