"Do it right the first time" is stupid

We learn from mistakes and doing it poorly.

What if you said to your 10-month-old “Ok, you are going to walk today.  Do it right or give up, it’s not for you.”

Nobody does anything right or well the first time.  And the better we want to get at something, the longer it will take to get there – so long as we don’t give up.

"If you were the leader of this company…"

People have good ideas and want to be heard.  They want to feel like their opinions are valued.

Ask your team members, “If you were the leader of this company, what would you do differently?”

If you’re a manager ask “If you lead this department…”.

Only the brave will ask because they are afraid of what they might hear.  

Go ahead – be brave! 

You’ll get some great ideas from people that know some things better than you do!

Selling on price?

If you’re selling because you have the lowest price, you’d better have the lowest cost; otherwise, you’ll have some sales but no profit and be wasting your time.  If you are selling at the lowest price, you don’t need salespeople.

Most of us can’t sell at the lowest price.  So we have to be good at selling added value, service, convenience, or uniqueness and we better have salespeople who can convey enough enthusiasm and confidence to the customer so they are motivated to pay our price for their own good reason.

What do you sell compared to your competitors?

Simplify the battlefield

It happens.  We add steps and processes to make things better, and if we aren’t careful, we are choking on them.

When you add a step in any department of your business, ask “Is there something I should take away?”, “Should I change something that’s already there instead?” and “Can I just take something away to fix it instead?”.

Keep your business as simple as possible.

Simplicity scales.

Your employee has three jobs….

Let’s say you have an ambitious employee who is trying to make ends meet at home and is working three jobs during the course of the week. Which job does the employee like the best?

Let’s say his supervisors have different opinions of him.  One thinks he’s really great, one pays no attention to him, and one thinks he is expendable.  Same employee!

At one job they ask with sincere interest and care if he is doing good and has everything he needs to do his job.  At your company, his manager is trying to catch him doing something wrong.

Which one do you think he is happiest at where he wants to give his best?

Is there a difference in employees?  Yes.  But it’s the difference in leadership that will make all the difference in your organization.

What should you NOT do?

What were you going to do today, that you may do many days – that you should not do?

Maybe you should NOT do it, or maybe YOU should not do it.

(Addition by subtraction).  

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The leader's real job.

The leader doesn’t do the work or build the company.

The leader builds the people and they build the company.

You're in the Arithmetic Business

Income – expenses = profit.

Make a profit or you’re toast.

Income – direct expenses = gross profit.  

Gross profit = administrative expenses = net profit.

We can say it a lot of ways, but you have to understand it.

Revenue (the dollars you collect, not sales) – Cost of sales (direct expenses such as materials, labor and sales commissions) = Gross Profit (You run the company on gross profit.  If your gross profit is too low, you can’t make much money or scale or make it up on volume very easily at all) – General and Administrative Expenses (“Fixed costs” that you have to pay even if you don’t sell anything, such as rent and insurance and people in the office and many managers and vehicles, etc.) = net profit.

Know your costs, look at your financial statements, ask questions and understand the arithmetic.

It’s not that hard.  The leader is responsible to make a profit, not the accountants.

Fear in management

If I am afraid of mistakes made by me or anyone else, I don’t trust anyone to take responsibility or accountability or do things for the first time.  It may be driven by my own fear, or that my leader demands perfection and will judge me poorly if one of my reports makes a mistake.

But fear will hold me back from growing my team and their ability to contribute in a meaningful way.  

Believe in people and let them do things for the first time.  You’ll find out who can do what well fast.  Many will surprise you with their latent talents coming out.  They will make a few mistakes, but you will get a team who is empowered and able a lot faster and have a happier team with higher self-esteem that smile more.

Empower others to make decisions

When a manager doesn’t trust others, or their ego wants to stay in control of everything and be the one who is best at doing everything, they will become the bottleneck and limiting factor, and their department will be stunted.

Empowering others to make decisions, and take responsibility and accountability is how you scale.  Essentially, the manager gives away part of their job to a team member.  Someone else doing a “85 is better than you doing a “100”.  This is because while you are doing a 100 you can’t do anything else, but while a team member is doing an 85, you can have many other people doing many other things.

You’re one person with the same amount of time as everyone else.  You don’t scale.  But you can scale through a bigger and better team if you lead them correctly.

Does this make sense?  Comment with the orange button!