Enjoy:
Leaders HAVE to be authentic:
- Be comfortable in your own shoes
- People can see through a phony in a minute
- People can see if you are someone they can count on
- Some people come out of the womb with vests on; be yourself. Don’t be more proper than you really are; don’t be snooty. People hate snooty.
Leaders HAVE to have energy
- Anyone can be a whirling dervish, but you have to energize and excite those around you
- If you’re full of energy it doesn't do much for anyone
- But if you can energize those around you about the vision and mission, you win
- It’s my job to energize people about the mission and vision
- Energizing someone is not hyping them, not a cheerleading, but getting them to FEEL where you’re going
- Unless the leader FEELS it, he/she can’t pass it along
- Tell a story and show them how their lives will change others in this journey
- Get them to play act and get their frustrations out
- Ask people WHAT they are getting out of their job
On Meetings and Hiring
- Most meetings that are good have engagement...
- The job of the leader is to always raise the intellectual bar of the conversation
- Hire smarter people than yourself
- Insecure people hire dopes
Leaders HAVE to emphasize Candor
- Candor enables speed, less bureaucracy, less paperwork
Differentiation
- The top 20% identified
- The 70% vital identified
- The bottom 10% of performers: something has to be done quite quickly
- Establish a culture of differentiating these people, and let them know where they fall
- The kindest thing you can do is tell someone the truth
- You can’t have a differentiated organization without having candor as a value
- Without candor and differentiation, we don’t learn!
- It is all about the appraisal system
- You can’t have an employee that doesn’t know where he/she stands!
- Everyone already knows the differentiation; some of them just hope you don’t know it.
- How you handle differentiation is key.
- Most people try to fix the bottom; that doesn’t work. It wastes time. Give them a soft landing and help them move on.
- You have to transition them, they know they don’t belong!
- Top tier employees: good energy, good values, good people, and a gene that says I love to see people grow (love to give raises, celebrate their people, generosity of spirit). These people hire great people and they don’t have envy.
- A mean spirited person hides good people.
- The middle 70%, the vital 70%, the B’s: isn’t always there in the clutch, is valuable, hard working, not as valuable as others...
- Differentiation isn’t a set in stone mark, but a snapshot.
- Here’s what I like about what you’re doing; here’s what I would like to see you improve.
- Never write a new appraisal, always write on top of the last one. Seeing progression is the best way to gather the snapshots.
- What characterizes a bottom 10% person: not a team player, low energy, acidic (pain in the “arm”), negative energy, they whisper
- Disruptive people and boss haters need to be listened to occasionally; they’re loud
- Nothing is worse than negative energy in an organization; a hallway whisper is deadly
- You have to do everything you can to stop the meeting after the meeting; make the meeting after the meeting an unacceptable event
- Covering candor with “niceness” is a bunch of “nonsense”
- Compensation is different in the differentiation model: top 20% you do all you can to compensate and recognize them
- “Who are YOU to tell me I am in the bottom 10, middle 70” Well, you’re the boss and what you think matters.
- ...there isn’t a better way to build a better team. Biases, revenge, and immaturity is wrong.
- No winning teams ignore differentiation.
- People choose to join your team; no one forced them. The outcomes that come from those choices are reality. Figure out the best way to compensate.
Biggest Failure
- Moving slowly: you NEVER wish you moved fast enough...go, act, do it, get out there...
- Fallout happens with every choice, don’t wait for it. You know what fallout you have if you don’t move.
- IF you’re right, you build confidence.
- One of the jobs of a leader is to make everyone else around you confident. Pat people on the back. Criticism breeds hesitancy.
Passing the Baton
- Started 8 years before he retired
- Had 22 people in mind to be the successor.
- Dwindled down to 3...they were all long shots in the beginning
- You can’t make a selection in advance...people change. At any one snapshot moment, you may make a different choice than you would in the end.
- You’ll never know how someone will behave in the next role.
Celebrations
- The hardest thing you can get to happen is to have managers spend money on celebrations for small victories; it is SO important and energizes the group
- Every budget has slush; celebrate and reward
