Hire your destiny

“Your company is who you hire.

Your goal in hiring should be to hire someone who has a 90% chance of accomplishing what only 10% or people can do.” – From the book “Who”

Wow.  “a 90% chance of accomplishing what only 10% of people can do.”

How do you hire?

What I learned about marketing at the gas station

There is a gas station in my town – you know – with a food store like they all have.  But this food store has a real deli and a few stools to sit at.  This is a photo of it.  I went in recently and here is what I observed – 

1) Physical space counts – the place is newly built and really nice inside.  It’s welcoming and perfectly clean – even the bathrooms.

2) Highlight your product and activate reciprocation – on a table they had free samples of a great chicken sandwich.  I ate one and ordered three specialty breakfast sandwiches.  I got a coffee and waited for them.

3) Communication – The manager had a sit-down meeting with an employee telling her what was going on and reviewing things for five minutes or more.  (Remember – this is at a gas station store.)  I looked around – the employees were not seasoned professionals – but the manager was getting great performance out of everyone and they were working as a team.

4) While I waited I noticed a sign for the smoothie special.  A guy comes around the counter with a tray with a dozen free samples of said smoothie.  I took one and loved it.  I thought – “Hmmmm, I’ll have to stop here for a smoothie someday.”  Then I noticed the whole smoothie menu.  The guy offered them to everyone who walked in.

5) While I was drinking the little smoothie sample, the manager got her phone out and took a picture of me sampling the smoothie with the guy who gave it to me for social media.  I posed with a thumbs up.  (It’s a gas station!)

6) Everyone was in clean uniforms.

7) The cashiers were polite and were glad I came in.  They hire for personality.

As I drove out of the neat clean parking lot, the buzz of customers in and out continued.

It’s not that complicated, is it?

Positional Power

A big leader can take five minutes out of his/her day and change someone’s life.

Words coming from you mean a lot.

Use that power for good.

If you are riding a dead horse…

This is the first time I have ever cut and pasted anything like this into a ThinkDaily message.  Honestly, I didn’t even know I could.  It’s funny, but really think about it – are you riding any dead horses?  Are there dead horses in your organization you are keeping and accommodating?

Get off.

"I can't believe I said that!"

If you look back and are embarrassed of what you said, and the positions you took – you are growing.

When we get more information, learn new things, and live longer to see that the things we thought would work don’t, we change our minds.

This is called maturity. 

Be humble enough, and allow it to happen.

Risks and facts

Risks and facts do not cease to exist because you are unaware of them, or because you ignored them.

As a leader, you have to make good decisions.  Before you can do that you have to get all the relevant information, study the numbers, and weigh what is most important.  You have to get advice from THE RIGHT “experts”.  Then you can make the right decision.

If you fail to get all the information you need, you will likely make a bad decision.

Drama always cost money

Unexpected surprises.  People freaking out or not getting along.  Mistakes.  Accidents.  Customers upset.

Whatever kind of drama it is, it costs money.  Good people will leave – they don’t need the drama.

A good leader prevents drama and causes things to run smoothly and without friction.

It’s on the leader to make this happen – and in most cases the leader is the ONLY one who can make drama go away.

Are you up to the task?

Control Freaks run out of energy

When the owner is a control freak they will fail because the owner will die of exhaustion.

If you are the owner – “you don’t scale”.  You only have so many hours in the day and so many days in a week.  

If you insist on hanging onto oversight for every job you are killing yourself, killing your company, and disempowering people.

Lousy culture – Lousy Leader

If you have a lousy culture, it’s the leader’s fault.  They let this happen.

The leader’s job is a people job. 

Yes there are other things for the leader to do – strategy, capital allocation, strategic marketing, innovation, positioning, finance, and more.  But if the people part isn’t right, the rest doesn’t matter – and it will be a giant hole in the net.

Get the right people and set it up so they want to do their best – and will.

"A" players need to see the scoreboard

A players love being tested or challenged.  But they have to see the scoreboard. 

So put up a scoreboard in public and generate competition.  A players will step up their game and want to win by a mile.

C players dread everyone seeing the scoreboard with their performance, but they will step up their game because they don’t want to be last.

If the score is not public, people the players won’t care what it is.  Once the score IS right there for all to see, everyone tries harder – and loves the recognition.