‘A’ players are good enough to follow their passion and still be handsomely rewarded.

‘A’ players are generally recognized as such and have very little trouble finding other opportunities via their networks when they get bored or frustrated by their current situation.

That’s my theory anyway.

http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/08/crappy_people_v.html

Guess which one is better to have in a business?

There’s a couple of other factors in my particular case – disability is probably the most significant one – but I’m not an exception. I think mostly it comes down to aspiration. My childhood friends and I, all C2DE, are generally unable to even *conceive* of a rewarding career, or a lifestyle that is other than hand-to-mouth, in anything other than an abstract sense.

So we do the cruddy jobs and regard not getting fired as a success. Currently I pack CDs for a living. I aspire to being a PA or secretary of some sort, because I’ve got good organisational skills and respond well to being given some objectives and told to Make It So. I have high hopes for getting there before I’m thirty. That probably sounds nuts to someone more used to dealing with “people who want to change the world” but hey, someone has to change the printer cartridges and order the right size of staples.

If my boss offered me $1000, or since I’m in the UK, £500, to quit, I wouldn’t be able to take it.

Not for love of the company or a desire to perpetuate my call-centre career – but because, like many people at my level of the employment hierarchy, I don’t have much by way of savings or family to fall back on, and £500 would only cover rent, bills and food for about two or three weeks, which would not be long enough for me to find another job.

I can’t say for certain whether that’s my low-self-esteem talking, or simply a truthful account of my incompetence. But whichever it is, the result is the same – job security, in *any* job, is worth more than $1000 to people like me.

What if, rather than leaving only the most committed employees, that offer actually leaves only the dullest and the most insecure?

On the plus side, us dull insecure people do tend to work our backsides off as we’re terrified of unemployment, rather than the confident employees who, when pressed, will be prepared to stick two fingers up at the boss and say “sod your poxy job”. So hard work and fabulous customer service is achieved.

Fear is a marvellous motivator.

I should have elaborated. I didn’t mean to say that you should or can build a business with all B players. Also I think the A / B / C / D classification is also somewhat misleading—it leads us to relate them to grades in school where the B graders are definitely inferior to the A graders.

I think Best and Good is a better way of thinking about it. I think it’s possible to build, scale and sustain a business with few Best and mainly Good players. Good players are stable and more loyal and eventually they get better but they do deliver what the business requires and their consistency and loyalty makes up for the difference between the Good and the Best players. Also one needs to have a balance of Best and Good players where the Best can stay ahead of competitors as the Good players support by executing consistently.

I don’t know if there is a right answer for retaining A players—their motivation to stay or leave always varies. I will count out the A players who are driven purely by money versus the entrepreneurial adventure. The ones driven by money are just not good choices anyway.

We have our share of Best and Good but one thing we put ahead of Best or Good is their attitude and their ability to be good team players. I have been in situations where self-proclaimed A players look down on everyone else and it’s a terrible place to be in. So a team that works like a team is another important thing to consider.

One can go on and on about this topic based on experiences—I don’t know if I have the right answer yet because it evolves with every experience.

Is it possible that you haven’t found the right value proposition yet to retain and motivate A players?

P.S. BetterLabs looks very cool.