Superstars are like art - you know them when you see them. I find they share three core characteristics: they are smart, creative and they get things done. I think most people know a Superstar when they see one. They are the people who, through smarts, guts and sheer force of will, drive great companies to do great things (or keeping middlin’ companies alive). Then why are there so few Superstars in evidence at most companies and is there anything you can do about it? Would like to turn some of your “B and C Players” into “A and B Players”? You can make your existing team stronger and hire even more strength by creating or changing the way you do a few core people processes at your company.

I was recently speaking with someone who is CEO of not one, but two highly successful companies. We were discussing recruiting and he noted something that has really stayed with me. He said, “Everyone says that people are their most important business asset. But I don’t think that’s true because they sure don’t act that way.” Truer words were rarely spoken. For every General Electric, with their manic focus on people development, there are thousands of companies, big and small, public and private, who pay surprisingly little attention to their people - this despite the fact that, with rare exception, it is your people alone who will determine whether you succeed or fail. And there is no escaping the fact that people are a typical company’s most expensive line item, often accounting for 60%-70% of all operating expenses.

So if your people are so critical and so expensive, why don’t more companies treat their employees like the precious resource they so clearly are? Wait, I can practically hear executives and Human Resources professionals everywhere screaming out in protest. Unfortunately actions speak louder than words here. How many companies have a performance management strategy? How many companies review their employees every year without fail or excuses, and reward the producers and move or get rid of the laggards? What is the average tenure of people at your company – short and shrinking? Do your managers (or you) run from the “bother” of having to write a job description for a new position and delegate interviewing or treat it as an annoyance? As a manager do you delegate the vetting of candidates to your recruiter – someone who has most likely never spent a minute in the function they are hiring?

All of these are symptoms of people and an organization that does not truly believe its fate rests in the hands of its employees. If they did, nothing would be more important than hiring - it would get more focus than other deliverables, not less. If they did, your company would religiously review personnel every year and your managers would look forward to the process, not dread it. If they did, at the end of each quarter your company would not just celebrate a number, it would celebrate the people who brought you that number. But with rare exception, companies do not do these things or, they do them but don’t “mean it” and therefore pay lip service or do them half-heartedly. “We’re too busy for that stuff” is the most ironic of management excuses in this arena. If you did these things at all or more effectively, you would spend much less time running around like a headless chicken.

This inattention can be overcome, but like most changes, it starts at the top. The CEO of the company has to deeply care about and understand these issues. If they do not, no HR group or administrative executive, regardless of how heroic, will be able to change the company’s behavior. Here are a few tips for putting a plan into action.

First, build a people plan. Start by knowing thyself. What do you do now with recruiting, reviews, compensation, recognition and other personnel programs? Do you have retention goals? Do you have compensation guidelines? Do you have any recognition programs or events? Do you do employee training? Each of these areas can be quickly assessed. Then create the vision for where you want to be. These changes can be enacted quickly as they are largely the result of implementation of well known processes.

Fact: most employees do not know where they standEmployee reviews: Fact: most employees do not know where they stand. Fact: most managers do not know where their employees stand. Fact: most employees are not sure what is needed for them to excel at the company. Are they doing great work, good work, or are they about to be fired? Most managers don’t spend a lot of time reviewing performance and many managers are not good communicators. The review process forces the company to communicate its goals throughout the organization. It also forces your managers to think about each of their people and drives them to act. Employees doing well hear about how well they are doing. This is a great excuse to make your Superstars feel good about themselves and the company. Those who are good workers but need help improving can have their problem areas identified and addressed and your company can turn some “B Players” into “A Players” and some “C Players” into “B Players”. Finally, it forces your managers to confront the fact that they have some team members who really need to move around or move on. Your process should accommodate the fact that poor performance is sometimes the result of poor fit. Great, find another place at your company for this person and turn a “C/D Player” into an “A/B Player”. If the employee is a total loss, write them off! If you cannot recover your sunk cost look to re-invest in another person instead of throwing good money after bad. Reviews work because they “force” all of this good-for-you behavior which people typically don’t do on their own. This is the “eat your vegetables” of the business world.

Compensation: People are not happy when they think that they are not paid well. Note the emphasis on “think”. The company should have a compensation policy and should implement it, publicize it and stand behind it. A compensation review which is tied to a performance review lets the employee know that you are a) paying attention, and b) thinking about their well-being. The best performers get paid more. The so-so employees stand pretty still, and the non-performers should be gone. This all translates into your compensation guidelines of average employees being at X% of range and receiving Y% increase year-over-year. Do you see how this all fits together? You will also see how it makes employees more satisfied with their work. They know what they are doing, how well, what is expected of them, and that they are being compensated fairly. All of this leads to higher employee satisfaction which leads to a more desirable workplace which then attracts more “A Players” to your company and lower turnover. This is what we call a “virtuous cycle”.

Your employees are not perfectTraining: Your employees are not perfect. They may be very intelligent, but not everyone comes in to their job with all the tools they need to succeed. You do not need to build a massive internal training program. What you do need to do is have periodic reviews which will uncover the need for training and then send your people to training. Yes it takes a part of a day or a full day and it costs money to send them (or buy the webinar series) on top of the lost work. But would you rather pay for training or pay for a non-productive employee? Or, even worse, pay to recruit another employee? Training will cost hundreds or a few thousand. The alternatives are measured, almost without exception, in the tens of thousands or worse. This is a classic example of spending money to save money.

Celebrating success: Does your company celebrate great accomplishments? For the cost of some munchies and a fifteen minute break (and a few printed certificates), you can make one person or a team feel great and show the rest of the company that you mean business. Most people don’t need to be rewarded with a trip to Hawaii for a job well done. Try some verbal recognition and a lasting symbol (that certificate) and see how far you get. And don’t save it for a once-a-year event. Great performance should be celebrated often and the drive for greatness should be part of the company culture. And keep it inexpensive so you won’t have an excuse to not celebrate.

Recruiting: It’s one of life’s great mysteries to me that more managers don’t jump on the opportunity to hire an open position. Sure every manager wants more people, but when was the last time you had a hiring manager just dying to get you a great job description so you could kick off the search? Or happy that they had interviews that day instead of annoyed? When was the last time the hiring manager made it a priority for their team to interview? As a manager, nothing is more important than the quality of your team. An open headcount is your next opportunity for salvation. Instead of complaining or putting it off, managers should have hiring as their top priority. This needs to be noted and measured on their personnel review and should be emphasized from the very top of the organization.

Recruiting is expensive! As CFO and/or COO at four companies, I did not enjoy paying for new hires. Unfortunately we found that a) keeping critical positions open was far more costly, and b) having internal recruiters was often no cheaper than going outside, nor was it more of a guarantee of success. The key, it turned out, was how much experience the recruiter had in the function they were hiring. Recruiting experience alone did not count – at all. What mattered was how well they understood the ins and outs of the job being hired, the expectations of the manager and, if necessary, the executive team and the board. That means having meaningful business experience in the function being hired and only using recruiters for the functions they lived in. Having an accounting recruiter hire your engineering team turns out not to be a great idea. Having a recruiter with no business experience at all turns out to be the worst idea!

Thus, what counts is time in function, time managing in the function, and time as a business executive. You want your recruiters to have:

• Deep functional skills (e.g. marketing, engineering, etc.) so they truly understand the working content of the position being hired
• Extensive people management experience so they have experienced great and poor performers first-hand and have learned what to look for in a great employee
• Significant executive level experience so they understand the business imperatives from the bottom of the organization to its top
• They should also have an extensive network, a deep database of talent and solid recruiting methods. It turns out these are much easier to accomplish if, once again, they spent a long time in the function.

Since your recruiter is supposed to be helping your hiring manager find the best talent, doesn’t it just make sense that they too have these skills and this experience? If you are going to pay for a service, shouldn’t you get what you are paying for?

These are all things that any company with a will to do great things can to in order to improve their chances of finding Superstars and elevating their entire team. None of it is rocket science. None of it is even original. Some companies do all of these things and do them well. Alas, most companies do few or none of these things and it costs them a lot more than they may think they are saving by not doing them.