We live in an era of long-term labor shortages. The much-ballyhooed AI will not alleviate these shortages quickly, even for highly repetitive work. While I’m enthusiastic about digitization, I also know is is often expensive, usually overrated, and has long lead times for successful applications. More on this below.
This puts us in the era of talent management — leaving you with your current workforce, such as it is: highly motivated, not as motivated, highly skilled or with outdated skills, and often overlooked.
Many talent management strategies emphasize identifying, developing and rewarding your best-skilled employees (often called “A” players) who take the initiative, often volunteering for the most difficult tasks and working long hours. They can be from our best business schools and typically are about 15 percent of your workforce. People in this category can achieve the results of two to four average workers and are often paid at the top of their pay range. (See my blog on the 80/20 rule).
However, your “A” player stars are often self-centered, combative, competitive, and not always the best team players. In my experience, they never miss an opportunity to tell you how wonderful they are and why they deserve a promotion and a significant pay raise. You need to take safeguards to retain these employees because they will be targeted for competitive offers (15 to 20 percent above what you are paying them, and many will leave for these offers).
In these times, it is wise to develop and motivate your B players. And don’t treat your B-team employees as second best.
B Players
B players are high performers, loyal, and team players, but they are not always the first to suggest an idea or take an initiative. Liz Kislik, writing in the Harvard Business Review describes them as follows:
B players are often less concerned about their personal trajectories and are more likely to go above and beyond in order to support customers, colleagues, and the reputation of the business. For example, when one of my clients went through a disastrous changeover from one enterprise resource planning system to another, it was someone perceived as a B player who kept all areas of the business informed as she took personal responsibility for ensuring that every transaction and customer communication was corrected.
I agree with her assessment. I have found that many B players can be recruited from your regional MBA schools, and they provide your business a higher recruiting return because they are productive and have much lower turnover (as they typically prefer working close to family) then the high-flying A players from Stanford, Wharton, or Harvard.
B players usually need to be tapped on the shoulder to take on new projects or leadership roles. While the A players will volunteer even if they are only 60 percent qualified. The B players, on the other hand, are often overly concerned about the minor shortcomings they must overcome to take on highly visible roles. Or they simply may be shy and don’t like the limelight. Good managers know that the best learning can occur on the job with coaching.
In her HBR article, Liz Kislik, has identified five approaches to help you identify and stop underestimating your B players. These approaches will develop them to reach their potential.
- Get to know and appreciate them as the unique individuals they are. This is the first step to drawing out their hidden strengths and skills. Learn about their personal concerns, preferences, and the way they see and go about their work. Be sure you’re not ignoring them because they’re introverts, remote workers, or don’t know how to be squeaky wheels.
- Reassess job fit. Employees rarely do their best if they’re in jobs that highlight their weaknesses rather than their strengths. They may have technical experience but no interest, or they could be weak managers but strong individual contributors. One leader I know had been growing increasingly more frustrated and less effective; the pressures of satisfying the conflicting demands of different departments were too much for her. Then she took a lateral move to manage a smaller, more cohesive team focused on developing new products, and was able to focus and be inspirational again — once she was freed from the pressure of managing projects in such a political environment.
- Consider the possibility of bias in your assignments. Women and people of color are often overlooked for challenging or high-status assignments. They’re assumed “not to be ready,” or they’re not considered because they don’t act like commonly held but stereotyped views of “leaders.” I will add to Kislik’s observation that introverts or people who were raised “not to toot their horns” can also be overlooked. In an era of talent shortage, many companies can’t afford to overlook the potential of their shy employee or those who don’t fit a leadership stereotype.
- Intentionally support them to be their best. This was the issue I was highlighting above: B players may overstate their shortcomings. Kislik writes: Some people are their own worst critics or have deep-seated limiting beliefs that hold them back. When one of my clients lost a senior leader and couldn’t afford to replace her at market rates, a longtime B player near the end of his career nervously filled the gap. Although he expanded his duties and kept the team going, he emphasized to both his management and himself that he wasn’t really up to the job, and most of the executive team continued to treat him that way. It was not till after he had retired, and a new senior leader had to fill his shoes, that it became clear how much he had done on the organization’s behalf. The executive team never came to grips with how much more he could have accomplished had they provided the relevant development, support, and appreciation all along.
- Give permission to take the lead. B players hold back if they don’t believe they’ve been given permission to step up. (The people we think of as As tend not to ask for or wait for permission.) Some B players aren’t comfortable in the spotlight, but they thrive when they’re encouraged to complete a mission or to contribute for the good of the company.
AI Applications are slowing.
Christopher Mims, writing in The Wall Street Journal, observed that, “The rate of improvement for AIs is slowing, and there appear to be fewer applications than originally imagined for even the most capable of them. It is wildly expensive to build and run AI. New, competing AI models are popping up constantly, but it takes a long time for them to have a meaningful impact on how most people actually work.”
I also recommend you read Mims’ column, “What I Got Wrong in a Decade of Predicting the Future of Tech.” No. 1 is “Disruption is overrated.” He writes:
The most worshipped idol in all of tech—the notion that any sufficiently nimble upstart can defeat bigger, slower, sclerotic competitors—has proved to be a false one. It’s not that disruption never happens. It just doesn’t happen nearly as often as we’ve been led to believe.
We are in the era of talent management. If you believe that AI and digitization will save your organization from workforce scarcity, I am afraid you will be sadly mistaken. It is time to motivate, develop and retain your talent. Certainly the talented but pesky A talent. But don’t forget to develop your shy, overlooked, and often more loyal B talent. It will drive big dividends.
As Elon Musk once said: Human beings are underrated.
About Victor
Victor Assad is the CEO of Victor Assad Strategic Human Resources Consulting and Managing Partner of InnovationOne, LLC. He works with organizations to transform HR and recruiting, implement remote work, and develop extraordinary leaders, teams, and innovation cultures. He is the author of the highly acclaimed book, Hack Recruiting: The Best of Empirical Research, Method and Process, and Digitization. He is quoted in business journals such as The Wall Street Journal, Workforce Management, and CEO Magazine. Victor has partnered with The Conference Board on innovation research. Subscribe to his weekly blogs at http://www.VictorHRConsultant.com