The 90-Day Talent Sprint: How to Dramatically Upgrade Your Team in One Quarter

[00:00:00] 

Mike: I hear leaders say all the time, we need to develop our people. We need a stronger team. Why aren’t people performing at a higher level? But quarter after quarter, nothing changes. In fact, very often things get worse because if you don’t fix that problem, your lowest performing team members stay and your highest performing team members get frustrated.

And go somewhere else. 

and I think one of the big reasons why things don’t change is because people look at. At the importance of talent development, and thank God most leaders believe it’s important, even if they’re not acting the right way to make things happen. But people look at the huge importance of it.

So they think they need some big monster talent initiative. You know, we’re gonna create a, b, c company, [00:01:00] university, and you’re gonna need to be certified in these things and we’re gonna bring in great trainers and create this whole curriculum. And it becomes this big, just, dollar suck, just dollars flow in and not much flows out.

And part of it’s because. It takes so long to create something like that, that by the time you create something, it’s outdated, or by the time you create it, people are fed up with the investment and they’ve got, quote, unquote, more important things to do. they’re just, they’re two, two big, take too much time, take too much money, and it takes too long to figure out whether you have gotten any return.

On that investment or people just rely on their quarterly and annual performance reviews to solve all problems. And if you’ve heard me at all, you’ve probably heard me say a dozen times. I think [00:02:00] annual and quarterly performance reviews are the worst invention ever. Created in business. 

So, so what do we do?

what I want to share with you,in this episode is a way that you can really start to have impact on your team. And I want you to focus on your team instead of focusing right now on how do we fix this problem at a company level. I want you to focus on your team. So if you are the CEO listening, that’s your senior executive team.

If you’re the VP of sales, it’s your sales team. But using simple, targeted actions, I wanna help you with some steps that will absolutely help you improve your team within the next 90 days. Are we gonna solve the problems of the world in 90 days? Of course not, but we’re gonna see some real. Impact. And then [00:03:00] once we do that for our own teams, then we could worry about, wow, how do I take these ideas and roll it out?

To the rest of the company In my book, the Strength of Talent, I talk about this more at a company level, but do talk about in the book how you can get started by yourself and I wanna talk about something you have more control over. I don’t care who you are in the company, whether you’re the CEO or an accounts payable manager.

You don’t have immediate control over the whole company right now, but you certainly have control over your actions. So. Let’s talk a little bit about how you create a, not what I’ll call a 90 day sprint of talent development, coaching, re-recruiting, making tough decisions, challenging people, raising the bar.

What’s in this 90 day sprint? 

and you know, [00:04:00] before I get into the details, let me talk a little bit about the benefits of this 90 day sprint of taking action. You know, one is in, in 90 days, 90 days is long enough. If you focus to create some real visible winds, it’s short enough that it allows you to hold yourself.

Accountable and of other leaders hold you accountable for taking actions. 90 days you could build these 90 day habits and have a habit of continuous development. the ROI you get back is gonna feed more momentum and in 90 days there’s a sense of urgency. To get something done, not we’re creating a, b, c company university and it’s gonna take us nine months.

No, I’m gonna work with my team to have visible impact with a return on investment over the next 90 days. So. Let’s talk about the different steps you can take here. And again, in my book, the Strength of Talent, [00:05:00] I talk about, this in much more detail on how to do it with your team, but I’m gonna, I’m gonna keep it simple.

We’re talking about a 90 day sprint that you have control over. 

So I’m not gonna throw a ton of different things at you, but it starts with getting a clear picture. Of your team member, each of your direct reports performance, we need to assess their performance. So when you think about your, each of your direct reports, not as a group, but individually, you’re gonna assess them using my Talent density framework, which very simply is you’re gonna assess them along two axes, two different.

types of performance. One is productivity. Productivity is not about how long and hard they’re working. Productivity is about [00:06:00] results. It’s not about getting a bunch of tasks done, it’s about the results. So if a,sales VP reports to you. It’s not about all the stuff that VP of Sales is doing.

It’s about the amount of revenue they’re bringing in. It’s about the margin on that revenue. It’s about the pipeline that they’re building. If you’ve got a CFO reporting to you, it’s not about reporting necessarily, although that’s part of it. It may be about, you know, are they maximizing cash flow? Are they allowing our leadership team to make decisions based on return on investment of different spend?

So anyway,the number one component, the first axis of performance is productivity. The second axis is, culture fit. Culture fit is, think about it as is this [00:07:00] person you are evaluating, making the people around them better or worse. Are they adding to the culture you want to create or subtracting from it?

If you’ve got a specific communicated set of core values, non-negotiable behaviors, and I hope you do, it’s about how well they’re living and breathing those core values every single day. So. 

What I want you to do and if it’s helpful to stop this and go do it, don’t do it. If you’re driving is for each of your direct reports, score them on a scale of one to 10, 10 being the best, one, being the worst.

Score them on a scale of one to 10 on productivity and score them on a scale of one to 10. On culture fit. Now in the strength of talent, I have a very specific set of guidelines as to for culture, fit and productivity, what a 10 means, [00:08:00] what a nine means, what an eight means. Like I said, I wanna keep this simple.

You want more details, go read the book, but. Use your gut as best you can. You know, someone that is, you know, from a productivity standpoint, it might be someone that is blowing away the goals you’ve set for them. Maybe they’re a 10, someone who’s right about at that. Maybe, you know, approaching the goals you set or at those goals, maybe a nine, you know, and so on.

Over on the culture fit side, someone who is a, just a model of your core values. Maybe a 10, someone who’s just living them consistently. Maybe a nine, you know, someone that is constantly, you know, hurting and hurting the performance, and hurting the culture, of the company and those around them.

Someone who is disrespectful or not coachable, you know, they may be a three or a four or maybe even lower. So score each one of your direct reports on a scale of one to [00:09:00] 10, as I said, for productivity. And for culture fit. And once you do that, we now know we have a sense of how people are performing.

And I’m gonna help you categorize them a little bit. And again, I go into a lot more detail in the book. But those folks that you scored at least a nine in both Culture Fit and Productivity. I would call those folks your high performing team members. No shock there. Anyone who is a seven or below in Culture fit, I don’t care what their productivity score is.

Several, seven or below in Culture Fit, which means they may be having frequent problems with one or two of your non-negotiable core values. they’re, you know, they’re impacting the people around them in a negative way. Someone who’s a [00:10:00] seven or below in core values, let’s call those folks.

I’m gonna suggest we call those folks low culture fit. Someone who is a six or below in productivity. If they’re not already a low culture fit, let’s call them low producing, and then all the folks less left over, let’s just call them medium performing. So we’ve got high performing, medium performing, and two different categories of low performing.

And the reason for the two categories of low performing, low culture fit and low producing is because what I have found over many years of doing this. And many years of being part of teams and leading teams is folks that are living your core values every day. they’re respectful, they’re coachable, they’re, they have a positive attitude.

They wanna do the right thing. If those folks are low, lower in productivity than you’d like them to be, they at [00:11:00] least tend to be coachable. Co coachable to get where you need them to get to become high performing. I don’t know. They may not have the capability, but at the very least, at some level they’re coachable.

but folks who are not living your core values, folks that are a bad culture fit tend not to be coachable. Not because they’re bad people, but because trying to coax someone to live core values, they’re not already living is like trying to coax someone to become someone they’re not. So when we get to actions, which we’re gonna get to next, the actions you take for low producing folks versus low culture fit folks may be different.

So you’ve done that assessment, and if you’ve paused this and actually done the assessment. Awesome. if not, I hope you do it later, but I’m gonna move on to the next step is, you know, so what, so now I know I’ve got, you know, a team of five people and I’ve got [00:12:00] one high performing team member. I’ve got.

Two medium performing team members, a low producer and a low culture fit, who cares? Like, what do I do with that? Do I go back and tell each one of them, you know, how I have quote unquote labeled them? and that my answer there is absolutely don’t go back to people and say, Hey, I did an assessment.

And by the way, you’re a high performer. You’re a medium performer. you know, you may want to get your resume ready. This is for you. What your team members, your direct reports are going to see is not that you’ve done this assessment and here’s how you evaluated them, but if you follow the steps I’m about to outline, they’re gonna see that you are spending more focused time in the right areas with them.

So when you think about. The folks that you just evaluated, or hopefully you’ll evaluate later. 

I wanna start with, we’re gonna talk about actions for each of your [00:13:00] direct reports, and I wanna start with the highest performing team members you have, because those folks are the most important. Those are the folks you are going to leverage to be great.

You don’t create greatness. By trying to maximize weakness, you create greatness by maximizing strength. So instead of overinvesting in your low performers and underinvesting in your high performers, we’re gonna start with your high performing team members, and I’m gonna list out for you a number of different actions you might wanna take with and for them.

Do not do a ll of these, one or two might fit, or maybe one of my idea sparks a different idea. But the key is over the next 30, 60, 90 days, we need to be taking action. You need to be taking action with your highest performing team members. If they’re not [00:14:00] growing with you, they will quit and grow with someone else.

So we need to work with them. And by the way, these are the folks you probably love working with anyway, so spend some more time with ’em. What do you do? Give them a stretch project. There’s something in the company that needs fixing or an opportunity you wanna move faster on. Give that to them. Challenge them to learn something new.

Do something new. Be someone new. Increase their responsibility. If you feel like you are stretched too thin, put a little more on their plate now. We don’t wanna burn them out. So be cognizant of how much you’re already throwing on their plate. But very often, highest performing team members want more.

I’ve seen more high performing team members leave out of boredom than anything else. Ask them to mentor someone else. How could they take what makes them [00:15:00] great and have that, that be a contagion that infects other people, reward them, monetary or not monetary. Maybe they deserve a promotion.

Recognize them either in a formal all hands meeting or in a heartfelt kind of one-on-one informal situation. Get them more exposure. More exposure externally to the industry. Maybe they should be speaking at the next industry conference. Maybe they need more exposure to your clients. Or they would benefit from more exposure to your clients or to your vendors internal exposure.

If they’re not on the senior leadership team, maybe invite them into the senior leadership team to present some of what they’re doing. Career planning. When’s the last time you sat down with one of these folks who just assessed as being high performing? When’s the last time you sat [00:16:00] down with them and asked them where they want to go in their career?

And how you can help them get there. And please don’t wait for an exit interview to find out why one of these folks left. Have a stay interview now. Ask them what they love about their role and how you can help them to do more of it. Ask them what frustrates them about their role, and brainstorm some ways to fix it.

Ask them what it would take for them to leave. Some of them will be honest with you. And maybe there’s something you could do about it before they do leave. So a whole bunch of actions for the folks you’ve just assessed as high performing. 

What do we do about the medium performing folks? Well. Four, four different actions there.

Actually. Number one, why are they medium performing? If you followed the assessment, they’re medium performing, either because they’re a little lower than you’d like them to be [00:17:00] on productivity and or they’re a little lower than you’d like them to be on culture fit, living your core values, living your company’s core values.

So what do we do? Well. Number one may if they’re lower than you’d like them to be on productivity, get in there and help them improve their productivity. What aspect of productivity are they falling down on and help them. Number two, if they’re a little lower than you’d like them to be on culture fit, then what core values do they need to do a better job of living and start working with ’em on that and coaching them on that.

The third option. It’s to change their role. If they are living your culture at a very high level, but they’re lower than you’d like them to be on productivity, it may be because you’re not effectively leveraging their strengths. Is there another role that would more effectively leverage their strength?[00:18:00] 

If you’ve got a salesperson who is great at building relationships but not closing enough deals, is there another role that’s more about building relationships? Maybe it’s a business development role where their job is to build relationships with potential,strategic alliance partners that could refer you.

A lot of business, they can go from medium performing to high performing. As soon as you make that decision, if you could better leverage their strengths. The fourth option, and this is gonna might sound a little surprising for a medium performing team member, is you might need to coach them out of the organization.

You need to determine first, what kind of role are they in? I believe there are two types of roles where we cannot accept mediocre. where good enough is not good enough. One is any member of your senior leadership team. So if you have got someone on, if [00:19:00] you are a CEO listening to this and you’ve got someone on your senior leadership team that is performing at a medium level and you don’t believe they have the potential to move up to performing at a high level over the next three to six months.

I would argue they knew, do not belong on your senior leadership team. They have too big an impact cascading down and out from the organization to accept mediocre on your senior leadership team. The other type of role is any role that is a core competency for you or a strategic differentiator for you.

The easiest example I can give you is Netflix. Think about what role or what types of roles differentiate them? Right. It’s probably not accounts payable. We could probably accept mediocre there if we’re a leader within Netflix, but I don’t think Netflix could accept mediocre in content development or content creation.[00:20:00] 

I don’t think Netflix could accept mediocre in their ui, especially the person driving and building their recommendation engine. So sometimes those medium performers need to be coaxed out of the organization to go behind, become high performing individuals somewhere else if they can’t do it in your organization.

Let’s go to the low performers and we’ll start with low producing. Anybody who is producing at a low level, they have low productivity, but they’re doing a pretty good job living the core values and maybe a great job living the core values, three potential options for them. Number one, coach them on whatever aspect of productivity they’re falling down on.

Number two, just like I talked about for the medium performing team members, changed their role. They can go from low performing to high performing. If they’re doing a great job living the culture, but their productivity is low. If you could find a way to leverage [00:21:00] their strengths and make their weaknesses invisible, ’cause it’s not part of their role anymore, they can go from low to high performing.

The third option for a low producer, for a low producing team member is to coach them out of the organization. Now I know that’s tough whenever we talk about coaching someone out. Firing someone. These are human beings. I know it’s not easy to have that difficult conversation to make that difficult decision, but sometimes as leaders, we let our loyalty to one person impact the other 25, 50, 500, 5,000 people within our organizations.

We let it impact our clients. We let it impact our vendors. We let it impact our ability to sleep at night. So who are you trying to be loyal to? And if you’re worried about a difficult discussion, are you really worried about that other person, or are you worried about how it’s gonna make you feel?[00:22:00] 

The other thing I’d say is I believe with all my heart, that everyone has the ability to be a superstar somewhere. Somewhere. And if you’re holding onto someone who is low performing. You are actually hurting them. Now, I’m not saying when you fire someone, they’re gonna thank you for it. Not sure I’ve ever seen that, but long term they really might.

Thank you because you are setting them loose to go from low performing to find something where they can be high performing. 

Let’s go to low culture fit. Low culture fit, is the simplest, but maybe the hardest, if that makes any sense. There are only two options. You are either gonna coach ’em up by helping them better live your core values, be a better culture fit, or you’re gonna coach ’em out.

And let’s be honest, and I said this earlier, most of the time, coaching someone [00:23:00] to become a culture fit is a fool’s errand. Yeah. Now we always need to try these human beings and sometimes someone’s just going through a rough time or they’re junior in their career and they need a little molding on their attitude.

I know I did when I first started many years ago, but most of the time culture fit is not coachable and we need to be ready to make the tough decision so they’re not hurting those around them. Even people that are high in productivity, but low in culture fit. They’re hurting the people around them.

They’re hurting your culture. They don’t belong. So you might need to make some tough decisions. 

So I wanna encourage you to write down if you haven’t already, these assessments, these scores document for you, not for anybody else right now. Document the actions. That you are deciding to take for each of your team members [00:24:00] with a target date?

When are you having that difficult discussion? When are you gonna give them that new stretch project? When are you having your stay conversation? When are you doing the career planning conversation? And then just take massive action now, follow the plan and adjust as you need to. And at the end of the quarter.

Do it all over again. Who moved up? Who stayed stuck? Who did I, who did you need to move out?

How are you doing now versus last quarter? And I’m gonna introduce a measure that I call the TDI, the talent density indicator. Very simply, it’s your percent of folks that you evaluated. That are high performing, minus the percent that are low performing, either low producing or low producing and low culture fit.[00:25:00] 

So if you evaluated six people and two, or high performing, actually I’ll make it easier math, you evaluated eight people and two are high performing, which is 25%. And two of them were low performing. That’s another 25%. You have a TDI of zero, 25% minus 25%. You have just as many high performing folks as low performing folks.

If you have all high performing folks, your TDI is 100, 100% high performing, zero low performing. All your folks are low performing. Your TDI is negative 100%. And if all your folks are medium performing, your TDI is zero, it’s a great way to benchmark how you’re doing. And later, when you roll this out to other teams and the company, that becomes super, super important as well.

[00:26:00] And at the end of the quarter, ask yourself from the actions you took, which actions had the biggest impact? What actions do you need to repeat or scale for the next quarter? Talent development, assessing talent is not an event. It’s a 90 day sprint that repeats itself. 

So let’s wrap this up. Simple first step if you haven’t done it yet. If you haven’t paused this recording and done it sometime in the next week.

Rate your direct reports, document what actions you’re gonna take for each of them.

If it helps, go out and buy my book if you haven’t bought it already called The Strength of Talent. All of this is there in more detail, more detailed actions, more detailed ways to evaluate, but for God’s sakes, don’t wait until you’ve read through the book. [00:27:00] You can take the actions that I just talked about.

You can take those actions. Now, I’d love for you to buy the book. Please buy the book, but don’t wait. Take the actions. Now, the number one driver of profit growth is people growth. And you can take, you can just really impact the trajectory and the momentum you have in people growth just within 90 days.

You do it first just for your team, and then we could focus on how you expand that out to the company later. I always say if you want a great company, you need a great leadership team. I hope I got you closer there today. See you soon. 

​