Podcast Ep 88 | The Hidden Cost of Not Having a Team of All A-Players

Most orga­ni­za­tions care about increas­ing per­for­mance, but they may not have enough peo­ple who are high per­form­ers to make it hap­pen. In this episode of the Growth Whis­per­ers pod­cast, Brad Giles and Kevin Lawrence dig into under­stand­ing clear­ly what an A‑Player is, and the cost of not recruit­ing, devel­op­ing and retain­ing enough A‑Players.

Bring­ing high per­form­ers to the team can seem elu­sive, or too expen­sive — but instead, it’s actu­al­ly more expen­sive NOT to have A‑Players. Brad and Kevin dis­cuss five key fac­tors that make up the costs to your busi­ness of not fill­ing your team with A‑Players.

EPISODE TRAN­SCRIPT

Please note that this episode was tran­scribed using an AI appli­ca­tion and may not be 100% gram­mat­i­cal­ly cor­rect – but it will still allow you to scan the episode for key content.

Kevin Lawrence 00:13

Wel­come to the Growth Whis­per­ers pod­cast where every­thing we talk about is build­ing endur­ing great com­pa­nies. Because that’s what Brad and I are pas­sion­ate about. That’s what we spend our days doing. And that’s what we take a lot of pride in being a part of. I’m Kevin Lawrence. I’m here today, as always, with Brad Giles, my won­der­ful part­ner down in Aus­tralia, Brad, how’s it going?

Brad Giles 00:36

Excel­lent. Love­ly. Today, thank you. Love­ly. It’s warm­ing up for sum­mer. And that’s a nice place to be.

Kevin Lawrence 00:42

Well, I’m, I’m warm­ing up for sum­mer-ish, because I’m down in Palm Springs, Cal­i­for­nia for this record­ing of this episode, even though it’s cold for them. It’s warm for us com­pared to what it’s like up in Cana­da. So let’s jump right in Brad, what’s your word of the day?

Brad Giles 00:58

Don’t be afraid to Go Big. The rea­son being I had a client. And about five years ago, we set a goal. And it was cer­tain­ly auda­cious, and it met all of the cri­te­ria. And then I will tell you the last two weeks, they made a very large acqui­si­tion. And this means that they’re going to achieve their BHAG. And so the CEO emailed me and said, We’re gonna hit our BHAG five years ear­ly. So we were delight­ed. What about yours, Kevin?

Kevin Lawrence 01:37

Mine is every­one has a sto­ry. And over the week­end, you know, got to know some sort of extend­ed fam­i­ly of some­one I know and, and hav­ing the time to sit and ask ques­tions and hear peo­ple’s life sto­ries, what they’ve been through what they’ve expe­ri­enced what they did for their work, their unique insights into the world. Every­one’s got a sto­ry, if you’ve got time to sit and with them and the desire to hear it. And it’s just fas­ci­nat­ing. I just love hear­ing peo­ple’s sto­ries and experiences.

Kevin Lawrence 02:26

So for today’s show, what are we going to talk about?

Brad Giles 02:35

It’s the hid­den cost of not hav­ing a team of all A‑players. So maybe I’ll start by just say­ing how this came about. One of the teams that I work with, were approached about a poten­tial acqui­si­tion. And we had a dis­cus­sion about the qual­i­ty of the lead­er­ship team, because the qual­i­ty of the poten­tial Acqui­si­tion was sec­ond to none, they were absolute­ly impres­sive. And the per­son who is my client who I work with, they had a look around the room. And they were, you know, in a very dif­fer­ent league, let’s just say. And so we had a bit of a frank con­ver­sa­tion about the qual­i­ty of the lead­er­ship team and the impact that that is hav­ing on them. The impact is seri­ous, and what is their B hag? And are they try­ing to achieve it? And are they going to be able to achieve it with the peo­ple that they’ve got, now that they’ve expe­ri­enced, been in the room with a team of a players?

Kevin Lawrence 03:54

Yeah, and it’s inter­est­ing, I am in Palm Springs. And as of tomor­row morn­ing, I’ll be meet­ing with one of my clients from the US. And they have a team of almost all A play­ers, and the whole orga­ni­za­tion, and they’re a sol­id orga­ni­za­tion, you know, more than 500 employ­ees. And I’ll find out tomor­row the cur­rent stats, but last we checked, it was over 60% of the whole orga­ni­za­tion was A‑players. And the results they’re get­ting even through COVID are aston­ish­ing, spec­tac­u­lar. I think in most orga­ni­za­tions have based on the mea­sures we used about 25 to 30% Max­i­mum A‑players because most orga­ni­za­tions are you know, they care about per­for­mance, but they have a lot of peo­ple who just aren’t out­stand­ing. And so we’re gonna dig into today is this thing of under­stand­ing clear­ly what a play­er is, which we’ll define a bit fur­ther in a moment. But what is the cost if your team isn’t all A play­ers and we’re talk­ing about your direct team? So for exam­ple, in this orga­ni­za­tion, I’m with this CEO that I meet­ing with the team His direct team is all a play­er’s. Yeah, and almost all of the peo­ple in that next lay­er are. But the whole orga­ni­za­tion is again, well, north of 60% of all the 500 plus peo­ple. So let’s, let’s define the dif­fer­ence between an A. and A. And by the way, this is some­thing you know, I know, Brad, your­self and myself, I spend a lot of time on this with all of the com­pa­nies we work with, because it’s real­ly about get­ting amaz­ing peo­ple into those key roles or their or their was impor­tant jobs. Yeah. And obvi­ous­ly, any­one that reports the CEO, or is one lay­er away from the CEO is a pret­ty darn crit­i­cal proof no mat­ter what is going to be a crit­i­cal role.

Brad Giles 05:40

Yeah, so the word A‑player gets bandied around a bit. But real­ly, real­ly sim­ply, we use the method of top grad­ing, and we would advo­cate imag­ine a sim­ple 2 x 2 matrix. On the one hand, on the ver­ti­cal axis, you’ve got core val­ues. And on the hor­i­zon­tal axis, you’ve got pro­duc­tiv­i­ty or per­for­mance in the role. And then in the top right cor­ner, you have a play­ers. So then the peo­ple, as you move left to the top left cor­ner, you would have a B player.

Kevin Lawrence 06:24

So fits that fits the cul­ture and core val­ues. Yes, but the results are iffy. There might be not con­sis­tent. And they’re pret­ty good, too good.

Brad Giles 06:37

Yeah. So I want to hang out with them. They’re fun to chat to. But they don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly always pro­duce the results that the com­pa­ny needs rel­a­tive to their role, their prod­uct, you know, they don’t real­ly, their pro­duc­tiv­i­ty isn’t as good as it could be less than 50%, let’s say. And then below them, we’ve got what we call the C play­ers. So they are low on cul­ture, and core val­ues. And equal­ly, they’re low on pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. And then obvi­ous­ly, to the right of that, we’ve got what we would call what some peo­ple would call B C’s, but we would call tox­ic A’s.

Kevin Lawrence 07:21

And those tox­ic A’s are peo­ple who get excel­lent results, they get out­stand­ing results con­sis­tent­ly. They’re just a night­mare for every­one they have to work with, or a lot of peo­ple they have to work with, they cre­ate a lot of dra­ma, and they cre­ate a lot of fric­tion in the busi­ness. They’re often the hard­est peo­ple to remove, because they are so darn pro­duc­tive and very good at what they do. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it just comes with the price for the orga­ni­za­tion. So when we’re say­ing those A play­ers in the top right, there are at least an 85 to 90% fit. Brad, you’re good there in a very expres­sive face. There anoth­er has for those of you that are that aren’t watch­ing the video, Brad’s face just opened up like a kid on Christ­mas morn­ing. It was awesome.

So there was in terms of, of a play­ers were like, We’re some­one it’s an eight, like an A stu­dent. You know, in Cana­da, it starts at 85%. I believe in us, it’s 90. But it’s, you know, 85%, or bet­ter fit on cul­ture, ide­al­ly, 90 again, and in terms of per­for­mance, you know, they’re in that top 10% of all of the per­form­ers. And they con­sis­tent­ly deliv­er excel­lent results, and they are a delight to work with. You know, you’ve got some­one who’s an A play­er on your team, when you’re so excit­ed to work with them, you feel hon­ored that they’re on your team, and you would hate the thought of los­ing them, not just because you have to replace them because they’re so darn good at their job. So that’s the a play­er. Again, tox­ic a play­er is some­one that is darn good at their job that is dri­ving me crazy. or and or oth­er peo­ple crazy in New York.

Brad Giles 09:03

So with­in a play­er’s there’s actu­al­ly four dif­fer­ent types that we’re going to talk about next week. But this week, we’re talk­ing about the cost and again, born of this stark real­iza­tion for this team that I work with when they actu­al­ly saw what it’s like to be sur­round­ed by a play­ers. So what are the costs? Well, first of all, if you aren’t sur­round­ed by a play­ers in your team, he cre­ates more work for you. Yes, more work. They’re unable they are unable to take on tasks they’re unable to, to con­fi­dent­ly exe­cute tasks and you can’t real­ly push them to the next lay­er. You can’t real­ly push them to two exe­cute the things that the com­pa­ny so des­per­ate­ly needs, or the team des­per­ate­ly needs, because you just don’t have that con­fi­dence in know that they’re not going to be able to do or they’re going to cre­ate may­hem perhaps.

Kevin Lawrence 10:15

So said, anoth­er way is you have to man­age down, you have to be more involved than you would ide­al­ly like to because the, you can’t trust that the job is going to get done as expect­ed, whether it’s that if it’s a tox­ic A, that they’re going to, you know, frus­trate peo­ple and you have to stay involved to man­age the con­flict of the dra­ma, or for the be that they’re going to get it done on time, or on qual­i­ty, or on bud­get or on what­ev­er it hap­pens to be some­how, you need to basi­cal­ly it’s like a lit­tle bit of babysit­ting, you got to be involved. Like like it’s a sev­en year old child, ver­sus if it’s a 28 year old child or 27 year old child, right, yeah, very dif­fer­ent amount of time and ener­gy. And it sucks up a lot. In some peo­ple. Inter­est­ing­ly, they’re so used to being involved. Some­times they might do micro­man­agers them­selves, but some­how they’re so used to being involved did­n’t even notice it. And when they work with an A play­er, they’re shocked. Because there’s actu­al­ly not a lot to do with an A play­er at all, just a lit­tle bit of guidance.

Brad Giles 11:17

And that’s fas­ci­nat­ing that you say that, because for this par­tic­u­lar client that I’m talk­ing about, one of the biggest prob­lems they’ve got is they are just hav­ing to take every­thing on. And one of the rea­sons they were will­ing to talk about acqui­si­tion was that they could­n’t see, they could­n’t see, imag­ine a future where they would­n’t have to take all of the responsibility.

Kevin Lawrence 11:42

When we talk to entre­pre­neurs, and they’re fed up and frus­trat­ed and want­i­ng to sell their busi­ness, most of the time, most of the time is because their team is dri­ving them crazy. Because they don’t have a team that is 100% a play­er’s for sure. So look at it basi­cal­ly noth­ing of a team at all, it’s gonna take a lot more ener­gy than doing your real CEO job. And by the way, how do you know if this is true? You’re focused a lot on short term day to day stuff. Yeah. Now, lit­tle caveat here. It could be you and your own bad habits of how you’re lead­ing. It could be it might not just be the team. So when we start with com­pa­nies, we try to unpack that we try to unpack Could it be that the CEO is involved too much? Are the lead­ers involved too much? And the team maybe has more capa­bil­i­ty? Or is it you know, the team effec­tive­ness? And the answer often is usu­al­ly a lit­tle bit of both.

Brad Giles 12:44

And you can, you know, there’s a very good chance that you can work through those habits, like this is not some­thing that’s often insur­mount­able if one is coach­able, but you can over­come that, this is a solv­able prob­lem is my point.

Kevin Lawrence 12:59

It is yeah, so that’s point num­ber one, it makes notably more work for you. And again, you can take that con­cept of it’s like hav­ing a sev­en year old child or a 27 year old child, they both take dif­fer­ent amounts of ener­gy, notably dif­fer­ent sec­ond one is is less achieve­ment for the com­pa­ny. Because A‑players use less resources to get the job done, peri­od. They’re cre­ative, and they find ways to effi­cient­ly get things done. Where oth­ers whether it’s tox­ic a cre­ates a drain on your orga­ni­za­tion oth­er ways or a B or a C, they just like they get less results, less results per pound, right less results for dol­lar so your orga­ni­za­tion can’t achieve is because the team actu­al­ly isn’t as strong Remem­ber, a play­er is the top 10% of tal­ent avail­able at the salary you are pay­ing it’s not that they cost more you’ve got some­one so here that’s mak­ing 85,000 a year who was a bee and he got so and so here this mak­ing 85,000 a year who’s in a same com­pen­sa­tion but the A and doing a visu­al on screen and hold­ing my hands up. But the A gets nor­mal­ly bet­ter results per dol­lar or results per pound what­ev­er you want to look at it. Nev­er mind the work you have to do just the net impact or val­ue added into the com­pa­ny is notably different.

Brad Giles 14:24

The visu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion was good, but the words did it jus­tice there was no there was noth­ing that you missed. So imag­ine that you are at an off site, annu­al or quar­ter­ly work­shop. And what you’re doing is set­ting the pri­or­i­ties and the strat­e­gy for the com­ing 90 days or a year. And you look around and you just can’t give any big projects to the peo­ple who are on the team. You can’t. Let’s say that you’re going to imple­ment a new CRM or a new Count­ing pack­age, or you’re gonna start in a new geog­ra­phy or some­thing that’s quite chunky? Well, if you look around the team, and you can’t read­i­ly hand over big projects to them with absolute con­fi­dence, there’ll be only a lit­tle bit of guid­ance on your part, then, you know, this is how it trans­lates into less achieve­ment for the com­pa­ny. Because if every­one can’t take on a big project, if most peo­ple can’t take on a big project and con­fi­dent­ly exe­cute it, over­all, the aggre­gate is that you take on less big projects.

Kevin Lawrence 15:39

I’ll give an exam­ple. You know, one of the com­pa­nies that I was work­ing with this was back last year. And I’ll gen­er­al­ize a sto­ry to pro­tect the nice peo­ple that we work with. There was one exec­u­tive in a com­pa­ny who was­n’t an A play­er by any stretch that, you know, would have been a low B play­er. Yeah, like a low per­form­ing B. And that was, yeah. They weren’t high­ly effec­tive. And they weren’t an expert at the project that they were dri­ving. So as a result, the project took way longer, took way more time than it should, because it’s almost like, it’s like get­ting a three year old to go and paint your house. Yeah, they’re going to use more paint and take more time, and then you’re going to have to still fix it any­ways. And that’s what this was like. And again, not for lack of desire, just not they did­n’t have capa­bil­i­ty. And it was so cum­ber­some, and com­pli­cat­ed. And the out­put was okay, we need­ed a bit of cleanup, but it was­n’t, it was­n’t great. And but for the amount of ener­gy it con­sumed, it was almost a crime. Because they just they did­n’t know what they were doing. And they just made one three year old paint your house. Yeah, that’s, that’s what it was like, that’s what hap­pens. And as a result, it slows down the whole orga­ni­za­tion, and it makes it hard­er, because you just burn more resources to get the same thing.

Brad Giles 17:18

So yeah, you’re gonna achieve less as a com­pa­ny. So let’s move on to the next one. There’s more stress for the whole team, there’s more stress. Why? Because team of a play­ers who are aligned and head­ing in the same direc­tion, there’s very lit­tle points of fric­tion. But when you’ve got a B play­ers who aren’t as pro­duc­tive, C play­ers who both aren’t as pro­duc­tive, and don’t align with the val­ues and tox­ic A’s who don’t align with the val­ues, and those peo­ple are all doing their dif­fer­ent kind of thing, all of those lit­tle points of mis­un­der­stand­ing, they com­pound, and they add up. And that cre­ates more stress for the team. So even if you’ve got one C play­er, I’ve, I’ve seen a team with one C play­er that was just cat­a­clysmic, like, yeah, it was just ter­ri­ble. Nobody want­ed to talk to this per­son, or sit next to them. And they would avoid them active­ly. And this is a lead­er­ship team of, I don’t know, $30 mil­lion busi­ness. And no one want­ed to talk to this indi­vid­ual, no one want­ed to go near them for, let’s just say sev­er­al years,

Kevin Lawrence 18:39

We had one in a com­pa­ny that I worked with where there was, we’ll call it a very low B, prob­a­bly a C play­er. Yeah. And I remem­ber one of the oth­er it was the exec­u­tive and some of the senior lead­ers. So like, 15 peo­ple in the room, one of the exec­u­tives was so frus­trat­ed with this per­son, he’s like, You know what we’re gonna do, we’re gonna put you up there and we’re gonna put you up there in a hot air bal­loon. And then we’re gonna shoot you down.

Brad Giles 19:06

It’s a bit harsh.

Kevin Lawrence 19:07

It was a bit hard, but it’s some of this guy was such a mis­fit in the com­pa­ny. It was incred­i­ble. And, and the whole team was just had enough of it. And so the best metaphor to think about this is it’s like in a relay race. Right? If you’re, if you’re doing a relay race, and you’ve got one per­son that can bare­ly run, and def­i­nite­ly can­not pass the baton to some­body else. That cre­ates a lot of stress for the team, because it screws up the whole team. And you’ve got these peo­ple who they might not be the fastest in the world, but they can run decent­ly and they can pass the damn baton. But this per­son can’t do that. Yeah. And as a result, they get frus­trat­ed because they don’t when they get frus­trat­ed the oth­er per­son and that’s obvi­ous­ly bad for the per­son that’s the weak play­er on the team. Because they don’t feel good about not being able to, you know, grab the baton or hand the baton off. prop­er­ly. And so the whole team pays a price for that. And it’s, it’s even worse, if you have a tox­ic A, that’s just assum­ing a B play­er who’s try­ing to do the right things in that in that in that relay race exam­ple. But if you’ve got a tox­ic a, they just bring in all kinds of oth­er junk. I mean, and by the way, you know, you’ve got a tox­ic a, when peo­ple threat­ened to or talk about or actu­al­ly quit because of them. Because they’re just such a night­mare. And, you know, a force to be reck­oned with. And if they’ve stayed for a long time, they gen­er­al­ly have some sort of pow­er, or rela­tion­ship with the CEO are the right thing that is to be able to stay there. Because if they were, you know, that kind of bad behav­ior, and so you just, there’s some oth­er quirky, dynam­ic, or weird dynam­ic that has that per­son being able to keep their role as well.

Brad Giles 20:50

But here’s the thing. If you’re lis­ten­ing to this, and you have iden­ti­fied, per­haps in your team, some­one who isn’t an A play­er of what­ev­er fla­vor, your inac­tion is pre­vent­ing them going to be an A play­er at anoth­er orga­ni­za­tion. So most of the time, it’s the fit, that is the prob­lem. And this per­son can go to find anoth­er job where they’ll be real­ly hap­py, because most of the time C play­ers or tox­ic guys aren’t hap­py, where they’ll be real­ly hap­py, they’ll be a real­ly good fit, and they will be an A play­er in that orga­ni­za­tion. It’s just that this indi­vid­ual can’t be an n a play­er in your organization.

Kevin Lawrence 21:36

And the oth­er piece of oth­er sounds that came to my mind, Brad, is you’re talk­ing about that? Oh, yeah. And if you keep a B play­er, or even worse, a tox­ic a play­er on the team, you are endors­ing them, your cul­ture is not what you say it is the cul­ture is demon­strat­ed through your actions. So if you got a tox­ic jerk on your team, and you let them stay there, oh, being a tox­ic jerk is actu­al­ly okay. Actu­al­ly, the CEO sub­con­scious, or some­times, it seemed like the CEO was okay with it or endors­es it.

Brad Giles 22:13

Well, peo­ple say, Why is this per­son not tak­ing action? Cor­rect? Why? You know, so in actu­al fact, you, the tox­ic, a, may be per­form­ing ter­ri­bly, they may no one want my wants to talk to them. But it actu­al­ly impacts the lead­er­ship much, much worse, because it’s the inac­tion about that, that under­mines the leader, and actu­al­ly can be so much more detri­men­tal for the lead­ers because of their inac­tion. So, yep, we could do a whole episode.

Kevin Lawrence 22:46

Basi­cal­ly, num­ber one more work for you. Num­ber two, less achieve­ment for the com­pa­ny num­ber three more stress for the whole darn team. And on num­ber four, when you don’t have a play­ers, you got to fix a lot more mis­takes. A play­ers get the job done, right. So you’re gonna have more mis­takes to fix. Now, whether it’s rela­tion­al issues, ser­vice issues, qual­i­ty issues, and it’s not that a play­ers don’t make mis­takes, but when they do, they gen­er­al­ly fix them them­selves, quite quick­ly. You don’t have to get involved fix­ing those. And I’ve, I’ve seen with a cou­ple of tox­ic gays like tox­ic jerks, and often, some of these tox­ic gays are very aggres­sive. And some­times it’s because they’re try­ing to hide stuff. And I’ve seen a num­ber of peo­ple who were tak­ing the rip­ping the com­pa­ny off. Yeah, we had this one guy, and he was the one guy I remem­ber it was, um, I won’t name the coun­try, but I remem­ber hav­ing a meet­ing with him. And, and he was being so rude to some of the peo­ple and aggres­sive. And I just came up to him and I got in his face that hey, we don’t do that here. Now the CEO was­n’t in the meet­ing, I was run­ning the meet­ing on the CEOs behalf. CEO was­n’t there. And I like we don’t do that there. i All I know is I start­ed to wash his hands because I thought he might take a swing at me. And although I was ready, I was just gonna, if he hit me, it would have been a bad scene. Thank­ful­ly, that did­n’t hap­pen. But the point of it is, is we found out I was on this guy because he was arro­gant. He was all kinds of things the com­pa­ny was­n’t. In the end, we found out that he was embez­zling or doing some funky trans­ac­tions in a way that mil­lions of dol­lars went a direc­tion that they should­n’t have. And, you know, it’s not shock­ing. I’m not say­ing a play­ers are crooks. I’m just say­ing that some­times there’s these peo­ple that are up to all kinds of weird stuff. And nice peo­ple can do it too. So I’m not say­ing that’s always the case. But the point of it is, is that there’s a lot of mis­takes and mess­es from either their rela­tion­ship issues if they’re tox­ic or their incom­pe­tence or mediocrity.

Brad Giles 24:57

Well it’s quite pos­si­ble that what you’re say­ing as a leader, and the team is the the top of the ice­berg, that then under the sur­face, there’s a lot more mis­takes and prob­lems that you’re just not aware of, because of a whole range of rea­sons. So, yeah, there are def­i­nite­ly more mis­takes. And ulti­mate­ly, they’re com­ing back to you in some form or anoth­er to sort out. So that’s def­i­nite­ly a cost. But then we’ve got a bonus one. There’s a bonus. So if this is our four, okay, more work for you less achieve­ment for the com­pa­ny, more stress for the whole team, and then more mis­takes for you to resolve. But then the bonus is that if you’ve got bees in your team, or even C’s, and if they’ve got any­thing to do with hir­ing these high­er, low B’s, and C’s, right, so you’re not going to have a B play­er on the team who’s going to hire an A play­er. So your main­te­nance, you’re main­tain­ing a team that has peo­ple who aren’t a play­er’s actu­al­ly com­pounds down­ward in a neg­a­tive loop. Like, the more b’s you get, the more low B’s and C’s you get, and it just con­tin­ues to spi­ral downwards.

Kevin Lawrence 26:21

And peo­ple gen­uine­ly weak, not so good peo­ple gen­er­al­ly hire weak not so good peo­ple who gen­er­al­ly hire weak not so good, right? Yeah, it’s it takes a con­fi­dent per­son to hire some­one more capa­ble than them. Yep. And a lot of these B play­ers are smart, they know that they’re not, they’re not per­form­ing at a spec­tac­u­lar lev­el. And so many of them are intim­i­dat­ed by peo­ple who would be because make them look bad. And I don’t fail, I don’t blame them for that. There’s an ele­ment of self preser­va­tion that peo­ple have, and that’s understandable.

Brad Giles 26:49

But if you drop an A play­er into a team of B’s, and C’s, there’s two things that’s going to hap­pen, they’re either going to drop down to the lev­el of the B’s, and C’s, or they’re going to be out of there quick­ly, because they’re going to look around and say, I’m not at the same cal­iber of these peo­ple, right? I’m in a dif­fer­ent lev­el, I’m out of here, like, I want to be in a win­ning team.

Kevin Lawrence 27:12

Or they’re gonna come and tell you, this is not good, and they’re gonna be frus­trat­ed with their team­mates. And if you don’t fix it, then they prob­a­bly at some point, I have no choice but to leave. Yeah. You know, peo­ple, high per­form­ers want to work with high per­form­ers. So you had to sum­ma­rize that up, is that there’s, you know, low­er be per­form­ers or be per­form­ers hire peo­ple like them or less, they don’t gen­er­al­ly hire peo­ple bet­ter. You know, and if some­one is per­form­ing at a 78% lev­el, they’re less like­ly to hire some­one who’s going to per­form at 110% lev­el. Yeah, it’s just it’s and there’s always excep­tions. So let’s kind of sum­ma­rize these. So num­ber one is, you know, top five rea­sons why he got­ta have a team for a play­ers because if not, it cre­ates more work for you. There will be less results or achieve­ment for the com­pa­ny, because resources are get­ting wast­ed and squan­dered. It just takes more ener­gy to get stuff done. More stress for the whole team, because they’re on a team with peo­ple who aren’t all real­ly strong at their roles. More mis­takes for you to resolve. And then the kick­er of the bonus one, and I love that. One is that those B play­ers can tend to hire low­er B’s, or C’s. And even if they want to sub­con­scious­ly they they have, they’re less like­ly to be hir­ing ace.

Brad Giles 28:27

And that’s a cost that you might not have fac­tored in to your inac­tion around peo­ple who aren’t per­form­ing. Awe­some. What a good chat, some­thing that, you know, cer­tain­ly we’re pas­sion­ate about, because we’ve seen it played out so many times over time. So inter­est­ing, quick point. This was about the hid­den cost of not hav­ing a team of a play­er’s and then next week, we’re going to be talk­ing about the four dif­fer­ent types of a play­er’s so be sure to look out for that episode, Episode 89 Next week. And as anoth­er quick note, Kevin, and I both pro­duce a newslet­ter each week. So you can go to our web­sites to sub­scribe for that. And there’s var­i­ous updates and blogs and stuff that’s in there. So Kevin, you can find at Lawrence and co​.com and myself, you can find it evo­lu­tion part​ners​.com​.au good chat today care. And thanks for lis­ten­ing every­one. This has been the Growth Whis­per­ers Pod­cast. I’m Brad and Kevin is my part­ner in crime here. For the video vision, you can go to YouTube as well and find us talk­ing on there. So good to chat. Have your­selves a great week. Look for­ward to chat­ting with you again.