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The Startup CEO's Guide To Building A Team Of A-Players
A-players are your startup's ultimate force multipliers. Here's how to build a leadership team full of them...
If You Could Do Only One Thing As CEO, What Would It Be?
My answer: Build a leadership team of A-players.
Why? They would have the best chance of figuring everything out without you. They may lack your vision, values, and strategy, but a room of A-players would build something successful.
“Mediocre teams do not build great companies.” Sam Altman, StartupPlaybook
Today, we’ll discuss:
Why it’s so vital to stack your leadership team with A-players
How to hire A-players instead of B-players who talk a good game
How to get the most out of A-players.
Why Are A-Players Such Force Multipliers?
Performance follows a power law. A-players produce 10X-50X the results of average performers.
Smaller, more efficient teams. With A-players you can build smaller, more productive teams that waste less time communicating and coordinating.
Less management, lower stress. They are autonomous, but will let you know if anything goes sideways.
Lower cost per output. Compensation increases linearly, but performance increases exponentially.
As attract As, and chase out the Bs! The best want to work on a winning team, and they don’t tolerate mediocrity.
You can delay adding process. A-players don’t need many defined processes; they figure things out proactively.
They pull others up. Working next to an A-player brings out the best in all of us.
“The difference between a good software person and a great software person is probably 50-to-1 or 25-to-1. A huge dynamic range. I have found — and not just in software but in almost everything I’ve done — it really pays to go after the best people in the world.” Steve Jobs
How To Hire A-Players:
If we held basketball tryouts, I’d secretly raise the net!
Then I’d hire the players who can dunk at an over-regulation height.
It’s the same in interviews. Identifying C-players is easy; the difficulty is separating the A-players from the B+ players. That’s why you have to make your interviews really hard:
Ask for examples that make them sweat. Ask lots of behavioral questions, but make them really hard e.g. “Tell me about a time when you led a vital project with impossible deadlines and a major disaster struck. How did you lead the team to success?”
Make them audition. Have your finalists perform real work on a current problem. Make them present their work to your Exec Team.
Back-channel references. Talk to their last three managers, even if the candidate doesn’t provide them as references.
Pay top of market compensation. A-players generate 25X and they know it.
Hire elite hobbyists. A-players are usually driven to be world-class at something else. It might be sports, music, or acting. Ask them where else they try to be world-class.
“Whenever possible (and it’s almost always possible), have someone do a day or two of work with you before you hire her; you can do this at night or on the weekends. If you’re interviewing a developer, have her write code for a real but non-critical project. For a PR person, have her write a press release and identify reporters to pitch it to. Just have the person sign a contractor agreement and pay them for this work like a normal contractor.” Sam Altman
How To Manage A-Players
A-players must be managed differently. They need to be stretched since neither you nor they knows what they are truly capable of.
Stretch them with high expectations, stretch them into assignments and roles they are not sure they are ready for. Let them surprise you.
Be demanding. Set near-impossible expectations to find out what they are capable of. A-players will say, “Oof - that’s a lot! But, I’ll find a way!”
Align on the ‘what’, let them decide ‘how.’ Spend lots of time agreeing exactly what results you expect, but send them away to build their own plan to run by you before starting.
Make them go first. Never tell them what to do; make them propose a solution. Don’t answer their questions; first, ask them what they think they should do.
Failure is the best teacher. Unless they are going to drive off a cliff, let them try it their way. If they fail, it will be a more powerful learning experience than if you had told them.
Provide lots of feedback. A-players crave it, so give feedback anytime they fall short of an A-player standard. Be blunt. Tell them where they stand with you each month.
Assess them prospectively. Don’t focus on their performance last year. Look ahead to the job they will need to do 12-18 months from now. Give them feedback against that standard.
Get them mentors. Talk to your CEO friends and find your VP Sales at least three sales mentors who’ve built startups at 3X your scale.
“The best perk you can give your employees is to surround them with stunning colleagues.” Reed Hastings, “No Rules Rules”
Sorry - You Still Have To Replace Your A-Players
Most leaders “go horizontal,” even A-players.
My experience is that this happens approximately every 18 months in a rapidly-scaling startup.
A-players will grow quickly, but you need different skills as your startup scales. You start with generalists, replace them with functional specialists, then replace them with scaling specialists.
And experience allows a lot of shortcuts. Your VP Sales at $1M ARR just doesn’t have the expertise of someone who’s run a $25M sales operation.
The result? You’ll have to level-over most of your executives.
The saving grace is that you’ll have given them their best possible shot at survival by managing them as A-players.
I’ve built a lot of my success on finding these truly gifted people, and not settling for B and C-players, but really going for the A-players….And that’s what the Mac team was like, they were all A-players.” Steve Jobs
Coaching Inquiry
How could you “raise the net” in your hiring process?
Where should your startup be in 18 months? Assess each of your executives against that standard. Who are your A-players? Who is most likely to “go horizontal” first? How will you coach each executive?
Let me know what you think. And let’s talk if you want to seriously upgrade your leadership team.
Thanks for reading,
Tim
P.S. Many of my obsessions come from conversations with you, my clients. I don’t call you out to preserve anonymity. Please know you are my inspiration and teacher, and I am so grateful.