Jack Welch, the former CEO for General Electric who has written several books, mentioned that a huge amount of his success came from his vitality curve and that which he later called differentiation. He spoke to always replacing your bottom 10 percent. Here is my interpretation of his message: take your top 20 percent; they’re your “A Players,” the middle 70 percent; they’re your “B Players,” and your bottom 10 percent; those are your “C Players.”
This rating system is based strictly on results. You’d give a probationary time period for new employees to allow proper training. However, anyone outside of those team members will be categorized based on their end results. The end of each month is a black-and-white process with no exceptions. You don’t round up or down based on attitude or work ethic. This is strictly the end results that you’ve identified as your economic engine (i.e. total revenue collected, new membership units, EFT, etc.).
Your A Players should be publicly recognized immediately following the previous month, as well as properly compensated — preferably with some type of bonus, as well as receiving more autonomy than the rest of the team.
Your B Players are the majority of your team, and need to be coached one-on-one immediately following the previous month, with recognition on improved areas as well as identifying their opportunities. These are then drawn up in a written plan and trained on. Action items and next steps need to be clear to not only help with their ability to execute, but also to be used in the following month to measure progress.
The C Players need to be fully aware on where they stand and the consequences of not improving. These meetings need to be pre-planned with data and kept fact-based. If done correctly, there will be no emotion or defensiveness and only openness to solving their issue. The C Player, just as the B Player, needs to have a written coaching plan and training to allow them to improve. However, the C Players’ documents will also include the provision that if they continue to remain in this category for three consecutive months, they will be terminated.
If you value this employee and enjoy having them on your team, there is nothing holding you back from giving them more of your time to train and develop them to catch the closest B Player. This extra attention, if they have the right attitude and skill set, will move them out of the C category and onto your B team. Sometimes, that jump is all they need to get the competitive juices flowing and put their sights on the next category.
The goal isn’t to always fire someone on your team to increase productivity — it’s up to you to train them up or out. If you give them your time, resources and attention with candid feedback, and they are still there after the third consecutive month, then they simply can’t or won’t compete with the rest of your team. Either way, they just can’t stay.
It’s like Jim Rowley, the CEO and co-founder of NEV, always says and mentioned in my previous blog “Consistency Equals Trust” — you can’t replace your backbone with a wish bone. Choose your team wisely, set your expectations early and often, consistently train and lead your team to success!
Ryan Junk is the director of sales for UFC Gym. He can be reached at ryan@ufcgym.com.
