Kevin Lawrence: Stacking the Deck with A-Player Talent

Today we are making a commitment to hiring excellence! To do this you must change your mindset, your expectations and your hiring method. The transition away from “best practices”, what everyone else is doing,  is necessary to stand out. 

Fill your staff with A-players! Develop your B-players into A-players and significantly increase the likelihood that your company will crush it. Today’s insight is the spark to set your standard in building an amazing company.

This show is proudly sponsored by Vidoori

Today’s Quote:

"Individual commitment to a group effort - that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work. " - Vince Lombardi

Guest Bio:

Kevin Lawrence is the CEO of Lawrence & Co. CEOs typically place their first call to Coach Kevin with a crisis to solve. They stay because of his business acumen and no-holds-barred, tell-it-like-it-is style. Kevin’s worked with hundreds of CEOs and executives, helping them to break through business challenges, grow their companies and find personal success along the way. 

These experiences inspired Kevin’s book, Your Oxygen Mask First, in which he reveals the 17 habits every leader must know to transcend the perils of success and achieve even more. 

Today we are going to cover: 

The philosophy behind poor hiring practices  (attitude)
What A, B & C players look like
Implementing a methodology to fill every position with A-Players

The all too common Philosophy of most startups

Aspirations are equivalent of a beer league hockey team with NHL aspirations
Entrepreneurs drag mediocre people with them and they wonder why they don't win
In your own business, you don't think it applies to them, yet if they were able to take 
Founding entrepreneurs
Don't have good mentors that they 

Understanding what the Hiring perspective should be

Most leaders don't scrutinize hires enough
Discipline and rigor around the hiring
The result from hiring quickly in the beginning 
As they become a bigger business they use the same methodology
Insanely critical all of the time. Each hire can make you or break you… especially you as a leader

You Must understand this

True A-players are being taken care of…. It is a lot of work to dislodge them. A-players never get laid off.
Patterns of A-players

Rick’s Input:

Treat every hire like it is a Million dollar hire, changes your perspective on time investment to the hiring process
Keep raising the bar! 

How do we make the transition to hiring excellence?

You Have to believe that you deserve and NHL caliber team
The belief puts you into a different trajectory
Review each of the key people in the business:
A, B or C player   - Philosophy is A to stay
Strive for excellence. With a quarterly portfolio review
Calibrating talent every 90 days. Take action, give feedback, support, development,
-treat your review like an investment portfolio

How to Identify the A player

Crystal clear on what you are looking for- a mathematical job description
Get to know who they are… before the offer. It may take 3-4 hours to dig deep
Understanding character, patterns
Being able to rate someone accurately during the interview  
Steps Implementation 
Have an expert in the methodology
Require key hire diligence & review the summary report before the hire. 
Reference checks- Talk to the managers only…. A-players easily give references and the managers will talk to you
*mediocrity cant find their bosses
*** Default to having an amazing team
Find the smartest people who have built systems and follow them
Earn the right to tweak a system. Systems work when you follow them completely, Humans screw it up. 
Relentless execution of the basic principles

Rick’s two cents:

Deep behavioral discussion 
Gathering evidence of success
Situational / Hypothetical interviews are a waste of your time! 

Key Takeaways:

Need amazing people to create amazing performing company 
Deep scrutinization is critical for all hires and promotions - these are million-dollar decisions.
You have to focus on your own strength & Resilience to have sustainable success