Assessing your team: Performance and Cultural Fit
Two aspects of People Management need some more attention e.g.Performance and Cultural Fit. High Performance companies assess and manage their people according to these two criteria.
Performance – or in some models Productivity–is the individual contribution to the team’s objectives and targets. Culture is the match between the individual and the company values. Or to put it more straightforward in case of the US Navy Seals: can we trust this person?
Assessment of your current team on a high versus lower score on performance and cultural fit is a simple but surprisingly effective. Starting with the insight what % of your team fits in which quadrant.
- A-players are employees who fit into the culture and are productive. You want to find as many A-players as possible.
- B-players are employees who fit the culture but are not (yet?) productive.
- C-players are employees who do not fit into the culture but perform well. Difficult but productive.
- D-players … well, they do not fit the culture and they are not productive.
How to manage each group:
- No company has 100% A players, 80% is a realistic target. The golden rule is also to spend most of your time to A-players. However, my observation is that most of the managers spend not enough time on their A-players.The job is to develop and retain A players to grow the company.
- B players need more training to become more experienced and therefore more productive.
- C players are the most difficult ones. Most managers would like to keep them within the team because of their productivity. But do not forget that they can harm collaboration and the working climate. In case they are running a team, be really careful. The advice is to warn them about their misaligned behavior.
- D players are unfortunately the mishires and should also be treated like this.
What % of A-players does your team have?