One of my mentors had a favourite saying that bears repeating: “Never harness a racehorse.”
What he meant by that was, if you have a person who’s out there “trying and doing, not crying and stewing” (another one of his favourites – I heard that one at least 14,000 times) let them have their freedom. They’ve earned it, and A-players want freedom to act.
The good news is that you can’t (and don’t have to) ‘manage’ A-players to begin with. Lead them, coach them, inspire and correct them, but never try to manage them.
The opposite side of this rule is that the funnel needs to tighten on underperforming plow horses, but that’s a discussion for another day.
