Chris Dreyer:
Every leader gets confronted with the same hard calls about talent, who to promote, who to keep, who to let walk, and who to bet on. And sometimes there's no textbook right answer. At the end of the day, sometimes you got to listen to your gut to decide what's the right move.
So today we're doing just that. We're playing a game called This or That. My producer, Nick, hits me with two opposite options related to talent, and I have to tell you which one I'm choosing. No middle ground. No it depends. Culture or skill? Fire fast or high or slow? Overpay the star or build the rookie? 18 questions, zero fence sitting.
This is Personal Injury Mastermind. I'm Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io, a legal marketing agency for elite law firms specializing in personal injury. Let's get into it.
Nick Jaworski:
Culture fit or raw skill?
Chris Dreyer:
Culture. You can train skill. So Jack Welch has this performance matrix framework and it basically has, and I'm going to try to explain this, on the X axis, that is values, which relates to culture. And on the Y axis, you have results from zero to 10.
So think about four boxes. Let's say you have an individual that is low values, high skill. Those are the ones that tend to be toxic, they butt heads with people, right? And this is the most challenging spot. You have to have conversations with this individual to see if they can be a team player. And often they get moved out of the organization.
I'll go next to the low results, low values. Those are the people that you coach out of the organization. That's just, they don't have the skill. They don't have the values. It's a clear exit. Okay?
Then you have, down at the bottom left, low results, but high values. Okay? Those are the individuals that are like you, that want to do great work. They show up on time. They just need more training typically, or they may need to be moved into a different role. So if you have someone that shares your values, they're a hard worker, but they're just not getting the role, maybe you move them to a different one or train them up.
And then in the upper right, say it's high results, high values. Those are the people that you lock down. Those are your A players. They're killing it in their role. They align with you for the culture. That's this business framework that's from Jack Welch and it's called the Performance Matrix.
Nick Jaworski:
Promote from within or hire out.
Chris Dreyer:
Within. This is a tough one. I'm going to give context more, but I had to set, that was a long delay. I think that everyone should be given the opportunity to advance their skillset. Having said all that, oftentimes it's very difficult to replace experience. I've talked about this a lot. The analogy that I've used is the person that shot a lot of three-point field goals versus the person that hasn't.
So when you have a role when you're moving up in the organization, it's easier to get there quicker if someone has succeeded and has the experience in that role. They know what it takes, especially if they've succeeded in the role. You can move a lot quicker. They know what the requirements are to succeed. Having said that, I think people that share your values, that are continual learners, that have that gumption to grow should be given the opportunity.
Nick Jaworski:
Lone wolf A player or B+ team player.
Chris Dreyer:
I'm going to take the A player. I'm going to take the A player. Without context, look, a B could be trained to an A, top grading, blah, blah, blah, but I want the A's. I want the A's. We didn't talk about values. Does the lone wolf have the values? Then rock and roll A player. Chances are if the A player doesn't have the values, they're going to be worked out of the organization. We've had that recently a couple of times and it's painful and it sucks. And I'm like, I just want to smack around these individuals and be like, "Can't you just get on board and be cordial with other people?" But they got to go. And it just is what it is. So more context. If the A player doesn't have values, they're out. If they do have the values, rock and roll.
Nick Jaworski:
Hire slow or fire fast?
Chris Dreyer:
Fire fast. Speed's an advantage. Hire fast, fire fast.
Nick Jaworski:
Counter offer or let them walk.
Chris Dreyer:
Counter offer. Let me explain. I had to sat and think about this one a long time, but I'm going to say counter offer because if you have A players are like, you want to feed those individuals, you want to nurture those individuals, you want to keep those individuals. So they get an offer to move to another position.
Now here's the deal. These are all the things that came to my mind. What role is it? Is it a sales oriented role? Typically, those individuals are very money motivated. Other roles, not necessarily. Do you know the individual? Are they extremely money motivated? So is there another reason why they're considering walking, right? Have they started to lose that culture and they're not blending in with the team?
There's different situations and nuances to go here, but look, if you got an A player that's wanting to walk and you want to do whatever you can to retain those individuals. The other thing that came to mind is you should be paying them really well above market anyway. So a lot of times when these offers come in, they're not high enough.
Nick Jaworski:
Referrals or job boards?
Chris Dreyer:
Referrals all day.
Nick Jaworski:
If you can only give one, a title or a raise.
Chris Dreyer:
Raise. I think titles are ridiculous. I just need people to do the work. And people think that you need to get the title to move up and make more money. And to some degree that's true if you have a huge organization below you, but I'm a firm believer in paying craftsmen. You don't have to just be a manager to make more money. You could be an amazing craftsman and make a ton of money. In fact, I would say in many organizations, the top account executives like the doers make more than the sales managers in most organizations.
Nick Jaworski:
Generalist or specialist?
Chris Dreyer:
Specialist all day. When I think of generalist, I think of AI slop, exit left.
Nick Jaworski:
Overpay a star or build a rookie.
Chris Dreyer:
Overpay a star. I didn't even have to hear the second one. You got a star, overpay them. Yeah. What is the counter? There is no counter. You want to roll the dice on a rookie? No. You want to roll the dice on a rookie star? Okay.
Nick Jaworski:
Remote or in office?
Chris Dreyer:
Remote. It depends. It depends on the position. I'll tell you, I'm going to do this from the firm perspective. If I'm a law firm, I want an in-house intake department. I don't think it's necessary to have all the administrative roles at the firm, but I do want intake in-house. It's what feeds everything. There's immersion that occurs, training. It's so critical. I think the big in-house intake departments is a necessary component. I also just think that if you're a litigation firm, maybe not a pre-litigation firm, but if you're a litigation firm, I would love to see that in-house as well.
Nick Jaworski:
Unlimited PTO or fixed?
Chris Dreyer:
Unlimited PTO, and then I'm going to explain. We used to have fixed PTO and you hear all these blogs about unlimited PTO, people don't use unlimited PTO and this and that. It's an it depends situation. We surveyed our employees and it was a resounding request for unlimited PTO, so we did it. We thought, hey, the fixed PTO, the 14 days, the 20 days, force people to use them, but we did what the people wanted. And I think that's important to be a leader. Sometimes you have these ideas of, "Hey, I hear the negatives of the unlimited PTO. Maybe I should keep it fixed." And you hear the ... But at the end of the day, what do your employees want? And that's an easy fix.
Nick Jaworski:
Cut the toxic star or keep the numbers.
Chris Dreyer:
Cut the toxic star. That goes back to the performance matrix that we talked about for Jack Welch. If they're a 10 on results, but a zero on values, they're exiting. It's just inevitable. People do their best work when they're happy. They don't want to dread bumping into this individual or having to speak to some individual in Slack that's condescending or mean. So the toxic people have this compounding effect that even though they're really good, it makes a lot of other people poor in their position.
Nick Jaworski:
Culture fit or culture add?
Chris Dreyer:
Culture add. When I think of this, I think about raising the bar. Is it adding to the team culture? Is it additive? Is it just fitting in? So I would put this in the raising the bar scenario.
Nick Jaworski:
Work sample or resume?
Chris Dreyer:
Work sample. I want to see the application every time. It's very rare that I read a resume. When it comes down to the end, that's when I'm doing it. Now typically, I should say this, our team, our talent acquisition team, they've read the resumes. They're putting people through, so I trust their judgment, but then when it comes down to the end, after the application, after those final interviews, then it's like, "Okay, it's close. I got a tiebreaker. I need to make a guess here. Let me look at the resume."
Nick Jaworski:
Hire your weakness or double down on strengths.
Chris Dreyer:
Double down on strengths all day. A lot of times, and I'm going to use sales. I'm going to pick on sales today. So let's pick on the intake department a little bit. I heard this from Jack Daly. He's a top, top sales consultant. Cameron Herold talks about him a lot. He's the guy that said, "If you don't have an assistant, you are an assistant."
I was sitting in a room with him in Vistage. He's extraordinary. He's an older gentleman. I highly encourage you to go try to find his old YouTube videos, they have him speaking. He's a beast. Anyways, he talked about when you have, let's say, a team of 10 sales reps, who does the sales manager really focus on? And let's take it even further. Let's say 100. Should the sales rep, the sales manager, focus on your top performers with the majority of their time or the bottom performers? And you would think, oh, well, the people that aren't getting it. The answer is no, that's not the answer. You should be focusing on your top performers because they get it. They provide the most value for the organization. And it's a lot simpler. It sounds like, "Oh, I'm ruthless Chris." Jack, he's ruthless. It sounds ruthless.
Let's talk about sports for a moment, okay? Basketball, you have a starting five, okay? And you have practice and you're trying to beat these other extraordinary teams. Your worst players on the team, do you put them on the court and just let them ... Do you spend the majority of the time with them at practice? No, you don't, right? You spend the majority of your time on your top players because they're the ones that are having to contribute the most effort, the most value against this other team. Okay?
So it makes a lot more sense in sports. It doesn't sound as ruthless as in business, but I promise you, if you look at it the same, it'll treat you well. Remember, it's the employee's responsibility, not the employers, to make themselves indispensable. It's the employee's responsibility to continually grow, to decrease the errors, to improve their output, especially when they want the opportunity to be given raises and additional responsibilities. You have to evolve and grow as a human. Look at the AI stuff that's coming around. I mean, the people that are really ingrained in AI, they have an advantage on the other individuals that are just ignoring it.
Nick Jaworski:
Best performer or best teammate for the promotion?
Chris Dreyer:
Best performer. We're looking for outcomes here. People can have the values, but if there's no results, I mean, that's like a cheerleader, right? If you have someone that shares the values, maybe they need to be in a different role or have the training, but the people that get promoted move up. Or the people that are results oriented and really move throughputs and help the organization succeed.
Nick Jaworski:
Backfill the role or restructure it.
Chris Dreyer:
Backfill the role, especially as you're much larger. I just listened to a podcast, Jen Harvala from Mike Morris talking about pods versus teams and pods being cross-functional generalists and better accountability, better communication, but lower efficiency, lower utilization. They're generalists versus teams and specialized teams, top down, you get experts. The challenge there is you create silos because there's more departments, communication challenges. And if the organizational design is there, you want to continue to move forward with the organizational design.
It causes a lot of friction, especially the bigger you get. There's tremendous communication complexities as you grow. When you're small and you could pop on a couple meetings and everyone's aligned and you're rowing in the same direction and then it's easy to do restructures. When you get a lot larger, it's like a rolled out mission to make change because you have to say the thing more than once. You have to say it 10 times, 15 times before everyone gets it.
Nick Jaworski:
Stated printed values or lead by example?
Chris Dreyer:
Lead by example. The values, it's who you are and that's just being a good leader in general. Hormozi and Leila talk about this. The person with the highest standards is often the best leader because they have the highest standards for that particular role. When I think of someone for client success, they go above and beyond. They have the highest standards for client success. They give them that concierge white-glove experience. Well, that trickles down and it's an expectation by the leader that these other individuals follow and model.
And I think that's why Horst Schulze and Ritz-Carlton, that's why they succeeded from the client's care, the client success perspective is because of what he thought about at the very top and how that trickled down and how he modeled those behaviors.
And that's the game. Every one of those calls is one you'll face eventually if you're building a team, and when you do, you won't have a textbook in front of you. At the end of the day, you just have to go with your gut to make the crucial final call.
Now here's what I want from you. Pick the one answer you'd fight me on and come find me on LinkedIn. Tell me where I got it wrong or which one you'd flip. I promise I'll get back to you and who knows, maybe we'll feature out on a future episode. I'm Chris Dreyer. Thanks for listening to Personal Injury Mastermind. See you next time.
