Scoring is for ants — there is a far, far better way
![Entrepreneur's Handbook](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fill:48:48/1*8sfeJBcpkpaPmv9Epi2Pjw.png)
Before you have your first team, the words performance and productivity never have to creep into your mind. Bliss.
That all changed from the moment I led a fast-growing startup with an equally fast-growing team. It was a stark revelation. Around the double-figure mark, I started to know less about who was doing what, and by the time there were 50-odd people, I was clueless.
We came up with our own productivity system. We knew how long jobs should take from pricing them up. So, we scored everyone on how much up or down they were against the allowed-for-hours. If, over a week, someone was up on the time allowed, we rewarded them. If they were down, we wanted to know why.
It made complete sense on paper and worked brilliantly for about a month, with some people reveling in the competition of seeing who could score highest and win rewards.
But very soon, we could all see how imperfect it was. The accuracy of the times allowed for the jobs varied. Some pieces were much harder to make and required more complex thinking time. Some delays were outside of people’s control, power cuts, or supply disruptions.
Perhaps most of all, it didn’t account for the extra contributions people made to their teams. The people who cleaned up, made the tea, liaised with the office, and kept people’s spirits up.
Morale slumped, and resentment set in. Measuring output alone was a dismal failure.
Years later, I interviewed a massively successful CEO with a global workforce. He explained that he graded the vast numbers of people into A, B, or C players and paid them accordingly.
A-players were the business assets, not just highly productive but bringing energy to everyone they came into contact with and making life fun. He recommended paying these A players double the next grade down.
B players were still good people and were encouraged by managers to upgrade to becoming As. The bottom tier, the C people…