Mediocre managers rely on 'A-players'

A little while back I was talking with a friend who was telling me a story about his friend. It was a guy running an offshoring company out of a smaller city in Pakistan.

They were employing hundreds of people to do all kinds of stuff from admin to marketing to development.

Their clients were mainly American small and mid-sized businesses.

These clients apparently loved them and their retention was terrific. In part because their price was far more affordable (often 50% less) than the more established offshoring companies.

But also because their staff were consistently pretty good and loyal. Whereas with many other offshoring agencies the churn of workers tended to be quite high.

My friend said the company’s secret was the founder’s philosophy, which could be summed up as “I love ‘B-players’!!!!!! I can’t get enough of them!”

Why did this business owner love ‘B-players’?

He loved them for several reasons:

1. B-players were in plentiful supply in his city.
2. B-players were a lot cheaper than A-players and a lot more loyal (ie. they didn’t jump ship to a competitor nearly as often).
3. Because they were more loyal there was a much stronger business case in investing in their training.
4. B-players were much more willing to stay disciplined to his systems. Whereas A-players were often more likely to want to not color within the lines.

And so this Pakistani offshoring agency was growing like crazy and extremely profitable.

Relying 100% on B-players!

I’ve had the same experience and I also love ‘B players’

For most of the past four years I am working mainly with B players.

I find folks on Upwork and then have systems to quickly identify and cut out the C & D players.

But the reality is that there are not really many ‘A-players’ on Upwork. Most ‘A players’ are too picky and perform well in cushier jobs.

However I’ve also realized that I do not need ‘A-players’. For the simple reason that I am not doing rocket science.

We are not SpaceX putting up rockets. We are not Tesla creating self-driving cars.

We are typically helping clients with things like creating content, creating apps, etc.

And the reality of 99% of small businesses is that 95% of their tasks can be done just fine with ‘B players’. And only about 5% needs to be done by an ‘A player’ because this is the strategic thinking, etc. But the Founder or CEO can just do this himself.

The trick, however, is that you cannot just hire a B player and leave him on his own. You need a very strong system around the person. Let me explain.

The difference between a B and an A-player

Think of an ‘A-player’ you know and describe the person. Go ahead and try.

I actually wrote this down a little while back to see what I would write. And here are the main things I wrote:

• You just need to tell them the goal and they can achieve it on their own with relatively little guidance.
• They problem solve creatively and so don’t get stuck nearly as often.
• They deliver results reliably.
• They have good discipline and work habits.

And after I looked at the list I realized why I don’t really miss not having them.

It is because the systems I use enable ‘B-players’ to achieve all of these things.

I provide them with guidance when they need it, I unblock them in a timely when they get stuck, the system forces them to have good habits, etc etc

A ‘B-player’ gets to the same destination with the right system

This is a metaphor I love to tell lately. Imagine you have a traditional manager and he is managing an ‘A-player’.

He has a weekly one-on-one with the person and tells him the result he wants.

The A-player works all week on their own and delivers more or less what the manager wanted.

Now if you were to do the same with a B-player and leave them on their own, they would most likely not end up in the correct destination. Rather they would get stuck or veer the wrong way.

But all of a sudden if you ‘microsteer’ the way I do with my ‘Everything is a task’ system in Clickup… than my B player gets to the same destination as the A-player every single time.

This is what i’ve consistently seen for four years now.

And it is because I have visibility into all of their tasks and can comment on their updates a few times a day to make sure they’re going the right away at the right pace.

But don’t you save a lot of time and effort by just hiring A-players?

The question managers are probably asking themselves are “why not just hire an A-player and then you can leave out all the microsteering?”

And my answer to that would be that there are numerous repercussions:

• It is a lot harder to find A-players and it takes a lot more time
• There is an opportunity cost to this lost time as it usually means you are slowing down your ability to chase an opportunity
• With today’s level of competition you cannot afford spending 6-months looking for an A-player. Especially if you’re competing against someone like me who will put a B-player in place within a week. I will have a 5+ month headstart on you.
• A high percentage of times these perceived A-players will not work out. They will in fact be B-players or they will leave because they have more competing opportunities.
• B-players will align to a good culture better than A-players who will often consider themselves stars and exhibit bad attitudes.

So by hiring B-players I avoid all of this and am a lot faster and more agile.

Managers that rely on ‘A players’ are typically making up for the fact that they are mediocre

If you’re managing a team with systems like the ones I use it becomes a no brainer in my view to just sweep up B-players fast.

So why don’t more people do it?

Well in my view the vast majority of people don’t use these types of systems because they are just mediocre managers who think they are good managers.

They have old-school practices like relying on weekly one-on-ones and recurring team meetings.

So while they are getting their inputs on a task once a week, I will have gotten Clickup updates a few times a day and micro-steered on that task 15-20x over the course of that same week.

Play the long game

If I can consistently get B-players that are cheaper and faster to find to achieve the same result as a manager who relies on A-players than what does that say about the difference in management?

And over a longer stretch of time like an entire career…. which manager is going to more consistently deliver strong results?

The one that relies on A-players? Or the one that gets things done just as well with B-players?

And don't forget to check out episode 5 of Million Dollar Ideas podcast with our guest Richard Armstrong, Venture Partner at TA Ventures.