Business Building: Time To Eliminate Your “C” Players?




Filling all of your positions with the right players is a constant struggle. The right players are the best people available in your market who want to improve, perform and achieve results. The right players are not those who disrupt or impede the productive workflow, cause problems, whine or complain, disrespect others, make the same mistakes over and over, are unwilling to learn new systems and processes, don’t follow standards and rules, and can’t work with or communicate well with other employees or customers.

Hire Slow, Train Hard and Fire Fast!
The first step to building a winning team is to hire the right players who have the right attitude, experience, talent, and values. Experience only counts if your candidates have positive winning attitudes, integrity, and put the team ahead of their own interests. The right players are also the best available who have the ability to grow along with your company.

Next is your commitment to train and mentor players to become the best they can. This takes a dedicated investment of time spent with your top players who have the highest potential to make a difference in your company’s future. Most contractors don’t really have a formal training program or career development ladder. In fact, most contractors don’t do any training with employees and hope they get better while they learn on the job. This lack of player training keeps companies stuck at below average level of results as they continually hope things get better.

The next commitment to build a team filled with the right players must be to fire poor players fast. When players don’t perform, play within your core values, or have the wrong attitude or character, they must go. Don’t waste time holding on to the wrong players you can’t afford to lose. Remember that one bad apple rots the entire bushel. The test we use at our mastermind peer group meetings I host for construction business owners, when an employee question comes up we ask: “Do you love them or like them?” To the keep or fire question, everyone unanimously responds - only keep them if you love them. Keeping the wrong players shows the true strength and character of the leader. If you are unwilling to make tough decisions, people will not respect you, give you their all, and never perform at their highest level.

Focus On Your ‘BEST” and Dump the Rest!
Common business knowledge is to focus on your “A” players, train and mentor your “B” players to become “A” players and eliminate your “C” players as fast as possible. “C” players are those employees who shouldn’t work for your company. They don’t fit in, like a round peg trying to fit into a square hole. They are not happy and as their employer, you’re not happy with their performance, attitude, or abilities either. The wrong players include those with bad attitudes, employees who aren’t willing to continually improve, and people who aren’t team players. So, what’s the solution? The best thing you can do with poor performers is to free them from working for your company and let them move on to where they can thrive.

Business owners and managers have lots of things to do every day to keep their ball rolling to hit the target. They often get overloaded and don’t take enough time to do everything perfectly as they know they should. After a while, they get in the habit of doing things the easy or fastest way and take short cuts to get things done. This reduces their bottom-line net results. Think of the little things in your business you know you should do to play your best game every day. When you don’t follow sound business principles, added costs, small problems or costly mistakes add up and significantly weigh you down. This drags your bottom-line lower than it could be.

For example, when you keep poor employees on your payroll for too long or continually use the same supplier without getting other bids, you’re saving time but costing you money. When you continue working for bad customers rather than seeking new ones or not taking the time to focus on collecting your receivables fast, you’re saving time and losing small amounts of money that add up significantly. When you do extra work without signed change orders or only offer what is on the plans and specifications to get awarded jobs, you are saving time while not maximizing your bottom-line by doing more than required. Whether you’re too busy, stressed-out, or overloaded, you have many options and choices available to do a better job or make more money. Here is another tool to help you get out of the rough, back on the fairway, make more putts, and play up to your full potential all the time.

Clean Out the Dead Wood!
Who on your crew or staff causes you the most grief, doesn’t do a good job, or has a bad attitude? These poor performers are infiltrating everyone on your team and bringing them down. Poor performers should be cleaned out, fired, and removed fast. Think of employees as trees in the forest. When they die, run out of life, or stop growing, they become dead wood. Dead wood gets in the way, it is a fire hazard and causes you to trip or fall as you try to move forward. When you let the dead wood remain, you tolerate bad performance. When you don’t remove or clean out dead wood, other employees have to put up with them, work around them, cover for them, and make excuses for them. Additionally, your good employees lose respect for a boss who won’t do what’s right in a timely manner and accepts less than the best from his people.

I know you’re too busy to get rid of the dead wood employees or find some new people to do a better job. I know you can’t easily find any good help. But, by doing nothing and allowing poor performers to stay onboard, you’re avoiding tough decisions and losing more money than you can imagine. One dead tree can reduce your crew efficiency by as much as 25%. Make a list of your employees and rate them on the skills you need them to perform well and on time. Also rate their attitude, teamwork, talent, willingness to grow, commitment and dedication. Rate them on their desire to take on more accountability, responsibility, and leadership. Through this process, you’ll discover your valuable employees, those who can improve, and those who shouldn’t work for you. Who knows? You might also find that a few ‘old-timers’ or relatives which shouldn’t be on your ‘keep’ list.

It’s not your fault that as many as ten to twenty percent of your employees might not be the right fit or suited to work for you or your company. You shouldn’t feel bad about realizing that not everyone you hired was the right employee for you. You did your best hiring them. But some people eventually don’t fit the required job description, culture, teamwork, or aspire to excellence in your company’s environment. In other words, a few of your employees are working at the wrong company or position. It is not good for them or you, and it is your responsibility to get them to move on and find a place where they’ll contribute in a positive way. It’s OK to feel good about cleaning out the dead wood. It’s good for you, your employees, and those who’ll be leaving your company. So, get out your axe, trim out the dead wood, and then make it your priority to find positive people who’ll make your company a better place.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
George Hedley CPBC is a certified professional construction business coach, consultant, and popular speaker. He helps contractors build better businesses, grow, profit, develop management teams, improve field production, and get their companies to work. He is the best-selling author of “Get Your Construction Business To Always Make A Profit!” available on Amazon.com. Watch his educational videos on YouTube. To get his free e-newsletter, start a personalized BIZCOACH program, download online courses, or utilize his contractor templates visit: https://constructionbusinesscoaching.com or E-mail GH@HardhatBizcoach.com.



About: Business Building
 0
Fechino Files: When Something Easy Should Only Take an Hour
August 2025

My days all tend to start the same: wake up happy, work out... still happy. Make a phone call to check in with a buddy of mine, then I start my actual work for the day. So last weekend, I did what every masonry contractor has to do from time to time—I had

Fechino Files
Read More
Building More: Symphony of Delegation
August 2025

It’s 6:42 a.m., the sky’s turning that pale gray that makes extension cords disappear, and you could picture yourself rolling onto a subdivision where the first thing you hear isn’t the boom lift, but a superintendent we’ll call Ivan. He’s looking up the

Building More
Read More
Chairman’s Message: STRENGTHENED SIDE BY SIDE
August 2025

This summer, MCAA took part in the Canadian Masonry Contractors Association’s 58th Annual Conference in Ottawa, Ontario. MCAA was represented by our President, Jeff Buczkiewicz, our Vice Chair, Kent Huntley, and my wife and me. It was an incredible expe

Chairman’s Message
Read More
Contractor Tip of the Month: Building a Brand People Choose Without Thinking Twice
August 2025

The Story of Coffee, Construction, and Kleenex I still remember the morning at Con Expo, the largest trade show in the construction industry, when I was running on empty and in desperate need of coffee. My day was filled with back-to-back meetings, leavi

Contractor Tip of the Month
Read More