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"Gino Wickman"
Great managers are hard to find. Great managers have a true gift and a passion for getting the most out of people. Great managers possess a unique ability that is not in everyone.
This message is a mini–passionate plea. Having worked with so many managers, I now see clearly the ones that truly want to be great managers and the ones that are doing it for other reasons (e.g., ego, advancement, having nowhere else to go).
One of my clients a few years back—the owner of the business—took over the sales manager role for his company because he thought it would be fun. He was very upset with me when I challenged his motivation and long-term ability to be a great, consistent, and enduring manager of his salespeople. Many years later, as he sits in the visionary seat of his fast-growing company with a great manager in the Sales VP seat, he thanks me for the brutal honesty and admits his ulterior motive.
A person who says “other than having to discipline people, keep expectations clear, repeat myself often, run meetings, and hire, fire, review and hold people accountable, I like being a manager” is not a great manager, and something bad is going to happen. Not always maliciously or purposely, but it’s going to happen.
If you’re sitting in a management seat for the wrong reasons or have put a manager in a seat who doesn’t belong there, you owe it to those people being managed to make a change. Make sure that every seat in your accountability chart that requires a manager is filled with a person who gets it, wants it, and has the capacity to be a great manager. If not, you must make the change.
Find out how you’re doing; (click here) to download the Management Questionnaire which is part of the LMA download. It contains five simple self-assessment points that get to the root of what makes great managers.
One simple discipline we teach our clients is the power of rating their weekly Level 10 Meeting (click to download the Level 10 agenda). The power of doing this consistently is getting instant feedback on the effectiveness of your meetings.
Meetings are a necessary evil in business. They are the moment of truth for leadership teams. They’re an opportunity for getting on the same page, solving problems, creating ideas, and reporting on what’s important. It’s vital that your meetings are great. That’s non-negotiable.
Knowing this, the best way to find out if your team thinks your meetings are great is to ask, and the fastest way to ask and get an answer is a rating. It works like this: At the end of your meeting, ask, “Okay, let’s rate the meeting. On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the best, how did we do?” Once everyone has answered, you’ll have your feedback. My advice is that an 8 or better is the standard. Anything less isn’t going to get you to great.
Sometimes, if the rating is less than an 8, you just leave it right there and end the meeting. You’ll have your insight, and the awareness alone will move you toward increasing the number. However, I’d also recommend occasionally asking anyone who rated it lower than an 8, “What would have made it a 10 for you?” You will then get some great feedback on how to improve and take it to a level 10!
I know it might be a little scary to find out the truth, but I urge you to try it in your next meeting.
The above title is our EOS Creed. Simply put, if you want a great enduring company, everyone on your leadership team must speak the same language and play by the same rules.
I’ve seen too many businesses where highly talented new hires are allowed to do things their own way, mergers and acquisitions that force multiple differing approaches to compete with each other, and stubborn business owners who won’t play by the rules. These are all examples of not running on one operating system, and they are less effective.
Having experienced this dynamic with over 120 companies intimately, I’ve learned that, in the long run, a team of average people operating on one operating system and all speaking the same language will outproduce a team of above-average people who are all doing and saying it their own way.
So, whether you have five people or 1000 people, the question is, are you all consistently following the processes, using the same terminologies, meeting on the same pulse, prioritizing the same way, selling the same, and delivering the same? The mantra should be one system, one vision, one team, one voice. That’s how sports teams win, and that’s how companies win.
There are hundreds of systems to choose from, or you can create your own. We’re partial to The Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS); regardless, you must choose one.
As Harry Beckweth says, “People don’t lead, purposes do.”
Your company’s purpose/passion/cause (please choose one of those three words) is its reason for being. Organizations that have one and live by it are more successful and endure longer than the ones that don’t.
Yours should meet the following criteria if you’ve nailed it:
- It’s stated in three to seven words.
- It’s written in simple language.
- It’s big and bold.
- It has an “aha” effect.
- It comes from the heart.
- It involves everyone.
- It’s not about money.
- It’s bigger than a goal.
I hope yours passes the test.
A common debate leadership teams have when setting Rocks is deciding whether something that is your day job can be a Rock—for example, things such as training, sales activity, reducing the AR balance, establishing the budget for the year, or employee reviews.
The question to ask yourselves is, is it DNA? If it’s DNA that means it’s automatic, consistently being done, and everyone’s comfortable that it’s going to be done. Here’s a rule of thumb: Until it’s habit and consistent (DNA), it should probably be a Rock.
Not to pick on any one person here, but this comes up a lot when setting a sales-related Rock. The common response is, “I’m going to do that anyway.” Frankly, in my experience, most of the time it’s an excuse for not wanting to be held accountable to the expectation. Another rule of thumb: If a majority of the team wants it to be a Rock, it’s a Rock.
Simply ask yourself the following: Is it one of the three to seven most important things that must get done? If the answer is “yes” and you’re saying you’re going to do it anyway, then make it a Rock.
I was in a Starbucks this week and noticed Howard Schultz’s book Onward. He is the CEO of Starbucks, and the book’s subtitle, How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul, prompted the idea to send you this video.
Are you protecting your company’s soul?
When I use the word “commitment,” many interpret it as commitment to the company, team, or cause. That’s not at all what I’m referring to here. Of course everyone on your leadership team is committed to the company (I hope). The question is, is each person on your leadership team committed to every decision you make every time?
Do You Have 100% Commitment When Resolving an Issue Every Time?
Another way of saying 100% commitment is “buy-in,” “on the same page,” or “agreement.” Without 100% commitment on every conclusion, you’ll have the same issues come up over and over. You will end up with side conversations that are unhealthy and lack crispness, which takes more effort to achieve results. You simply won’t have a united front on your leadership team.
One simple step to achieve 100% commitment and to make sure that every member on your leadership team buys in is to simply ask. At the end of IDS (click here to see the issues solving track), ask each member of the leadership team if they are all committed to the decision. The reason you might not ask most of the time is that you’re afraid to ask or you’re trying to rush to get through the agenda. It’s vital that you do it every time.
Not all members are going to agree or they might have gone a different way if it were their decision, but if they’ve been heard and they can genuinely live with it, support it, embrace it, and help drive it, then you truly have commitment.
It feels like an oxymoron discussing process to entrepreneurial leaders, but I hope to make clear the value of marrying process and entrepreneurship.
Jim Collins’s words say it best: “Magic occurs when you combine the spirit of entrepreneurialism with a culture of discipline.” Or in another common phrase, “You must systemize the predictable so you can humanize the exceptional.”
Is everyone following your company’s core processes? What processes, you might ask? Your company has a “way,” and you and your people might be taking it for granted. If you packaged it, it would actually be worth something. The way you market, the way you sell, the way you deliver, the way you retain your customers is unique and valuable. Often many discount it because it comes so naturally.
The reality, in most cases, is that you and your people are just not doing it consistently or that you’ve gotten away from it. Imagine if everyone did it the exact same way—your “way”—every day. How much more revenue, how much more efficiency, and how much more peace of mind could be achieved?
What are your company’s core processes? Are they documented? Is everyone following them consistently?
One of the most well-received articles I ever wrote was called “All You Need Is One Great People-Move This Quarter”
Recently, I recorded a video on the subject and thought you’d enjoy a nudge and receiving it in a different medium.
Enjoy!
Do you ever get frustrated with people on your leadership team while solving problems or brainstorming ideas? They may ask too many questions, jump to conclusions too fast, are too quiet, or are always a pessimist. Do you sometimes wish they all had your “MO” when discussing these things? Wouldn’t that be great? Or would it?
You might think it’s best to have all optimists on your leadership team or that it might be best to have all innovators or all realists, when in reality, my experience, after having observed over 100 leadership teams identify, discuss, and solve issues, is that you’ll actually benefit by having a balance of all types.
There are optimists and pessimists; introverts and extroverts; people who are detail oriented and people who aren’t; people who want to change everything and people who want to keep things the same; people who follow through and people who don’t; and people who are risk takers and people who are very conservative.
The strongest, healthiest, and most productive leadership teams are the ones that have a balance. When I work with leadership teams composed of all optimists with no follow-through, they tend to overshoot. When I work with leadership teams made up entirely of conservative pessimists, very little happens. The ones that are all detail-oriented tend to overanalyze and get paralyzed. When they aren’t detail-oriented, things tend to fall through the cracks.
I’m not talking about core values here; that’s different. Let’s assume everyone on your leadership team possesses your core values. Ideally, you want to make sure your team is made up of all the personality traits listed above. Ideally, make sure you’ve got one of each represented (a person can possess multiple characteristics).
Take a minute now and put the names of your leadership team members next to the characteristics below and see if you have balance.
- Optimist
- Pessimist
- Detail-oriented
- Detail-averse
- Introvert
- Extrovert
- Change agent
- Prefers status quo
- High follow-through
- Low follow-through
- Risk taker
- Conservative
