Topgrading: Hire & Keep the Best Talent

Build­ing a team with­out Top­grad­ing is like build­ing the Gold­en Gate Bridge from a kid’s cray­on sketch rather than from clear and detailed draw­ings by an engi­neer and archi­tect. — Kevin Lawrence

If your com­pa­ny is going to con­tin­ue to grow and thrive, you’ve got to get the right peo­ple in the right seats — and keep the best talent.

You want to build stronger teams and have as close as pos­si­ble to 90% A‑Players – an excel­lent fit for your cul­ture and an A‑grade for their performance.

I believe that every­one can be a high­ly desir­able employ­ee some­where – but how do you know if they are right for your com­pa­ny? Are they a fit for their man­ag­er and their team?

Find­ing those answers is hard. You have to be high­ly skilled and use pre­cise tools to get them right. If you don’t, it will cost you – some­times up to a mil­lion for a high-lev­el exec­u­tive position.

A Proven System

So, let’s talk about the pow­er of Top­grad­ing™, which I first came across over 15 years ago, as I did the research for Scal­ing Up Rock­e­feller Habits 2.0.

Of the 50 CEOs I inter­viewed around the world, eight specif­i­cal­ly called out Top­grad­ing as the game chang­er for their busi­ness. Using it gave them dra­mat­i­cal­ly stronger teams and freed them up to do their job as a CEO.

With those strong rec­om­men­da­tions, I learned and mas­tered the tech­nol­o­gy, and it is still the best tool we have found to strength­en a lead­er­ship and exec­u­tive team. To the point that I am fanat­i­cal about the use of the Top­grad­ing sys­tem to build stronger teams for the com­pa­nies we work with.

It’s hard to argue with a sys­tem that gives you at least a 75% suc­cess rate when hir­ing new A‑Players or pro­mot­ing exist­ing team mem­bers. That’s sig­nif­i­cant when most com­pa­nies have a 25% to 30% suc­cess rate with new hires and inter­nal promotions.

The Ori­gin of Topgrading

Soon after Brad Smart cre­at­ed a new, for­mal method­ol­o­gy for hir­ing, devel­op­ing and man­ag­ing high per­form­ers, he was hired by Jack Welch, the new CEO of Gen­er­al Elec­tric (1980). Welch knew that his strat­e­gy of becom­ing #1 in every mar­ket in which they oper­at­ed could only be achieved if he hired great peo­ple. Using the Top­grad­ing method­ol­o­gy, more than 90% of can­di­dates hired and pro­mot­ed turned out to be ​“A Play­ers,” and Smart’s sys­tem became an an embed­ded part of GE’s hir­ing prac­tices. Brad lat­er wrote the best-sell­ing book Top­grad­ing, How to Hire, Coach and Keep A‑Players.

Mis­takes are expensive

Hir­ing mis­takes can be very, very expen­sive in terms of stress for the team and the peo­ple who have to work with some­one who doesn’t fit the cul­ture or deliv­er on their account­abil­i­ties — and in pure cash for the cost of recruit­ment, train­ing and on-board­ing, and bad deci­sions or mistakes.

Suc­cess means discipline

Com­pared to the fast and loose hir­ing process many peo­ple use, Top­grad­ing may seem com­pli­cat­ed. It isn’t — it just takes discipline.

If you want to get close to 90% A‑Players, you have to con­sis­tent­ly pick the top 10% of avail­able can­di­dates, at the pay you offer, for the role – and you need to fol­low through, on a reg­u­lar basis, to coach, devel­op or change the roles of peo­ple who aren’t thriving.

We bring these dis­ci­plines to ensure all the key peo­ple on your team per­form at their best and instead of leav­ing feed­back and devel­op­ment to a per­for­mance review, once a year.

Here are the core dis­ci­plines that get results:

Tal­ent Reviews

Every quar­ter, a mini-eval­u­a­tion of the top tal­ent in your company.

Peo­ple talk about their peo­ple being their great­est asset but nev­er do a peo­ple review – if they do, it’s once a year and weak. This key activ­i­ty involves the CEO and exec­u­tive team to make sure the right things are hap­pen­ing with key people.

• How can you help peo­ple to thrive more now?
• If they are an A‑Player, how can you help them to sus­tain that lev­el of performance?
• If they’re a B‑Player, how can they become an A?
• How can you help some­one with poten­tial to get pro­mot­ed to their next role?
• How do you devel­op their successor?
• What’s the best way to help some­one who is not meet­ing the mark? Are they under­per­form­ing or not a great fit with the culture?
• If you’ve done every­thing you can, is it the end of the road? How do you cre­ate a quick and grace­ful exit?

Expect this process to be chal­leng­ing when you do it the first time – when you real­ize, for exam­ple, you have 30% C‑Players who aren’t aligned with our val­ues or not pro­duc­tive in their role — because the next ques­tion is, ​“What are you going to do about it?”

A man­ager’s job is either help peo­ple to grow and be effec­tive in their role, or to look for a dif­fer­ent role in which they can be effec­tive in or to move them out.

Score­cards

A very detailed job descrip­tion with clear out­comes or goals the role needs to achieve, through the lens of core val­ues, on 50 dif­fer­ent competencies.

Hire and pro­mote against this tan­gi­ble score­card, so that you and the can­di­date are very clear about what suc­cess looks like upfront, what they need to pro­duce, the required com­pe­ten­cies for an A‑Player, and how they need to fit the culture.

Deep Assess­ments

• The screen­ing inter­view: 30 to 45 min­utes to get a sense of the can­di­dates and if they are enough of a fit.
• The tan­dem exec­u­tive inter­view: a three-to-five-hour, in-depth break­down of their entire career, start­ing with high school. When you ask a few sim­ple ques­tions – when you dig deep to pro­duce data and repeat this for every job they’ve had – pat­terns emerge. The best indi­ca­tion of how a per­son will be in your role is how they per­formed in sim­i­lar roles, in the past.

A lead­er­ship can­di­date can be a per­sua­sive and spin a good sto­ry. Just because you like and con­nect with them, doesn’t mean they are good for the job. So, take a cou­ple of days to cool down and write a struc­tured report, based on the data uncov­ered in the Top­grad­ing Tan­dem inter­view and scored against the job score­card to verify.

• Call past man­agers. Call three to five past man­agers — not the ref­er­ences they gave you who’ll say they’re amaz­ing. Ask very spe­cif­ic questions.

Decide by Data

Make your deci­sion based on data not feel­ings. You can have a gut instinct about some­one, but you’ve got to come back to specif­i­cal­ly say why some­thing does – or doesn’t – feel right.

• Which com­pe­ten­cy or core val­ue are you con­cerned about?
• How do you know that’s true and how do you ver­i­fy that?

Two Final Thoughts:

• The CEO and exec­u­tives need to buy in and cham­pi­on it, to invest in the train­ing and work with experts until they become experts, or it won’t work. This a tal­ent enhance­ment sys­tem, not just a hir­ing methodology.
• To get results, you need to make a com­mit­ment to build a cul­ture and a dis­ci­pline of hir­ing, devel­op­ing and pro­mot­ing tal­ent­ed peo­ple. If you’re not com­mit­ted to invest in Top­grad­ing and to move, over a cou­ple of years, to build a team of A‑Players, don’t do it.

The Chal­lenge

• Does your cur­rent tal­ent-enhance­ment sys­tem help you to know the per­cent­age of A‑Players that you have?
• Does it ensure that all the lead­ers in the com­pa­ny do some­thing to sup­port or devel­op every­one on their team, each quar­ter — for the sake of the indi­vid­ual and the ben­e­fit of the company?

For more:

• Lis­ten to Episode 100 of The Growth Whisperers.
• Read about the dif­fer­ent types of A‑Players and how to stack your tal­ent deep.

Don’t hes­i­tate to reach out if you would like help from one of our expert advisors.

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.

We help high-achiev­ing lead­ers to have it all – a great busi­ness and a reward­ing life. Con­tact us for sim­ple and impact­ful advice. No BS. No fluff.