Jan 29, 2026
“I need a team of A players!”
Pretty obvious. I’ve never heard a leader say the opposite.
But the real question is:
Do A players want to work with you?
Do you have A+ leaders?
Do you have A+ incentives?
Do you have a way to identify potential A players?
If you can’t answer these questions with a big “YES”, you will always be fishing in the C-player pond.
To build a world-class team, you need to do three things well:
Attract
Engage
Incentivize
Easily said, but extremely difficult to execute consistently.
It all starts with CULTURE clarity.
There should be zero doubt about the expected behaviors and ways of working.
There should be consequences for breaking the internal code and rewards for setting the example.
Cultural clarity requires making choices.
The choices that matter are the ones where there is no right or wrong. It’s a preference. Your way of doing things.
Every single person in the organization has to carry the weight of unmade decisions.
Cultural clarity brings speed. It’s one decision that eliminates one thousand discussions.
Leaders who try to play it safe end up building something with no personality or taste.
They try to avoid anyone saying, “This company is not for me”.
But in the process, they build something that no one can say, “I’d kill to be part of this”.
Know who you are.
Be bold and unique.
Tell the world about it, so the right people can join.
Reward what you want to see more of.
Have consequences for what you want to see less of.
Don’t be boring.
Turn engagement up to eleven
Engagement is the secret ingredient that amplifies talent.
Tommy Mello, CEO of A1 Garage Door Service, said it perfectly:
“I used to hire fours and turn them into sevens. Now I hire sevens and turn them into tens.”
This is what A+ leaders do. They make everyone around them better.
When engagement drops, the best people look for a better place.
You can’t out-hire bad leadership.
If you want A-players, you need leaders who can constantly turn good into great.
“Show me the incentive, and I will show you the outcome” - Charlie Munger
People are driven by different things. It’s the leader's job to know what drives each key member of their team and to create the conditions for it to happen.
Financial incentives are the main driver, but only up to a point.
When all you have is money, you’ll have to give much more of it to compensate for everything else.
Talent is the best bet you can make for asymmetrical returns.
At median compensation, your talent pool is limited. You’ll need to hire someone from a more junior role and bet on their potential, or offer significant future upside to have them bet on your potential. Either way, you’re playing a high-risk game.
When you move to the 90th percentile and above, you gain access to a different talent pool.
The gap between median and top talent is worth multiples of the compensation difference.
But it’s also a chicken and egg situation. To afford this, you need extraordinary results. You unlock extraordinary results by hiring great talent.
The most important job of any leader is to build a culture of performance based on talent.
And here’s the bonus: it’s much more fun to work with exceptional people.