The Important Middle

Let’s take another trip back to pre-Thrive Ben and back when I was at Lowes and before I was able to learn the importance of the middle 70%. This was before I knew about A Players, B Players, and C Players. In Jack Welch’s book  Winning, he talked about something called the top 20%, the middle 70%, and the bottom 10%. Before I started working here with these business coach teams, I was very unaware of the existence of these categories. I thought that there were just good workers and bad workers. In my other jobs, there were always people that would try and do as little as possible, those that did just enough and those that tried to be the best at their job. I knew a clear line between the top 20% and the bottom 10%. However, the middle 70% was completely new to me when business coach Clay first told me about it and was still new to me when in Winning it said that they were a valuable asset to the team and as a manager you should spend more of your time with them because they make up the majority of your team. 

If you think about it, without the middle 70% of anything, be it a movie, and T.V show, nothing would make sense.

I took time to really marinate and think about the middle 70% of employees. How without the middle percent of the worker’s life here would be very unpleasant. I mean there is only so much I can do to help write articles, help motivate and in general do the work. The top 20% of the team would get burnt out so fast if it was just up to them to complete everything that was assigned to them. Even more so when they would have to do it month after month. The importance of the middle 70% is to help be the bulk of the team. In the middle 70, it is still further broken down to the top 20 of the 70, the middle 70 of the 70 and the bottom 10. If you think about it, without the middle 70% of anything, be it a movie, and T.V show, nothing would make sense. The same goes for the middle section on any team. The top section of the middle group are eager to prove themselves, they know where they want to be and are trying to improve. I was once, in my opinion, part of the top section of the 70% and with mentorship and with the right guidance I was able to move up into management and learn these skills.

I know that I am still far from perfect, I continue to try and improve myself every day in order to move up in my business coach career. That is a huge factor that helped me move up is the fact that I asked how I can improve, read a ton of books, and am still trying to learn from everything that I can. As of the past week, I am a lot more appreciative of the people that are in the middle group. No one is born into the top 20% of the workforce. They might not have the most talent but they are ready to prove themselves and will work like crazy to reach that next level.