Be an Ethical Entrepreneur, Marketer, and Business Builder

Simon Sinek, I’m not your dad – Firing people is sometimes necessary

May 18, 2018 by Leave a Comment

Open letter to Simon Sinek about your Mother’s Day Video.

Dear Simon,

You’re seriously awesome and one of my team’s favorite people to learn from.

Your Ted Talk on How Leaders Inspire Action is required viewing for my entire team and we’ve spent dozens of hours and discussions reviewing just about every video of yours we could find. Many of them I’ve watched several times.

You are clearly brilliant.

As to my credentials for giving you an honest critique:

  • Since Optimized Marketing‘s founding in 2011, my team’s primary Core Value is Love and Service.
  • In 2015, based on anonymous surveys my team was the Happiest Company in the World out of over 760 organizations and in 2016 the happiest in our industry.
  • The average tenure for a digital marketer is about 18 months. My team has 12 team members and no one has ever quit.

So when I offer my feedback it’s a sincere appeal from a huge fan of yours who has implemented and benefited from much of your message.

In other words, I’m not an armchair quarterback.
I live the values of Love and Service as does my team so I’m speaking from experience.

Your Mother’s Day video on your LinkedIn profile is a bit creepy.

In particular your statement that, “mom’s don’t get to choose their kids. They just get what they get and offer unconditional love. Great leaders do the same.”

Then when you go on to explain mom’s goal is to build up skills and let their children fail, the implication is, as I learned from Boss Baby (sorry, it’s my toddler’s favorite movie), you can’t be fired from your family and so shouldn’t be from your job. This seems to be taking your praise of Next Jump’s no firing policy in your TedTalk, “Why Good Leaders Make You Feel Safe”, even further.

If I’m your Team Leader, it’s just weird to use the analogy, “I’m your dad and you are my children.”

The idea that a leader should treat her people like her children (maybe Marissa Mayer took that a bit too literally when she read a children’s book to everyone at Yahoo) is absurd.

But let’s get more practical.

Why is it unhealthy for a leader to treat his team members with unconditional love like they are his children?

  1. They’re not. If you hire someone who has a serious mental or emotional issue, it’s not the responsibility of the new boss to be his therapist and counselor and provide unconditional love like his mother would. And suggesting it is the new boss’ responsibility is extremely dangerous.
  2. Even your children have limits. Jordan Peterson likes to say, “Never let your children do anything that would make you hate them because a lot of parents hate their children.” Tough love is a real thing and spoiling your child, not holding them accountable, or enabling their addictions or laziness, is not healthy.
  3. Sometimes children are flat out wrong. If your child is accused of rape, you are probably going to hire him the best lawyer and help defend him. But if he actually committed the crime, then only a sociopathic parent would argue he doesn’t deserve full punishment for his actions.
  4. Your children love you. If you raised your children properly, they will also love you, as their parent, unconditionally. So are you suggesting the team member should also unconditionally love their leader? In other words, if you should never fire someone, should an employee also sign a contract saying they will never quit. (Have you read Atlas Shrugged? That style of employment doesn’t work out.)
  5. The data just doesn’t support a no-firing policy. Check out First, Break All the Rules, and everything else written by Marcus Buckingham. To summarize, if you, as a leader, are providing the environment in which your team can excel (based on their own feedback), don’t waste your time on the under-performers. You’ll get much more benefit in helping the top performers get even better. Moreover, an under-performer on one team can likely be a top performer on another. Not everyone excels in the same culture and environment so it’s important to let those people go so they can find the best environment in which to excel.

As another example, at some point, likely because the parents screwed up raising their child, it may be necessary to kick a child out of the house as an adult.

You can’t take advantage of and abuse your parents and expect them to enable that behavior.
It’s not healthy or loving.

The same is true in business.

If you are not a good fit for my business and we unfortunately didn’t catch that during our half-dozen interviews and tests during recruitment, then after considerable coaching and guidance, the best thing to do for both parties is to part ways.

Even the most well-funded, well-researched, data-driven organizations in the world get it wrong such as when Tom Brady was the 7th quarterback drafted and pick #199 overall in 2000.

No hiring team is perfect.

As a leader, you have a responsibility to all of your stakeholders – your entire team, your shareholders, your clients – and if one team member is putting them all at risk, the unconditional love of a mother is not the answer.

As a child whose parents are kicking you out so you’ll go get a job and grow up, it’s not always immediately apparent to the child that this is an act of love.

And to the team member who is let go because her culture, values, goals, or talents are misaligned with the company’s, it’s not immediately apparent that separation is the best for all parties.

But, in both instances, it doesn’t make it any less true.

So please clarify your video indicating leaders should unconditionally love their employees so we can go back to agreeing with basically everything else you’ve ever said. 🙂

To great, loving leaders,
Bryan

Filed Under: Business Books, Business Ethics, Business Psychology, Leadership, Team Building

Living a Life without Regrets – Finding Your Purpose(s) at Each Stage of Life

December 12, 2017 by Leave a Comment

In August 2010 it was a long day riding my Yamaha FZ1 through big sky country in Montana from a tiny, campground just south of Glacier National Park to Yellowstone National Park. The air was quite brisk in the early evening at my camping spot as I setup my portable “pup” tent at over 8,000 feet and then had to jump back on my sportbike for a short ride down to the public showers.

My bike outside of Death Valley NP. FYI: Don’t ever ride thru Death Valley in August!

With all of my camping and heavy riding gear left behind, it’s amazing how much lighter (and exposed) you instantly feel with the cool, high-elevation air cutting through thin layers of clothing.

As I’m dismounting my motorcycle at the public shower, a minivan pulls up next to me. The mom quickly gets out, followed by 3 cute, blonde-haired “mini-mes” of their mother in a frenzy of giggles and activity.

The father walks around the back and then just stands there. Literally, and a bit awkwardly, staring at me gathering up my toiletries.

“Nice bike,” is how it always starts.
“Thanks.”
Struggling to continue the conversation, “Where did you ride from?”

Not one to miss the opportunity to share my epic adventure, I obliged the small talk. “Just south of Glacier last night but I’ve done the whole west coast starting in New Mexico, riding across to California and then north along the Pacific Highway almost to Canada. Do you ride?”
“I used to ride dirtbikes but had to get rid of them,” as he glanced back towards his minivan, his wife straining to let him enjoy his memories while not interrupting to ask him for some much-needed help.

Then it came as predictable as the sun rising in the east, “Do it while you’re young.”

The last time I’d heard that was just a few short hours earlier as I stopped to take some pictures in Northern Yellowstone at a scenic overlook.

It had become a bit of a disturbing joke to me. Since I was riding alone, there was no one else to share it with, but it was always a bit depressing because what was unsaid was much more important than what was said…

“Do it while you’re young… or you’ll never get to do it at all.”

Ouch. How depressing.

Never could I imagine the day that I didn’t regularly yearn for the thrill of a motorcycle.

Whether at the track or on a trip to the grocery store, for almost a decade I only rode motorcycles and drove sports cars while changing my address over 22 different times and moving between 8 different states.

Then, my son was born and it all changed.
Instantly.

My main modes of transportation shifted from a Buell 1125R and a Camaro 2SS 1LE to a rusty 15 year old Chevy pickup for a child seat to fit in the back.

The pickup was because, I reasoned, at least I’d have a vehicle to transport my bike to the track for the occasional track day. Two years later and still no track days.

But it wasn’t because there weren’t any opportunities to ride.
My wife gave me plenty of leeway to go ride if I wanted to.

I simply don’t want to give up my time with my family.

How to live without regrets

We all have purposes in life. Unfortunately, most people talk about “a purpose.” Something singular.

This is doing you a huge disservice. No one has “a purpose”.

We all have many purposes.
Each stage of your life has a different set of purposes.

As a student, my “purpose” in life was to learn. Learn to become the best engineer possible, learn to interact with people from all walks of life, learn leadership, learn to struggle, learn to overcome tough exams with minimal sleep, and learn to come together with a group of friends to achieve seemingly insurmountable tasks with no money and diets of Taco Bell.

As a young graduate, now in the real world, my purpose was to find my professional calling and passion. Learn how I could impact the most lives and generate the greatest value in the world. For me, my purpose was to find, buy, run or start a business and I clearly understood that I wanted to achieve enough financial success to support a future family.

My other purpose was to enjoy life to its fullest by exploring the world which often involved motorcycle and car trips to over 2-dozen national parks along with any other adrenaline-inducing adventure I could find. At one point, I flew to Australia to look at buying a business on 3-days notice.

In my mid-20’s and early 30’s those were my purposes and I lived them fully.

Now, in my mid-30’s it’s to spend time with my young, growing family.

The secret to not having any regrets?

Live out your full purposes at the right time in your life.

What happens when you mix-up the timing of your purposes?
You have a mid-life crisis.

When you’ve enjoyed adventures when you have little responsibility and few bills, you don’t feel that you’ve missed anything when responsibility and bills inevitably come along,

When you feel like you’ve missed out on some of that adventure because you got married too young or started having a family before you were ready, you turn 50 and buy a Corvette.

Far be it for me to ever disparage someone from wanting a Corvette. I bought a Z06 in my early 30’s and hated it. It was simply unusable as it couldn’t make it over a speedbump without painful grinding. Been there, done that.

Now when I’m playing toy cars with my son, I’m not thinking, man, will I ever have that Corvette?

Of course not everyone buys a Corvette. Maybe you buy a $2,000 purse, get plastic surgery, buy a Harley, or insist on a fancy vacation your family can’t afford.

Maybe you have an affair (or fantasize about it), get divorced and then run around, or just become depressed as you realize your youthful energy, beauty, and naivete aren’t coming back.

Certainly, treating yourself to an expensive gift isn’t wrong.

But if you’re doing it to “make-up for” something you missed before, you’ll quickly realize the new purchase depresses you when you finally admit that you can’t stand the Corvette scraping the ground when pulling into your driveway.

Don’t play catch-up with your dreams

A sure fire way to never be happy and content with life is to continually try to catch-up with “missed opportunities”.

Recently I asked a friend with a growing brood of grandchildren if he had any regrets raising his own kids as I was hoping to not make the same mistakes myself.

His answer was that he wished he’d spent more time with his children when they were all very young instead of relying so much on his wife to handle everything.

If you currently have a young family, they are your purpose. Loving, serving, teaching and being with them.

That certainly doesn’t mean you can’t do other things, but the last thing you want to do is give up that time with them to fulfill missed dreams and desires from your youth. Trying to chase those old dreams will simply result in you missing your purpose in the current stage of your life.

That’s a vicious cycle.

As your children age and go off to college, you’ll once again regret missing your purpose and then have a hard time letting go.

If you want to live a life without regrets, determine clearly your purposes for this stage of your life, prioritize them and live them fully.

To fulfilling your ever-changing purposes,
Bryan

Filed Under: General Business, Leadership Tagged With: , , ,

This 1 thing would have made the $70k minimum wage successful

August 23, 2015 by Leave a Comment

The Gravity Payments announcement that the CEO, Dan Price, was taking a $930,000 pay cut to pay his team a minimum wage of $70,000 has recently caught headlines again because it doesn’t seem to be working.

It would be easy to point out the obvious problem with this approach, the same one Walmart is experiencing when they raised their minimum wage, that when you pay people for just showing up, you violate the social contract that employers and employees have that more talented, hard-working employees should earn more.

In other words, when people don’t earn a raise, (i.e. it’s just given to you as a minimum) it upsets those who have earned a similar raise or a very close amount.

However, that’s not the biggest problem with the Gravity Payments minimum wage.

The biggest problem, as-is generally the case, was Price’s ego.

If Mr. Price’s primary motivation was improving the way of life for his team members and he was happy to redistribute his wealth to do so, that would truly be a noble and generous act.

To ensure it’s success he only had to do 1 thing:

NOT TELL ANYONE

That’s it.

Had Price met with each person individually on his staff who was making less than $70k/year and told them, “Hey, I think you deserve an increase in pay and we can’t afford to do it all at once but over the next few years, we’re going to work hard to bump you up to $70,000/year,” it would have likely been an extremely successful adjustment.

  • The longer term employees would not have felt unfairly treated because other, less-effective team members were now making as much as them.
  • The people who received the raises would have actually worked harder (particularly if he gave them specific, actionable feedback as to WHY they received the raise).
  • The public, political pundits and the press would have not ever known about it to debate it and his customers wouldn’t have left because of his perceived socialist experiment.

Price, unfortunately decided to take a different approach.

He setup a video camera, held a company-wide meeting, recorded himself announcing the minimum wage to his team and then shared that video with the media heralding himself as a generous and benevolent leader.

His actions fall under a simple concept I try to live by, “If you have to tell people you’re smart, funny or nice, you’re not.”

In other words, because he had to prove to the world that he is such a great guy and an example to be modeled by CEO’s everywhere, his plan backfired.

If he was a looking only to improve the lives of his team and never told anyone that he took a $930,000/year pay cut to help them, he would have been a great leader because his concern would have been solely for others.

So the question is, if it was that simple to execute properly, and it was, why didn’t he do that?

Since I don’t know Price, my insights about him come mostly from his actions however these 4 explanations are more of a reflection on shortcomings all successful entrepreneurs will struggle with at some point in our growth.

  1. Ego – “Pride comes before the fall”, are words that ring true for all of us and who wouldn’t want to become the national face of such a hot topic?
  2. Greed – Let’s face it, when you stage something like this along with video recording the meeting and interviews on national TV, you are trying to get free exposure to your business. There’s nothing at all wrong with free publicity. Unless you do it at the expense of your team while claiming it’s for their benefit. My guess is Price took a calculated risk to temporarily reduce his pay and then increase his income again (through a salary increase, dividends, a stock sale or sale of the entire business) as a result of increased sales coming from the low-cost PR.
  3. Political Agenda – Being a 31 year old with a 7-figure salary tends to inflate your self-worth so potentially he thought he could be the first person to prove socialism works. Or maybe he just thought of it as charity since he was donating his own salary and profits. (And by me mentioning this am I hypocritically pushing my political agenda? Sorry, it’s hard not to do.)
  4. Lack of leadership – As Simon Sinek reminds us, great leaders eat last. It doesn’t work the same way when you do something good so you can get personal media attention to show everyone how great you are.

This may look like I’m picking on Price…

Ok, I am.

But, unfortunately, this would be an instance of the pot calling the kettle black as I’m surely guilty of ego-driven mistakes in business.

However, when a situation this unique and popular comes to the forefront due to national media attention, it gives us the opportunity to learn.

And that’s my goal. To articulate both the good intentions and poor execution of this strategy, and separate the 2.

Dan Price appears to be a sincere, hard-working, intelligent and successful guy and his mistakes in executing a $70,000 minimum wage don’t change that.

Hopefully, this will help him, and other business leaders, consider that you CAN achieve seemingly impossible things (like a $70k minimum wage) when you become a servant leader and put the needs of your team ahead of your own ego.

Dan, if you read this, I truly appreciate your good intentions and hope my advice can help you execute better servant leadership going forward since that appears to be your goal.

To humble, servant leadership, Bryan

Filed Under: General Business, Leadership, Team Building Tagged With: , ,

The 3 Non-Leadership books every Leader, Teacher and Parent should read

January 19, 2015 by Leave a Comment

I realize that might title is a bit redundant.

A great leader IS a great teacher and vice-versa.
In industries, like internet marketing, where the amount of information doubles every 8 months, the ability to teach your team may be the single most important aspect of leadership.

So with that in mind, if you want to be a leader on one of my teams, these are the 3 books you need to read and live.

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck

If there was a single book that taught you how to be a great teacher and thereby a great leader, this is it.

Each day we are all faced with success and failures and we respond in 1 of 2 ways:

  1. Fixed Mindset – Each mistake is validation that you aren’t smart, talented or good enough. Conversely, every success tells you that you are innately “gifted” which is very dangerous because then you stop looking for challenges where you might fail and therefore not validate your “gifted” status.
  2. Growth Mindset – Each failure and success are a means of learning. You either learned what you wanted (i.e. succeeded) or you didn’t (i.e. failed). Either way, you have more to learn, further to go and higher mountains to climb. Your mind is ever-expanding and intellect can always grow.

Our team has summarized this in our Culture Statements as:

Learning from other’s successes is extremely valuable however sometimes learning from our own mistakes is more memorable. We embrace our mistakes, learn not to repeat them, and therefore are constantly pushing the limits to get better.

If you only have time for one leadership or teaching book, Carol Dweck’s book is it!

The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How. by Daniel Coyle


It wasn’t blind luck that the greatest concentration of artists, sculptors and painters of all time just happened to live in the same area of Italy over a 60 year time frame in the 16th century.

It’s also not chance that the small, dingy school where Anna Kournikova learned to play tennis, at one time produced 4 of the top 50 greatest players in the world.

It’s by design that the Dominican Republic has an unmatched density of great baseball players and, amidst abject poverty, Brazil has produced some of the world’s greatest players and teams consistently for nearly 50 years.

There’s a system and a code to “talent”. It’s not merely innate and it’s not simply about working for 10,000 hours on something. It’s about mindset, commitment, and breaking down the skill or talent to it’s essentials.

Daniel Coyle tells you exactly how and it’s as inspiring a read as you may ever encounter.

Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ by Daniel Goleman


Think for a second of the tests that you may have taken to measure your intelligence.

  • IQ Tests
  • SAT’s
  • ACT’s
  • College Exams
  • High School Exams

Of the tests listed above do you know which one most closely predicts success in life?
None of them. None can be correlated to job, income, happiness or any other measure of success.

But there is a test that can.

It’s called the marshmallow test.
Put a 3 year old in a room. Give her a marshmallow and say, “You may eat the marshmallow. Or you can wait a few minutes until I come back and I’ll give you 2.”

If she waits, she understands the value of delayed gratification – working hard and sacrificing now to receive something better in the future – and it will predict her future success more accurately than any other test.

That’s one of hundreds of examples that illustrate that Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is more important in our lives than IQ.

Goleman also provides great examples of how to teach 3 to 93 year olds how to improve their Emotional Intelligence and better empathize with those around us.

Those were listed in the order of importance so start at the top and work your way down.

To your success in becoming a great, teaching leader,
Bryan

Filed Under: Business Books, Leadership, Team Building Tagged With: , , , , ,

The 3 Videos Every Leader and Manager Must See!

October 21, 2014 by Leave a Comment

Simon Sinek – Leaders Eat Last

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. There’s no harder challenge for leaders than to ignore their power and instead focus solely on serving their team. Simon is being interviewed by Glenn Beck and tells the best short story I’ve ever heard to help keep leaders grounded by the fact that they exist to serve not be served.

Dan Pink – Drive – The surprising truth about what motivates us

Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose – Every human being desires these 3 things and Dan breaks this down with unbelievable clarity. He also shares the downsides of commissions and incentives in many job positions.

Shawn Achor – The Happiness Advantage

Everything you know about success and happiness is wrong. You will NOT be happy once you are successful. The truth is, you will be more successful if you are first happy.

Filed Under: Business Psychology, Leadership Tagged With: , , ,

Why WhatsApp is NOT everything that’s wrong with the economy

March 2, 2014 by Leave a Comment

By WhatsApp Inc. (http://media.whatsapp.com/) [Public Domain], via Wikimedia CommonsFacebook recently purchased a startup with no profits for $19 billion dollars in the largest tech acquisition in history.

The venture capital-backed, tech startup world is rife with problems as I’ve blogged about before.

However, Robert Reich has brought up one of the more popularly alleged economic problems.

He claims the problem is that tech companies like WhatsApp are hurting the economy by not creating enough jobs.

In Reich’s words:

Productivity keeps growing, as do corporate profits. But jobs and wages are not growing. Unless we figure out how to bring all of them back into line – or spread the gains more widely – our economy cannot generate enough demand to sustain itself, and our society cannot maintain enough cohesion to keep us together.

In other words, Mr. Reich is saying, “55 employees were able to make a business worth $19 billion dollars serving 450 million people and that’s not fair. Why do such a small group of people deserve so much?”

Of course, he offers no solutions other than to mention income inequality implying that it’s the fault of successful companies like WhatsApp for being successful.

Venture backed start-ups with insanely high valuations, minimal revenue and no profit have all sorts of issues.

But not creating enough jobs is not one of them.

Remember the Luddites rioting to destroy new machines that made the textile industry more efficient back in the 18th century?

Richard Arkwright invented his cotton-spinning machine in 1760 which became one of the main instigators of the Luddite riots.

After all, the cotton-spinning machine would displace the jobs of all of the seamstresses who used to make the clothes by hand, right?

In 1760, there were about 7,900 persons in England engaged in production in the textile industry. In 1787, 27 years after Arkwright’s invention and only 8 years after Ned Ludd destroyed 2 stocking frames allowing his name to become synonymous with all the machine destroyers, there were 320,000 people employed in textile production in England.

Why did more efficiency results in a 4400% increase in jobs?

Because with increased efficiency came lower prices so, instead of having 2 sets of clothes, people could afford to have dozens.

The same complaints have been lodged against every major technological advancement.

Every time we progress, the Luddites come out claiming this time the new increase in efficiency is going to hurt the public by reducing jobs.

The exact opposite is true.

About two centuries ago, the majority of America was an agrarian (i.e. farming) society.

However, the invention of farm machinery didn’t result in the majority of Americans starving because they were no longer needed on the farm. In contrast, less people on the farm meant more people inventing, building, and creating other things.

At its core, economics is very simple.

If something increases efficiency it’s good for the economy. If it decreases efficiency it’s bad.

WhatsApp figured out how to connect 450 million people with only 55 employees. That sounds hyper-efficient to me.

Our knowledge-based economy has seen the fastest and greatest improvements in efficiency and leverage the world has ever known.

The end result of that increased efficiency is always an improvement for society.

Massive fortunes were made by Rockefeller, Ford and Carnegie when we transitioned from an agrarian to an industrial economy.

More recently, Gates, Zuckerberg, Page and Brin have been richly rewarded in our transition from an industrial to a knowledge economy.

Would we all be better off if none of them were allowed to reap the rewards of their creations?

You have 2 options

Become a Luddite, slow down technological innovation, and reduce the reward for being an innovator by asking the government to intervene.

OR

Learn what it takes to excel in the knowledge-based economy and join the successful companies that are improving our lives.

Time will prove, once again, that Robert Reich, despite all of his experience, power, and prestige, is no different than Ned Ludd whose name became synonymous with the machine destroyers’ failed attempt to halt progress.

The problem is education

The problem is not our exponential increases in efficiency.

The problem is an education system that was built at the beginning of the industrial revolution and is still designed to teach students to be good “workers” instead of great thinkers.

As the owner of a marketing tech company who has been almost steadily hiring for 2 years, I can assure you that the education or degree of people who succeed on my team is irrelevant.

A particular degree, or college education at all, cannot predict job success as well as cognitive reasoning abilities, emergent leadership, the ability to learn quickly, a passion for your expertise and a willingness to make mistakes while admitting when you are wrong.

Google recently revealed their top 5 hiring attributes and indicated that the number of people at Google without degrees is increasing.

So whether it’s Twitter, Google, Facebook, WhatsApp or my company, Optimized Marketing, fast growing companies that understand how to leverage technology are coming to realize that relying on someone’s particular degree or level of education is not a good predictor of future job performance.

In other words, our education system isn’t reliably producing people with the skills we need.

The problem isn’t successful companies.

The problem is we haven’t yet learned how to educate students for the knowledge economy.
Don’t blame successful entrepreneurs for not making more jobs.

Celebrate their success and start teaching more people how to do the same thing.

There’s a reason Ken Robinson’s below TED talk explaining how schools kill creativity is the most popular TED video ever with over 25 million views.

Mr. Robinson’s talk is popular because he’s right.

Whether creativity comes in the form of becoming the dance choreographer who wrote Cats or the founders of a successful startup company that sells for billions, creativity is the solution.

Taking away the rewards of creativity, as Mr. Reich seems to be implying, would further hinder creative pursuits and not help anyone.

Imagine what the next 100 years will look like if we are all allowed to “come up with original ideas that present value”, as Mr. Robinson defines creativity.

To your passionate, creative success,
Bryan

P.S. For more examples of technology increasing employment in various industries, check out Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson.

Filed Under: Business Ethics, General Business, Leadership, Team Building Tagged With: , , , ,

Your “experience” is what’s holding your managers back and limiting your growth

August 22, 2012 by 2 Comments

If you hired the right managers, who are better than you in their areas of expertise, then the key to getting them to excel is simply to unleash them.

In other words, get out of his or her way!

You just need to let him make his own decisions, his own mistakes, and allow him to lead his own team. Once you realize that your “experience” and knowledge is actually holding your team back, then real growth can start.

If you’re doing ANY of the following, you’re holding your leaders back:

  1. Addressing issues with the team members who should report to him. This should be clearly defined in your organizational chart.
  2. Addressing issues from customers who should be talking to him. If your customers have been trained to go to you to get the best deal, then un-train them by making sure all pricing goes through your chosen leader.
  3. Vetoing ideas and making decisions in his department. Your job as the CEO, Owner, President or Team Leader is to explain why you think something will or will not work. Not to make the decision.
  4. Dictating that leader’s schedule. Sure you can ask him to take care of an issue or help you with something, but dictating a schedule without his approval is more like putting on a choke collar and then asking him to chase away the rabbits. He can try as hard as he wants but he’s never going to get the job done.
  5. Second-guessing or analyzing every decision. The details are not important to you, only the results are. Allow him to work out the details. (I explain below what to do if you think he’s going to implement a bad idea.)
  6. Holding regular meetings to ensure you ultimately get to make the “big” decisions. Quite often this is done indirectly. You might never come out and say, “It has to be done this way because I said so.” But saying, “You know, I really think that idea won’t work but it’s up to you,” is interpreted as “You better not try that!“, when it comes from most bosses.
  7. Ignoring mistakes that are made. This is a major misconception. Allowing people to make mistakes, in and of itself, is pretty worthless. Not addressing those mistakes is downright harmful to your business and the mistake maker. Mistakes should only be made once and the only way to ensure that your leader knows that it was a mistake, and has a way to prevent it from happening again, is to openly discuss mistakes. Biting your lip because you’re afraid to hurt his feelings by pointing out a mistake, is a sign that you still have him on a leash.

So how do you keep tabs on your newly free leaders?

  1. You need some “Rules of the Game” in the form of a written Vision, Mission and Culture. Think of these like your 10 Commandments of business. Everyone on your team doesn’t need to memorize them. However, your key leaders do need to know what’s expected of them and the clearest way to do that is in writing.
  2. You must have a Weekly Action SnapShot (WacSnap) so you can keep regular tabs on the key areas of your business. Depending on your function on the team, this may be included in a weekly meeting with your key leaders.
  3. You need Key Performance Indicators for each leader. For example:
    1. Service leaders need to demonstrate a profitable service department with minimal call-backs and customer complaints.
    2. Marketing leaders need a target acquisition cost, marketing ROI, number of leads, and conversion rate.
    3. Sales leaders also need to know conversion rate along with average dollar sale and lifetime value of a customer.
    4. Finance leaders need to know cash on hand, cash in receivables, and pending payables at all times. She also needs a target goal for savings and capital available for upcoming large purchases.
  4. At least twice a year you need to conduct a 12 Questions survey with each leader.

What if a leader is going to make a bad decision?

Have you ever made a bad decision? Since you’re reading this, then you somehow managed to survive it. Most poor decisions will fall on that side of the coin – They’re survivable. Keep that in mind.

  1. Ask him (don’t tell him) why he thinks X will work out well.
  2. Ask him if he knows of anyone else who has implemented it successfully. If not, and you have a resource for him to talk to on this topic, then offer it. You don’t have to pretend to be the expert on every topic. It’s much better to have a list of resources available.
  3. Let him know you’ve tried something similar to that before and ask if he’d like a few ideas.
  4. Find out how he plans to measure if the idea is successful or not. Every idea should have a measurement for success and just defining that allows most people to see the flaws in their own ideas.
  5. If he still thinks it’s a good idea, no one is going to die, the business isn’t going to go under, and an account worth more than 5% of your gross sales doesn’t have a highly likely chance of getting lost, back off and let him implement the idea.
  6. Once he realizes he’s made a mistake (which will be obvious if you did step #4), ask him what went wrong. Again, don’t just tell him. If you ever want him to think critically and figure out how to catch mistakes before they’re ever made, you have to stop spoon-feeding him all the answers. 
  7. If the idea does work, congratulate him on a job well done! Now go celebrate because allowing a leader to do something you didn’t think would work and being proven wrong, just helped you take a giant leap towards growing your business without it depending solely on you.

Won’t that take more time than me just making all the decisions?

Yes. At first.

You can only physically make so many decisions so your growth will be limited. Additionally, your freedom and ability to take vacations will also be limited.

More importantly, the ability for your team managers to be fully engaged and satisfied with their work will also be very limited.

One last thought…

For some people, “unleashing” your managers is going to be a BIG change. You’re not quite ready for it and they don’t quite believe you’re serious.

So during this transition, when someone comes to you to ask a question, don’t assume she wants your opinion. Chances are she doesn’t. She just doesn’t fully believe the decision is in her own hands and still doesn’t want to do something you won’t like.

Before you answer her question, you need to ask directly, “Are you looking for my approval or my opinion? If you want my approval, you have it. If you want my opinion, I’ll only give it to you if you treat it for what it is. Ultimately, it’s up to you to make the best decision for your team.”

More importantly, when you say that, you better mean it!

To your success in unleashing the talents within your leaders, Bryan

Filed Under: Business Psychology, Leadership, Team Building Tagged With: , , , , ,

Happiness leads to better Employee Productivity… Not the other way around! [VIDEO]

February 21, 2012 by 1 Comment

TED speeches are a secret obsession of mine. On any given week I’ll watch 2-4 of them. Out of the dozens and dozens of speeches I’ve watched, this speech by Shawn Achor is only the second I’ve ever shared on my blog. Why?

  1. It’s powerful and extremely effective.
  2. It’s simple to learn and easily IMPLEMENTED.
  3. It’s backed up by science.
  4. Few small business leaders have this concept on their radar.
  5. It’s actually quite entertaining.
[Read more…]
Filed Under: Business Psychology, Leadership, Team Building Tagged With: , , , ,

How to Implement a Compensation Plan Based on Productivity AND Customer Satisfaction

February 3, 2012 by Leave a Comment

It’s the holy grail of service-based small businesses. But it’s never quite that simple, is it?

If you pay for productivity or performance, customer service suffers because everyone just tries to fix as many widgets as fast as possible to make more money… Or pay based on customer satisfaction and now it takes your technicians 3x as long as normal so they can “take care of the customer.” Plus it adds a whole new dimension of work for your payroll department.

Upset Customer

Not the happy customer we're looking for...

However, what if you COULD do both?

And without adding a mountain of paperwork to your payroll department each payday…

Here’s my experience with companies paying their team based on productivity and customer happiness

In 2006 I had cable internet installed at my home in Pennsylvania and had a few issues along the way. And true to the stereotype for that industry, service was less than stellar. Around that time I had a good friend who worked for them and confirmed for me that they paid a straight hourly wage. A very high hourly wage in fact. However, for some reason, paying more than the average hourly wage didn’t translate directly to better employees or better customer service.

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Filed Under: Leadership, Team Building Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Set Business Goals for 2012 in under 60 minutes while munching on cookies

December 28, 2011 by 1 Comment

This is the most powerful thing you can do for your business this week or next.  A simple 1-2 page plan to cover your goals for the next 52 weeks is the best way to generate massive results this year and every year. And, yes, a useful, simple plan can be put together in under 60 minutes… While munching on cookies if you’re so inclined.

Here’s how…

  1. Write down your personal goals. Your business is a means to an end. If it’s not providing what you need personally then what’s the point? This goes for you whether you are an owner or team member. If your boss doesn’t understand your personal goals or you are the leader and you don’t understand the personal goals of your team members, you’ll never attain full engagement. These goals may be, “work only 40 hours per week“, “take off early in the fall to coach my son’s soccer team“, “take an extra week of vacation this year with my family“, “donate an extra $5,000 to charities this year.” Whatever your personal goals are, write them out.
  2. Write down your business goals. Now that you have your personal goals outlined, your business goals for 2012 need to be in-line with your personal goals. If they’re disconnected you won’t be nearly as motivated. Based on the examples above, if your goal is to only work 40 hours per week and you currently average 50 hours per week, your business goal becomes, “outsource, delegate, or kill 10 hours of work per week“. If your goal is tied to increased profits, such as having more money to donate to charity, then you need to figure out exactly what you will need to add to the bottom line and then work backwards from there. For instance, if you want to have an additional $5,000 for charity that would be $1250/quarter. If you convert half of your leads to sales, have an average dollar sale of $2,000, a net margin of 10%, and you average 45 sales per quarter, that means you need an additional 12.5 leads per quarter OR to increase your average sale to $2278 OR increase your margin to 11.4%. Do any one of those 3 things and you’ll have your extra $5,000 per year for charity. Better yet, target a smaller improvement in each one.
  3. Brainstorm ways to achieve your goals. Now that you have concrete personal and business goals, sit down and write out everything that comes to mind that might help you reach those goals. In most instances we know that we’re wasting 10 hours per week doing low-level work that someone else can do if we just provide them with a bit of training and a procedure or checklist. Or we know that to get a few extra leads we can develop our referral program or by focusing less on website traffic and more on website conversion. Whatever the ideas, just write them all out. Don’t cross anything off or ignore it at this point. Just get it on paper or into a document.
  4. Put each brainstorm item into the Business Triangle. To help us organize the ideas and start putting together a plan for how we’ll achieve each one and who on your team can help you, categorize each idea into one of the categories from the business triangle: Sales/Marketing, Service/Operation, Finance/Administration. If the idea doesn’t fit succinctly into one of those areas it probably fits into all 3. For instance if you need to improve your pay structure, performance reviews, or buy a faster server, any of those things will help all 3 areas of the triangle. For those items, I put them under the Multipliers/Leverage category since they can multiply or leverage your entire business.
  5. Prioritize each item according to the 80/20 rule. Now go back through your list that’s currently broken into those 4 categories and put the items that are most beneficial in each category at the top of the list and least beneficial at the bottom. Take into account how long each item will take. For instance if the one that will be most beneficial will take you 20 hours and require the help of 3 other team members but there are 4 others that can be accomplished with 2 hours of work each, you are probably better off accomplishing the 4 smaller tasks, enjoying the benefits of those, and getting a few wins under your belt to feel confident tackling the bigger project.

In 60 minutes, that’s about all you can accomplish. From here, the next part is actually the toughest. You need to break down the To-Do list into weekly, digestible action items. Whether those items are for you or for someone else they need to be in bite-size chunks so you can feel confident in tackling 1 each week.

This is where an experienced business coach, consultant, or small business engineer can be immensely powerful. Not only can he help you determine exactly where to improve your business to achieve your goals, he can provide resources and weekly actionable items to keep you on track. He’ll save you enough time and money along the way that his service should pay for itself.

As a matter of fact, I’ve developed a Leadership Action Checklist that includes over 50 actionable improvements I’ve seen small businesses make to improve their bottom line and rely less on the owner. That list alone would almost entirely cut out steps 3 and 4 above.

Here are a few more tips on writing out your goals…

When writing goals, they need to be specific, actionable, and time-constrained. For instance, here are a few examples of poorly written goals:

  • Make more money
  • Spend more time with my family
  • Take more vacation

Here are examples of how to make those goals more powerful:

  • Be able to increase my salary by $50/week by the second quarter of 2012
  • Attend 90% of my daughter’s cross-country meets (which require me to leave the office by 2:30 12 times in the fall)
  • Take 4 Fridays off this summer to take weekend trips with my family to A, B, C, and D and 1 Friday off in the spring for a trip with just my wife to E

The difference between the powerful goals and the “generic” ones is immense. Your mind can picture the second set of examples very clearly and it puts PRESSURE on you to get it done. The first set of goals can easily be pushed off or even “checked off” after achieving a fraction of what you originally intended by that goal.

To make the goals even more pressing, share them with your business partner, spouse, or business coach.

To your personal and business success in 2012, Bryan

P.S. I’m working from home this week surrounded by Christmas cookies so, though I intend to do my 2012 business plan while munching on cookies, and I highly recommend it, it’s not required.

Filed Under: Business Psychology, Leadership Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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