Taking a good hard look at your teamIf you have listened to the IT Provider Network for any amount of time, and thank you for doing that, you will know that I am a big fan of outside coaches.   Mostly to help me do better at things that I am not good at, like taking a good hard look at my team and helping my find A Players.

Oh before I forget,  one of my favorite coaching teams is Chris Brogan and Rob Hatch.  I am a member of their Owner Insiders group and I just received notice that the pricing is going up.   If you listened to this podcast you know that by using this link RIGHT AWAY you might be able to still get the old pricing and save yourself about a grand a year.  Either way, it is a great value but signup now to get the grandfathered pricing that I have.

Owner Insider Group Signup

In this episode of the IT Provider Network podcast, I am going to share with you some of the strategies we have implemented when looking at the number one resource in our company; our team members.Q1 is almost over - Is Time Flying or Standing StillHere we are almost two months into the new year and two third through the first quarter. Time really flies when you’re having fun.   It also crawls when you’re not.   Dealing with personnel issues is when time stands still for me. I despise it.The Land of Misfit ToysI can’t comment on your business but sometimes in mine, it seems like the land of misfit toys. If I am being honest we have some great people but we have some less than great people too. I haven’t always been the best at hiring, and sometimes my hiring choices were based on an immediate need, not a well thought out process.   You know what I'm talking about when your ONLY engineer quits and you are forced to do all the work. Those kinds of hires. Been there done that.

But I digress.

I’ve grown since then and thankfully so has our company.  I have built resilience in my team, processes, and documentation so that our company is not so reliant on one person Rest assured,  that wasn’t always the case. Even though this episode is not about hiring I will tell you that you need to strive to remove as much of the emotion from your hiring process, be as objective as possible and think carefully about your hires. Look for A Players to fill every role.   Chances are you will be living with your decisions for a long time.It's in the way we communicateI have a new thought and it is my mantra for 2018. What separates us from the competition is NOT our team but the way we communicate with our clients. Every company in the world brags that they have the best people, or the best team and most of them really believe that they do but the truth of the matter is that we all can’t have the best people.   We just can’t.   Even though we all can't have the best team we can do everything possible to make ours better.

So what can you do to continually improve your team and leverage the most expensive, most important resource in your company?  What can you do to improve your team?   What can you do to continually raise the performance bar of your company so that you can achieve WORLD DOMINATION?

Well in the next two episodes of the IT Provider Network I am going to present two techniques that we have implemented in our company. In this episode, I am going to talk about ABC Rankings and in Episode 29 I’ll be telling you how we use ESP’s or Employee Success Plans.   Using these techniques together I think go a long way to build excellent teams.ABC Ranking -  Not your grandfathers forced rankingFirst, let’s talk about ABC ranking. This is the process of ranking your team into A players, B players and C players.   It’s highly controversial mostly from what is referred to as “forced ranking” or “stacked ranking”. The difference of between ABC ranking and forced ranking is that in forced ranking everyone fits in one place on the bell curve. The top 20% is are the A players and the middle 70% are the B players and finally,