It began with NetflixI have recently read No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention by none other than Reed Hastings. If you have read this, you would have learned about the seemingly ruthless “Keeper Test.” If you don’t know it, here’s the gist of it:  If an employee told you they were leaving for a similar job at a competitor, would you fight hard to keep them? That’s the question. If you sense you would accept that resignation then it’s time to get that person off the payroll immediately. The keeper test is aimed at weeding out average employees so that you can replace them with stars. Is that ruthless? Probably not. However, it dials up the ante when you spontaneously run that test in your mind, and not in an actual conversation. In other words; the exchange never happens, but you imagine that it did - and based on that imaginary conversation, somebody gets fired.The quest for impact players Next, I read  Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact by Liz Wiseman. I’ll share my thoughts on another occasion.At this point, my mind had amalgamated the ideas from these two books. I figured that peak performance is driven by retaining highly ambitious employees and weeding out those who don’t show rapid growth potential.I developed an idea, but I didn't like it I don’t think the idea sat well with me, and I was still processing it. Then I got stuck into Radical Candor. At one point, author, Kim Scott discloses that for too long in her career, she kept pushing everyone to grow super fast. Scott considered it best practice. Everybody had to continually strive to reach their ultimate potential. This was the very idea that just wasn’t settling well in my mind. But, for a very good reason. Eventually, Scott discovered that it did not create the ultimate team. So, what did? Aha! Scott realized that some people were great at what they did and they wanted to stay great. Scott began to focus on keeping those people happy and productive. This brought stability to the organization. People like this want to be rewarded and recognized, not necessarily promoted. This develops deep functional expertise and employees who stick around for many years. Aha! That makes sense.It begs the question Are we fostering deep functional expertise? Are we rewarding stability as much as we reward employees on a steep growth trajectory?

Jonathan Jensen

November 4 at 07:21pm

More reference than reading: Strunk & White's Elements of Style and a subscription to the AP Stylebook (if you're using AP Style)

Dale Pease

February 17 at 02:42pm

i didn't know this book existed.. thanks to you i grabbed a copy!!

Connor DeLaney

October 27 at 12:29pm