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EVERY ORGANIZATION CAN TOPGRADE

When originally published in 1999, Topgrading offered a radical vision. Topgrading techniques for hiring, promoting, assessing, and coaching people had enabled hundreds of companies to achieve 75% and even 90%+ success picking not just "okay" performers but rather true high performers. In order to build credibility for Topgrading, I cited companies in both the 1999 and 2005 editions that were mostly huge companies like General Electric, American Heart Association, AlliedSignal/Honeywell, and Hillenbrand. Thus I was responsible for what I call Topgrading Myth #1: Topgrading is only for big companies. Not so! Topgrading is arguably more important to small and medium-size companies in which just a couple of mis-hires could cause the business to fail.

Hundreds of new Topgrading success stories have emerged since 1999, and this edition includes dozens of case studies showing that Topgrading works everywhere in the world, in every type of organization, and in every size organization. About half of the 40 case studies in this book are companies with less than 500 employees; several have fewer than 100 employees. You'll meet entrepreneurs (whose businesses, as you know, create most new jobs) and learn in their words how they Topgraded. And you'll read of the experiences of large companies, not-for-profits, and even individual managers who got special permission to deviate from company hiring policies and initiate Topgrading.

EVERY ORGANIZATION 'SHOULD' TOPGRADE

Okay, if every type of company on the planet can Topgrade, why should they?

Our experience and research show that about 25% of managers hired or promoted turn out to be high performers, A Players, in every type of company. Topgraders achieve 75%, 90%, and even greater success picking high performers—that's why every company 'should' Topgrade.

In the dozens of case studies reported in this book, the companies and senior executives are identified. (A couple are not because the company does not want competitors to know about, and perhaps emulate, their Topgrading competitive advantage.) And the average result across all the 41 companies is to improve hiring and promoting success from 26% high performers to 85% high performers, with one-third achieving 90%+ high performers hired or promoted. Looking ahead to the fourth edition of this book, I note that Topgrading companies are increasingly pushing their supply chain to Topgrade. Do you want to be supplied by vendors who have mostly A Players or the typical mix of As, Bs, and Cs?

BUT SHOULD COMPANIES TOPGRADE DURING ECONOMIC DOWNTURNS?

Yes! Are you becoming all too familiar with recessions? In the 1990s, a decade in which premier companies Topgraded, lesser companies could sometimes perform spectacularly for a while without a lot of A Players, but from 2000 to 2002 there were annual declines in the stock market. Ouch! Companies with flawed business plans and not enough high performers faltered. Companies that hung on to marginal performers too long did what an increasingly competitive, Darwinian marketplace guaranteed: they went out of business. Then from 2002 to 2008 the economy was strong, and many business got fat with too many marginal performers.

From boom to the 2008 bam!—the severe global downturn arrived, with a U.S. market decline of 36% in 2008. Although stock markets recovered in 2009 and 2010, unemployment and debt globally lingered on and on and on. Hundreds of thousands of companies failed, and a major factor was hanging on to too many people, including too many weak performers. Most companies naturally cut head count, starting with "fat," but this time the Great Recession had forced companies to figure out they can be more successful with fewer people. The CEO's of many case studies in this book report that their companies perform better with fewer people, but those fewer people are A Players.