????Remember Pete Best? Best was the Beatles drummer before Ringo Starr took the job and the group went on to become the Fab Four.
????Best was invited by John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison -- the original Beatles -- to join them in 1960 just as they went to Hamburg in northern Germany to play a series of club dates. According to Beatles lore, it was in Hamburg, playing night after night in front of a live audience, that the group developed the seasoning and skills that would make them world-famous only a few years later.
????Why didn't Best go on to fame and fortune with the others? He was considered good, but not good enough, and so he was dismissed after spending two years with the group.
????In early 1962, the Beatles (with Best) auditioned for a recording contract with Decca Records and they were turned down. Months later, they auditioned for Parlophone. The producer there agreed to sign them but insisted on using an experienced session drummer instead of Best for the recordings (apparently, this was common practice at the time).
????When Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison heard what the producer wanted, they decided to let Best go entirely and find someone else. They chose Ringo Starr and the rest is history. Apparently, they felt if Best wasn't good enough for the recording sessions, he wasn't good enough for what they aspired to become.
????The music world may seem like a universe away from the daily concerns of most bosses, but almost every manager we've encountered has had a "Pete Best" problem -- someone on staff who was good, but not good enough.
????How can someone be "good but not good enough"? It happens when you want your group to become better or somehow different. And when you and the group aspire to change and improve, you need to ask everyone involved (including yourself, by the way) if they are capable of helping the group attain and sustain that higher level of performance.
????Unfortunately, the answer isn't always "yes." There's often someone who's perfectly capable in the current scenario -- like Pete Best as a club band drummer -- but isn't capable of doing his part to lift performance. What do you do with this person?
