The team with the best players wins. It’s just an obvious fact of organizational life – and yet, with all the day-to-day exigencies of work, it’s so darn hard to make it happen.

This section of our website is about changing that. It includes advice about hiring right, motivating, retaining, and rewarding, as well as a section on one of the hardest parts of managing an effective team -- letting someone go.  All of the territory we cover here relates to six driving guidelines as to what we believe the actual work of people management should involve. They are that companies should: 

► Elevate HR to a position of power and primacy in the organization, and make sure HR people have the special qualities to help managers build leaders and careers.

► Use a rigorous, non-bureaucratic evaluation system, monitored for integrity with the same intensity as Sarbanes-Oxley Act compliance.

► Create effective mechanisms – read: money, recognition, and training -- to motivate and retain.

► Face straight into “charged” relationships with unions, stars, sliders, and disruptors.

► Fight gravity and, instead of taking the middle 70 percent for granted, treat them like the heart and soul of the organization.

And…

► Design the org chart to be as flat as humanly possible, with blindingly clear reporting relationships and responsibilities. To learn more about these guidelines in action, dig in. You may not agree with everything we say about managing people, but we probably could agree that, when it comes to winning, no topic matters more.