Imagine each employee quits tomorrow to see who really matters
Billionaire builder Brad Jacobs grades talent by his gut reaction to losing them, and keeps only the ones he would dread losing.
David Senra · Brad Jacobs, QXO, XPO, United Rentals & United Waste | David SenraBrad Jacobs, who has built several multibillion dollar companies, spends the largest share of his time on people and talent. To tell whether he has the right people, he runs a brutal thought experiment on each one.
Picture the person walking into your office and saying, I quit. Not as an opening to a counteroffer, but as a done decision. He has already moved on, and now you are just talking about an orderly transition because he respects you and does not want to leave you stranded.
Then notice your gut reaction. If you feel quiet relief, because you had been postponing firing that person and now you do not even have to pay severance, that is a C player. Jacobs says you should find the courage to get that person off the team right away.
If your reaction is, this kind of stinks, but "it's not the end of the world," as Jacobs puts it, and a headhunter will find someone as good or better, that is a B player. If your reaction "is pure terror and absolute panic," as Jacobs describes it, like someone hit you in the stomach with a baseball bat and then punched you in the face, that is an A player. You cannot even hear the rest of what the person is saying because you are thinking you will never find anyone with that superpower again.
Jacobs says he wants only that last group around him. He wants people whose relationship he values so much that he would feel lost without them, and he wants "them to feel the same way," as he puts it. He even wrote a chapter called "how to kill a competition instead of killing each other," as Jacobs puts it. By that he means having the right people on the team and rules for "dealing with each other in a respectful way that still encourages differences of opinion," as Jacobs describes it. That coherence, he says, is one of the main reasons his teams have created tens of billions of dollars in value.
Start tonight with the top few dozen people you depend on most, one by one, and listen honestly to what your stomach tells you.
Questions people ask
How do I move out a C player once the test spots one?
Act quickly and kindly. Tell the person plainly that the fit is wrong, offer a fair transition and help finding a better role, and do not leave them in a job where you secretly hope they quit.
How do I keep A players once I find them?
Pay fairly, give them real responsibility, and show a future worth staying for. Top performers tend to stay where they are trusted, challenged, and learning from other strong colleagues while sharing in the upside they help create.