In this transcript, business coach student Caleb Taylor (Thrive correspondent) and Clay Clark (U.S. SBA Entrepreneur of the Year for the State of the Oklahoma) discuss the importance of managing your team to win on Thrive15.com, the best sales training program.
Clay: … install a business coach yes or no, check with every person in your bus, yes or no, should they be here?
Caleb: Yeah.
Clay: And a way that will help is actually this next principle, I think, it’s installing an employee ranking system.
Caleb: Oh, Billy, Whoo! That’s exciting.
Clay: Right? This is business coach Jack Welch notable quotable.
Caleb: It’s T.J. Jakes today.
Clay: Oh yeah. He was actually asked about his differentiating system. It was called cruel and Darwinian to him. He was asked what he thought about that and he said, “Cruel and Darwinian? Try fair and effective.” That was his response to that. What does he do with this system?
Caleb: Jack Welch, just so you guys know, he was the world’s most successful CEO and business coach of all time when he was at GE. Certain people will say, “Well now, since then there’s been more effective CEOs”, but he took a company in GE that was struggling to just keep up with the economy, they were struggling to make toasters and appliances and now GE makes jet engines. These guys produced the Seinfeld show. They went from making refrigerators to the Seinfeld show. They created a massive credit company. They created jet engines.
If you ever go to a doctor’s office and have an MRI done or maybe you’re a woman and you go to the doctor to have some medical testing done, they’re almost all done on GE machines. You go to an airport, airport security, a lot of GE stuff. GE is like the technology leader now.
What he did though, is he says, “Everyone who works for you is an A, B or C.” What he does is he thinks that you should know. He says what you do is you take a group of 10 employees and in that group you are forced to put one of them as a C player. You have to do it.
Clay: You have to.
Caleb: That’s the rules. Then you take seven or eight of them, they have to be a B and one or two have to be an A. This is the practical action step. If you own a business right now and you have 10 employees, go ahead and write down on a piece of paper, who is your C player.
Clay: Action step, right now.
Caleb: Who is your business coach C player? If you share you account with somebody because you’re a pirate, then go ahead and use initials or use food items that help you remember that person’s name. Who is your B player? Then, who is your A player?
Now, here’s where it gets real. Uh oh, tell them.
Clay: You have to tell them?
Caleb: Yep.
Clay: Tell them, “You’re the C guy.”
Caleb: Yeah. By the way, I now love this but I used to hate this. As we’re building the Thrive Team, I think there’s probably about 40 of us now that are involved in some capacity. The other day, had a talk with a guy. I said, “Hey” and it’s small enough now where we have these conversations. As it grows there will be meetings. I tell the guy, “Hey, I just want you to know you’re a C player.”
Clay: You just told him?
Caleb: Yeah. He was, “What do you mean?” I was, “Well, you show up late. You never get stuff done on time. You’re constantly yawning, looking tired.” I’m not cursing, “You’re an ask hole. You ask questions and put a hole in my schedule with endless questions instead of just doing your stuff.”
I went to another business coach guy, I went to him, I said, “Hey, you’re a B player. We have some stuff right now, we have an opportunity for you to get promoted to have some more on-camera experience to be able to actually work on the camera, in front of the camera, but you’re not going to get that chance right now because you’re not top performer.”
Clay: Why is it so scary to let people know where they stand?
Caleb: Oh gosh, because again, we go back to a home life and we were thinking, “If I tell somebody at home this, I’m going to get slapped.” I’m not saying you do this at Church. I’m not saying you do this at your community center. You don’t want to walk into the non-profit that you volunteer your time for. If you’re working at the Peace Corps right now, you don’t want to walk up to one of the volunteers and say, “Hey Dan, I just feel like you’re a C player.” Come on, stop it. Sales Training is on Thrive15.com.
I’m talking about any time you want to be productive, you need to do that. I’m just saying, when you tell people where they stand, if you tell them specifically why they’re there and what they can do to get to the next level, people who are upwardly mobile love it.
By the way, I love it. I love, I love when a mentor tells me this is what I can do better. I used to, when I was an idiot, I used to not want any feedback. I would justify and tell you why. “The reason I’m a C player is because of this, because of the way I raised, because of the economy.” But now, business coach boom, I love it.