Good point on the terror. On the individual level, A/B/C players is your average self-justifying dichotomy: I'm better than those people because I work hard, I work smart etc. Yet on the system level, it's the perfect rationalization for companies too lazy to hire correctly and too impotent to own up to mistakes.
"Why couldn't these folks go above and beyond like these other teams? It must be that they are inherently not good enough. Fire them and get a new team in."
I would even go so far to say that it's the CEO's and senior management, not the employees, who push this myth the most. In somehow all formulations I've seen, the persons's boss, who is amazing (regardless of context), and her or his bosses who are also amazing, are the judges of all performers in the company. Because the system is perfect or filled with perfect people (read: the top part is), any point of failure must be the employee, by process of elimination.
"Why couldn't these folks go above and beyond like these other teams? It must be that they are inherently not good enough. Fire them and get a new team in."
I would even go so far to say that it's the CEO's and senior management, not the employees, who push this myth the most. In somehow all formulations I've seen, the persons's boss, who is amazing (regardless of context), and her or his bosses who are also amazing, are the judges of all performers in the company. Because the system is perfect or filled with perfect people (read: the top part is), any point of failure must be the employee, by process of elimination.
Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve#Criticisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch (the