Addition by Subtraction:
Why You Need to
Assess Your Talent
and Training Gaps Now
by Jim Sullivan
W
As you look over all the team members
bobbing about, and calling your name,
who on that water-treading team would
you first seek out to pull into the life raft
with you? Who is the second person you’d
look for?
Now prioritize the order in which
you’d pull people aboard. Who’s third?
Fourth? 10th? 17th? 29th?
And this is the most important part
of the exercise: Who would you choose to
clearly leave bobbing out there?
You know who I’m talking about. Can
you picture them? Your low-performers
who are constantly complaining, underperforming and angering customers.
These are the people who are yelling,
“Over here!”while you and fellow raft
mates are paddling furiously in the opposite direction to get away.
There’s your deadwood.
So the question becomes: If you
wouldn’t pull these people into your
life raft today, why would you let
them continue to adversely affect your
customers and team tomorrow?
You’ve got to make room for talent to
grow. Think of it as “addition by subtraction.” If you don’t terminate people who
are not working out, you increase the
possibility of having to let go of the people
who are.
“The Life Raft”exercise is an important tool all of your managers should
use quarterly to assess the quality of
your teams, reinforce your standards
and improve your people, performance
and profits. Routinely assess your talent
and training gaps and create an effective
process to routinely improve both.
I know it’s easier to hope or pray
these folks will get better on their own or
maybe quit, but if you’re their manager,
whose fault is it that they’re still on your
team?
When assessing your deadwood, ask
yourself a question: Did I hire them or did
I create them?
It’s wise to remember that in the long
run, managers are remembered less for
the numbers they delivered, and more for
the people they hired and developed.
And finally, do you want to know the
NUMBER ONE reason why managers
don’t hold their team members accountable for their behavior?
They’re allowed not to. G
Excerpted from the best-selling book,
Fundamentals. Jim Sullivan is the
CEO of Sullivision.com and a popular
speaker at conferences worldwide.
You can follow him on Twitter daily @
Sullivision.
GearedUp | 2015 Issue 1
ho are the superstars, average
stars and falling
stars on your
team? Who is
truly contributing
and who is not? Who is moving your
company forward and who is holding you
back? Our advice for team-building: give
a lot, expect a lot and if you don’t get it?
Prune.
Sales reports, customer service scores,
mystery shops and turnover figures can
reveal a lot, so certainly use them. And one
of the best tools you can deploy to assess
your talent and training gaps is a clever
little mental exercise I call“The Life Raft.”
This assessment will help you identify
your high performers, average performers,
sub-par performers and your deadwood.
Here’s how it works: in your mind,
sack everyone who works for you; your
best, your brightest and your least productive. Everyone.
Imagine they have all literally been
thrown into the“sea of unemployment.”
Picture them bobbing around in those
troubled black waters, confused and
uncertain of what just happened.
Now imagine that you suddenly
appear through the fog, paddling a giant
life raft, scudding across the dark water.
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