IT Professional Blog

Steve Jobs was right. He said that “A small team of A players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players.” And he said that there was a huge difference between what an average person – a B player – can accomplish, and what the best person – an A player – can accomplish. He noted that A players accomplish 50-100 times more than average, B players.

In our last blog post, I wrote that Steve Jobs said A players are 50-100 times more productive than B or C players. Here again I mention Steve: he credited Apple’s ability to find, hire and retain A players as a key driver in the company’s unprecedented success.

Over the past 20 years Entelligence consultants have delivered over 30,000 enterprise IT projects. And what we’ve found is that the top 10% of IT consultants – the A players - have 5 traits that put them head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd.

Steve Jobs was right. He said that “A small team of A players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players.” Put simply, an A player is someone in the top 10% of the available talent pool. They communicate effectively, are honest, transparent and eager to learn, and they just don’t quit. B players make up the next 25% of the talent pool. Then there’s the C players – they’re everyone else.

Think about this: Apple is a company that, as of today, is valued at around $490 billion. Now I’m not saying that Apple got to that level of success just by hiring A players. But if we only look at the people who work for Apple and we know Apple only hires A players, we can attribute some of – perhaps even a lot of – the company’s success to who they hire.

The top 10% of IT consultants – the A players – have 5 traits that put them head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd. The traits may seem simple but, the key to success here is consistency. Only doing some of these things and not others won’t add up to A player status...