Nurture the B team players who get the job done

IT stars get all the glory, but your supporting actors get the job done.

By Kathleen Melymuka

June 16, 2003 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - It's always about the stars, the A players on the fast track to bonuses, promotions and glory. IT leaders will do nearly anything to get them—and keep them. But what about the rest of us? In this month's Harvard Business Review, Vineeta Vijayaraghavan and Thomas J. DeLong posit that a company's long-term performance and even survival really depend much more on the B players, those steady, capable performers outside the spotlight. Vijayaraghavan, a consultant at Katzenbach Partners LLC, an organizational strategy firm in New York, talked with Kathleen Melymuka about the vital contributions of these "best supporting actors" and how to make sure you're not taking them for granted.

Who are the B players? Those that, in a rough ranking, are neither fast-track—in the top 10%—nor struggling in the bottom 10%. Intuitively, most managers can tell you who they are.

You say being a B is more about temperament than talent. Explain? Oliver Wendell Holmes said that F.D.R. had a second-class mind and a first-class temperament. Achievement is a blend of intelligence, motivation and personality, and that blend makes the difference between A and B players rather than talent per se.


Vineeta Vijayaraghavan, a consultant at Katzenbach Partners LLC

Tell me about the B players who are "recovered A" players. At Microsoft, one of the top 20 performers was an A player who burned out and went rock climbing. He later came back, but to a smaller group—a think tank for new-product development. We call him a "recovered A" because he comes from that world. He maintained calling cards from that world. He knows how it works, and he can move in and out of that world.

Other B players are "truth tellers." Can you give me an example? These are people who have a zeal for the truth. They're not necessarily "company types," which A players tend to be. They're willing to tell the truth even at a cost to their standing in the company. One was a manager in charge of building a technology infrastructure for his trading division. He discovered that someone with status had paid more than the going price for a system. No one had dared raise a question, but he wasn't cowed and spoke up and saved the company millions of dollars.

Some B players are "go-to" people. What does that mean? Those aren't functional experts, but they have an extraordinary feel for the processes and norms of the company. They can make connections and go across departments and divisions to get things done. They're familiar with who really has the power, even if it's not the person in the formal role.

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