When you want to attract and keep the best players, you can’t play in a low league.

For almost thirty years I have been trying to bring some common sense to the area of human resources. Together with Performia offices and clients around the world, we set up a recruitment formula based on a person’s previous results rather than on questions that lead nowhere. When leading people we work with their potential and willingness because skill can usually be taught. But how do you know that a person selected according to all these criteria is good enough to manage the pace of the team he has joined?

“How exactly do I know that a new person is productive enough for our team? What if I see that he has potential, but his pace is just slow for us?”;  our director of Marketing and PR in Czech Rep asked me. “For example, look at football,” I told her. “When you hire a player for Sparta Prague football club, you will want someone productive, strongly focused on achieving the goal, fast and a team player. You probably won’t want someone to say during the training: `Oh! The ball is too far away and I’m too tired to catch it today’.”

This example is quite obvious, but let’s have look at it from the other side. This player may have some talent and if he joins a team in a lower league he will fit in well. So, when a football club recruits new reinforcement, it has to think about whether they are a highly productive team with high demands and daily training or rather a team that likes to play football, trains three times a week and they are happy when they succeed sometimes. These two are very different approaches.

A company as a football club?

In sport this is obvious, and it should work the same way in the company. When a company plays in the fourth league and wants someone from the first league it will be quite difficult not only to find the person but also to keep him. Why should a first league player want to play with a team from the fourth league?

The conclusion from this for the business world is that the higher league you play, the more attractive you are for productive people. When you’re constantly moving up, improving your processes and products, trying to do things more and more efficient, your statistics are going up, you’re constantly motivating people to produce better results and you aren’t lazy then all of this by itself will attract similar types of people and players who want to be part of a great team. And when you are saying, “We are very talented, but very lazy”, you will probably get more talented but lazy people.

So, the advice on this issue is as follows. Honestly tell yourself what league as a company are you playing. And with regards to your team member ask yourself, “Is his production good enough to play this league with us? Is he able to keep up with us?

How to change the league?

You may have found out that your company is playing in a lower league than you thought and wondering how to change it. We saw in many companies that a very fast jump is possible. Look at Facebook, for example, in February 2004 no one knew anything about it and they had already a million users by the end of that year. Everything is possible with today’s technologies and communication tools.

But what is crucial in such an attempt at a big leap? It’s the ability to deliver more than people expect. And the second, no less essential component of success, is to have the right people on board. I have witnessed a startup more than once before, which rocked off very fast but as it did not have the right people, it quickly fell to the ground again.

So, if you’re going to grow your game and move it up, make sure you have productive and willing people on your team who are enthusiastic about your goals. If any of them are already at a slow pace show them their results, facts and statistics. If they are good, but not enough for you, they will see for themselves. With the others, it may be a bit more complicated, but even that can be solved.

And if you are already playing in the first league don’t forget that even the best people need a good leader who gives them direction. Without good leaders, it doesn’t work.

Author of the text: Mårten Runow