Build an A-Team

CONCLUSION

GETTING STARTED

We are very near to greatness: one step and we are safe: can we not take the leap?

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

It makes no sense to have your best, brightest, and most-experienced employees leave to pursue opportunities elsewhere because they are bored. Yet too many companies make exactly this mistake.

Boris Groysberg, a professor of organizational behavior at Harvard Business School, has administered a “Building a Great Company” survey to small- and medium-sized companies around the globe for the past decade, asking questions about topics ranging from strategy to culture. He asks executives to rate “How effective is your company” on thirty-seven HR practices, from recruitment to engagement. For the 450 companies surveyed ...