Book Value

Corporate MVPs: Managing your Company's Most Valuable Performers
By Margaret Butteriss and Bill Roiter
John Wiley and Sons Canada, Ltd., $44.99

For a company to excel, it must attract, manage and retain its most valuable performers (MVPs).  Representing little more than 5% of any workforce, these people are the principal drivers of innovation and progress, and can be identified by their unstinting loyalty, work ethic and ability to create extraordinary value. An MVP is not the oft-disruptive "lone star" whose self-interested work disdainfully ignores the accomplishments and input of others. Indeed, true MVPs can operate effectively only in an environment where they are also encouraged to motivate others to take active roles in the company's success.

Butteriss and Roiter focus much of their study on identifying the corporate culture and human resources strategies needed to attract and retain such exceptional employees. It is much easier to identify an MVP, they admit, than it is to stop one from leaving. They offer a number of gruesome real-world results of failing to recognize the value of an MVP. Their riveting examples — culled from scores of in-depth interviews with top business leaders and HR professionals — most often focus on an underappreciated MVP who works tirelessly and successfully to improve an organization only to be poorly compensated or bushwhacked by a jealous lone star.

The authors' successful examples of MVP management seem to require as rarefied a level of corporate integrity, trust and respect as those possessed by the MVPs they hope to attract and keep. Still, Corporate MVPs offers a fascinating insight into the psychology of the dedicated MVP, what motivates this rare breed and, most importantly, how best to keep him or her from taking flight. 

-- Rob Colapinto