Growth Lab Team Candidate Selection Workbook
This is founder work, done alone and before any invitation conversation happens. You start with the initiatives already running and finish with the four or more proposed candidates who will join you in the Growth Lab Team. Each section feeds the next: the names you enter early are carried forward, so you only type them once.
Your entries save automatically in this browser. They are not stored on your Kajabi account, so use the same browser and device each time, and download the PDF when you finish.
Before You Start
Seven steps. Allow a couple of uninterrupted hours, and expect to leave one or two sections and come back to them.
The Growth Lab Team is five A-players including you. Not a committee, not the senior management team, and not whoever is available or deserving of recognition. What you are looking for is the people who can carry a strategic task each quarter and hold their own in a room where hierarchy is paused.
Five is the optimal size. A larger business may need more, and up to nine can work, though accountability begins to diffuse beyond five. More than nine and you no longer have a Growth Lab Team, you have a discussion forum.
A note on the judgements you are about to make. The assessments in this workbook are contextual. They describe how someone performs in this business, in this role, at this stage of its growth. They are not judgements of anybody’s worth, and someone who reads as a C-player here may be an A-player somewhere else.
The workbook is confidential to you. Nothing in it is shared with the people being assessed.
Leadership Load MapFounder
List the strategic initiatives already in motion and mark who carries each one. Where an initiative is Shared or Theirs, name the person already carrying the work. That name is your first evidence of a candidate.
| Strategic initiative | Who carries it | Person already carrying the work |
|---|
Me means you define it, drive it, or keep it alive. Shared means someone else contributes, but progress still depends on you. Theirs means it continues without you.
A map that is almost entirely Me is not a failure of the exercise. It is the reason the Growth Lab Team exists.
Talent Density AuditFounder
Every person in the business, placed honestly in one of three groups. Work through the full team, not only the people you were already thinking about.
A-player. Ninety percent probability of achieving outcomes only the top ten percent in their field could achieve. They innovate without being told to, raise standards around them, and make your life easier. You would rehire them tomorrow.
B-player. A safe performer. Capable within their lane, reliable within defined limits, rarely surprising. Some have a ceiling. Others are B-players today who become A-players with the right stretch. That distinction matters here more than anywhere.
C-player. Being tolerated rather than deployed. They consume disproportionate management time and have, in some way, lowered the standard around them.
The instinct to move someone from C to B out of kindness is natural. Resist it.
| Person | Current role | Rating | Evidence for the judgement | Future potential or concern |
|---|
Candidate EvaluatorFounder
Assess every credible candidate on three criteria. Score each from 1 to 5 and write the evidence underneath. The evidence matters more than the number: a 4 you cannot justify is a 2.
Names Already in This Workbook
Everyone you marked as an A- or B-player, and everyone carrying work on the Load Map. Tap a name to assess them.
Whole-Team Pressure TestFounder
Once you have a possible group, stop assessing individuals and look at the group as one unit. Tick each question you can answer honestly in the group’s favour.
- Does it bring useful knowledge from across the company?
- Can these people disagree without becoming defensive or political?
- Can they think beyond their departments?
- Is everyone here on merit, rather than because excluding them felt difficult?
- Is every critical perspective represented?
- Has nobody been selected primarily because of title, loyalty, familiarity or seniority?
Candidate Gap PlanFounder
Only complete this if you do not have at least four strong candidates. Record which situation applies and what you will do about it.
The instruction stands. Do not dilute the standard just to complete the roster. A Growth Lab Team of four A-players and one passenger is a slower team than one of four.
Proposed Growth Lab Team RosterFounder
Four proposed members alongside you is the standard roster. Add more if the business needs them. This is the output of the workbook and the document you take into the invitation conversations.
Political Implications CheckFounder
For any senior manager likely to feel sidelined by this roster. Do this before the invitations go out, not after.
The last question is the one that matters. If the honest answer to a manager’s concern is that they should be in the room, change the roster. The purpose of this check is not to build a defence of a decision already made.
Take this page into the invitation conversations. The full workbook stays with you.
