Making the hard but important people decisions.

In this follow-up video, I dive into one of the most critical dysfunctions discussed last week: making the hard but important people decisions. Here’s why it's crucial and how you can tackle it effectively.

Key Statistics: 45% of CEOs and C-suite executives don’t consider their top team to be high-performing. Yet, 93% believe their personal contributions positively impact the organization. This disparity highlights a significant issue in senior leadership teams.

Identifying the 7 out of 10s: Many executives fall into the “messy middle” – they’re not poor performers but aren’t exceptional either. It’s vital to recognize these 7 out of 10 players who are just doing enough to get by.

Steps to Take:

1. Identify the 7 out of 10s: Recognize those who aren’t contributing at the highest level.
2. Evaluate Potential: Determine if they can be improved to become top performers. If not, it’s time for decisive action.
3. Act Quickly: Don’t let mediocre performance linger. The adage “hire slowly, fire quickly” applies here.
4. Interim Solutions: Sometimes, having someone act up temporarily is better while you find the right replacement.
5. Board Management: Address these issues with your board. You and your chairperson must align on removing average performers to strengthen the team.

Why This Matters: Allowing mediocrity to persist drains your time and resources, hinders organizational performance, and creates a drag on overall success. Acting decisively ensures you have a high-performing team that drives your business forward.

If this resonates with you, and you’re dealing with similar challenges in your organization, drop me a line. Let's discuss how we can create an action plan to address these issues.

Thank you for listening. 

See you next week!

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Transcript

0:05

so last week's video, I talked about the five dysfunctions of a CEO. And there were five that I talked about were making that difficult, but important. People choices. So, let me share a stat with you. So 45% of CEOs and C-suite executives do not consider their top team to be high-performing. Yet 93% of C-suite executives believe their personal contributions have a positive impact. What does that say? That says to me that there are lots of people who are not great in senior leadership teams, in large organizations who are sitting on the C suite. Now as a CEO instinctively, you probably know who these people are. They're not the people who were three out of 10 who were just not great at what they do. They're easy to know what to do with those kinds of people. They're not the people who are 10 out of tens. They're not your all star performance. They're in that messy middle part. And what you've got to do is as a CEO is to know how to deal with people like this. The first and most important thing to do is to identify you have people who are a seven out of 10, right? You know that. Who are they right? Do you believe? That they can be a 10 out of 10. Right. That's the second thing, is it possible for them to be improved enough, to be an exceptional player on that team? If your answer is no to that? Then you need to do something about it and you need to act decisively. So the big dysfunction I talked about last week was this. It was not being decisive in terms of human decisions in the C-suite you can let people like that stick around for a long time, because they're not awful. There's no reason to fire them. They're just not exceptional. They may have a way of talking about great things and alluding to the fact that they're doing great work. And the reality is, is that not you to cut through that? And know exactly what you need to do. And that may mean moving them on. And the way to do that is to do that as fast as possible. Okay. It's the adage in business. Hire slowly fire quickly. The reality is if you're inheriting a C-suite or a haircutting, a board of directors, you know who the average players are, you need to act decisively to move those people on and get the right replacement into that job. Okay. Sometimes it can be better to have somebody acting up while you remove that person. And while you're hiring somebody else, but acting decisively is what you need to do in these situations rather than letting that linger. Especially if you've just taken over as a first time CEO, you've only got a finite amount of time when you're able to do that before the board start asking difficult questions. And the same is true in terms of managing your board as well. Right. You and your chairperson will know who the seven out of tens are. You need to act decisively to deal with that situation to move those people on. If you don't. You're not your organization is not going to get better and you'll be spending a lot of your time personally, trying to. Paper over the cracks, this person's created or coaching them forward or doing a lot of their work for them, or the people are taking on a lot of their. You know, that's just what they're doing or something, the division isn't performing and that's not great for you. And that's not great for the business. You need to make an act decisively. If after this video, you want to talk about this a little bit more. Maybe you've got some seven out of tens in your organizations. Drop me a line. I'd love to hear your experiences of this. And maybe we can come up with an action plan to help you in this particular situation. So. Thank you for your time and I'll see you next week. Bye bye now.