I believe that there has never been a time in business where smart productive people mattered more. We’re entering a period of massive change, turmoil and opportunity, and the catalysts of progress will undoubtedly be the 9s – the star performers – in your organization.

Ever since I got a piece of advice from an investor in one of my early companies, I always use ‘9’ as a way to describe a star performer.

It is all about the people you hire. Never confuse a 6 with a 9 because 9s will always exceed your expectations in the long-term and 6s will always disappoint in small soul-destroying ways. On the surface it is hard to differentiate between the 6 and the 9. Both turn up for work every day. They may be equally capable. Experience may appear to be equal, and often their professional training is the same. They just don’t deliver the same results. They turn you inside-out and upside-down.

We’re seeing tremendous confluence of technologies, and industries heretofore separate – and in some cases sacrosanct – are morphing into new manifestation of new paradigms that borrow the best and throw away the rest.

• The Agile Imperative has become a de-facto survival guide. The ubiquity of information, and pace of innovation in its delivery, transforms former value communicators into redundant empty vessels, their space being taken by those who, each and every day, craft new ways to create value.
• Positioned differentiation is being overtaken by true value difference, and demographic shifts in age and economic profile are coloring a different landscape to the picture we’ve all been more or less comfortable with.
• Applications like Uber are designed for how workflows should be instead of optimizing for how things are. They are selling you back time and removing friction.
• Nearly everything in business is available as a service as demand. This ubiquitous network that is the Internet, particularly in the Web Squared world, is threatening traditional service businesses, and companies who hang on to old-world ways.
• Peer to peer advice is three times more likely to be followed than ‘interested party’ advice, so customer experience is a more powerful marketing engine than marketing.
• Social media had been the catalyst for the creation of independent listening posts and context is everything, but context is determined by the customer – not by the vendor.

If you accept that any of this is true then you should be worried – unless you surrounded by people who you can truly classify as 9s – not 6s masquerading as 9s.

Those in leadership positions in companies of all sizes have an opportunity every day to make decisions that will prove to be terminal for their company, department or business unit. New rules apply, and you need to have a great team around you to understand the evolving mixture and respond quickly.

When I was CEO at Altify (I recently hired a new CEO and now I am Executive Chairman), I considered myself very fortunate to be surrounded by some truly great people. Those that influence where we go, what improvements we make to our software, how we solve big account planning problems for our customers, help with sales forecast and pipeline management, help sales and marketing organizations align around their customers, enable sellers to do more in a micro-moment on their phone than they may have thought possible, and who inspire the evolution of our sales process and methodology aspiration, are those who exhibit the attributes of a true 9.

Here’s how I think about 9s …

1. They show up wherever they can possibly make an impact
2. They are fully immersed in our business
3. They care about what might impact our customers
4. They research our industry, our competitors, our partners, and our customers – irrespective of what job they have
5. Their thirst for knowledge is insatiable
6. At heart they are entrepreneurs
7. They’re never afraid to say ‘I don’t know what this means, can you help?
8. They are life-long Learners
9. They accept failure – but don’t admit defeat too early
10. They like to win
11. They never dismiss competitive threats, but rather look to see what we need to do to 
improve our differential advantage
12. They are always confident, but never arrogant
13. They respect all other perspectives, seeing alternative views as an opportunity to learn
14. They never say ‘Why?’, they always say ‘Why Not?’
15. They’re never afraid to challenge anyone’s opinion, knowing their challenge will be respected in turn
16. They are never afraid to say – I screwed up, and take remedial action
17. They are not afraid to take risks, except where it could detrimentally affect our customers
18. At their core they are passionate
19. They understand the need to have a strategic long-term view, and a short-term execution focus
20. They exhibit what we call ‘Rightful Impatience’, an urgency to improve and progress, 
earned through effort and application

When you are surrounded by people like this you are driven to self-improve to lead. You will never be scared and never alone. You owe that to the 9s.

If you want to read more of my blogs please subscribe to Think for a Living blog. Follow me on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn. I want you to agree or disagree with me, but most of all: I want you to bring passion to the conversation.

Donal Daly is Executive Chairman of Altify having founded the company in 2005. He is author of numerous books and ebooks including the Amazon #1 Best-sellers Account Planning in Salesforce and Tomorrow | Today: How AI Impacts How We Work, Live, and Think. Altify is Donal’s fifth global business enterprise.