Chief Learning Officer - October 2008 - (Page 21)

J ack Welch, former head of GE, once said he concentrated on the “A players in his company” and he wasn’t interested in the “B players.” With all due respect, I think Welch missed that call. Not every person can be the chief marketing ofﬁcer, or the key scientist in discovery for R&D, or the person who ultimately determines the go-to-market strategy. But on the other hand, those people can’t achieve organizational success by themselves, either. Let’s follow Welch’s point for a minute — that the A players are the most important people in an organization. Let’s compare them to the weightbearing walls of a house. They are unquestionably critical for sustaining the overall structure. But a home with only the weight-bearing walls in place is not really a structure that can be bought or sold, and no one really wants to live there. AT A GLANCE Business Success = A Team + B Team focus must change, from surmounting the next peak to getting everybody to the top of the current one. So back to that house with only the weight-bearing walls in place. We need to include the collective knowledge and execution of the B team to ﬁnish the house and make it valuable. Success = A + B The point is that there are no bit parts, no small roles. Success requires all people to work together, regardless of their places in the organization. There are millions of examples of what can happen when a group of “regular people” get organized and commit to a common outcome. Here’s one: There’s a city near Dallas called Wylie. It’s an old town ﬁlled with ordinary people. As with many old towns, the local playground had become dilapidated and hazardous. There was no money in the town budget for a new playground. Five years ago, the community formed a corporation, asked for donations and held a festival to raise money and create excitement. Soon, it had $125,000 and dozens of in-kind pledges. Then, organizers met with the children to ask what they wanted for the playground. The enthusiasm spread, and soon nearly every business in town was donating something — from fencing to Not the ‘Fastest Few,’ the ‘Slowest Many’ The essence of understanding the difference between A people and those connected with any other letter is that everybody matters and everybody counts. One of the most important lessons I’ve learned in two decades of consulting is competitiveness is not determined by the learning speed of the “fastest few,” but by the learning and execution speed of the “slowest many.” Let me point out that “slow” doesn’t have anything to do with intellect. It means “slow” in being invited to the table to learn what others have already had the chance to assimilate to. This statement may seem obvious, but if you don’t appreciate its meaning, it can stop your organization in its tracks. Picture it like this: The senior leaders — the A team — of a company are climbing a mountain range. The rest of the people in the organization — the B team — are two peaks behind at the base camp. Where is the overall position of the organization? It’s not with the leaders. It’s back at base camp. It’s not, “How far ahead of everybody else can the leaders advance?” but, “How fast can the leaders engage others to move the entire company forward?” The success of the organization is deﬁned by the last group, not the ﬁrst, when it comes to measuring total performance. In reality, leaders almost always conceptually outrun their engagement and execution supply lines. Everybody can relate to this. Leaders spend months developing a strategy, considering, contemplating, contrasting and dismissing the alternatives and possibilities for future success. When they’re ﬁnally done, they craft this into a “strategy in a box” and ship it off to their people. Then the A team wonders why the B team doesn’t get excited about it immediately. The B team can’t realize how critical the strategy is because they have no idea what went into its creation. The Competitiveness is not determined by the learning speed of the “fastest few,” but by the learning and execution speed of the “slowest many.” concrete to tiles for the children’s handprints. Families got together to purchase a rope walk, a toddler slide or a rock wall. When it was time for the build, every single nut and bolt, board and swing was put into place by a volunteer. They worked in four-hour shifts for six days around the clock. During that time, other people brought food for the workers and provided child care. In the end, Pirate Cove was a bigger and better playground than the town of Wylie ever would have been able to purchase, and its citizens had the pride Chief Learning Ofﬁcer • October 2008 • www.clomedia.com 21 http://www.clomedia.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Chief Learning Officer - October 2008

Chief Learning Officer - October 2008 Editor’s Letter Connections Business Impact Best Practices Effectiveness Guest Editorial How Fast Is Your ‘B’ Team? Hampton Hotels CLO Profile Save the World, Make a Buck: Seven Ideas From the Nonprofit Sector Developing Leaders at Amnesty International Learning Measurements: It’s Time to Align Aligning Measurement to Business Success Training Employees With Special Needs How to Reach Disabled Learners Hands Off: Facilitating Informal Learning Who Owns Informal Learning? Case Study Business Intelligence Advertisers’ Index Editorial Resources In Conclusion

Chief Learning Officer - October 2008

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