People

Here’s How to Take The Next Step. How Do I Get Out From Under the Day-to-Day and Work On My Business? That’s the most common question I hear from owner/operators. You’ve got people to sell or make what customers pay…

Incentives are powerful - but hard to get right. “Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome” - Charlie Munger. If only business were that simple. The problem is we rarely want just one outcome. We need a…

Plus a Special Announcement you won't want to miss. People confuse management and Leadership. They're not the same. This post is about why you need both but if you confuse them you might end up with neither. But first a…

Your Maturity as a Manager is Shown in the Answer. Often when people hire me it's because they're frustrated with the repeated failure of an employee. They complain (or vent to say it more gently). That's rarely useful unless it…

You Need Actionable Insights not a Number. TL; DR You absolutely should survey your employees because an anonymous survey will tell you things that you won't learn otherwise. The goal of course, is happy, engaged employees, who do good work…

A presentation to TRIBE about Output Thinking and the Three levels of Management. Knowing the different outputs managers at different levels must produce. Makes your company more productive and easier to scale.

That's the first lesson from the greatest NCAA basketball coach. John Wooden is famous for being arguably the greatest basketball coach in college sports and for propelling many of his players on to stellar careers in the NBA. He's also…

To grow, your company must do hand-offs well. Before we start, I’m asking for a favor. Many of you have bought my book, Output Thinking, and for that I am grateful. If you have, I'm asking you to please leave…

Management is getting work done through other people. It happens differently at the three management levels - even if the same person manages all three.

But who makes them in your company? The reason you hire people is to produce some output: widgets, or hamburgers, or sales. I wrote a whole book about this Output Thinking: Scale Faster, Manage Better, Transform Your Company. But a…

Why? Because they make a manager's job harder. These are not magic words that you can sprinkle over your company to get amazing results - despite what some consultants will try to tell sell you. These are words that if…

Here's something I bet you didn't know if you speak English. There's something every speaker of English knows but most don't know they know. It's the reason you can say "my big, fat, Greek wedding" but saying "my Greek, fat,…

Subsystems are the Key. Imagine you want to delegate dinner. You have someone with all the skills needed. What do you tell them to do? You could say any of these things: Make me something delicious and have it ready…

Andrew Lynch hosted me on his podcast to talk about this book by Andy Grove. Andrew Lynch was kind enough to invite me on his podcast, The Rereadables, to discuss the book High Output Management by Andy Grove. Grove was…

It's not the numbers - it's what's in your head. Most SMBs Don't Need a Dashboard - but they are cool. Here's how to use one if you need to. Dashboards Track Output. When you realize your company is an…

Management is a system - with 3 levels. Management is getting work done through other people. We'll discuss the people part in another article - it's just as important. This one’s about the work. If you think about that definition,…

It's not as easy as you think. When you hire people, you expect them to produce some output. The output is the most important part of any function you have people perform. So it makes sense you'd want to measure…

Two Types - Internal & External. My client rescheduled our time twice in a row due to emergencies. It got me thinking that there are two types of emergencies. To over simplify (a little) one type is internal. A machine…

One of the biggest frustrations for any business owner is when an employee doesn't perform to your expectations. The higher level the employee, the worse it gets. The root cause it often a mismatch between our expectations and their performance.…

In a previous post I discussed the 4 Parts of a Function and why it's useful to see your company as a compilation of functions rather than jobs. If you haven't read that one, it will make more sense to…

The above tweet brought several questions to my mind. . If a remote employee hired someone else to do their job, would you even know? . How would you know? Why would you care? Let's deal with the last one…

Hiring Part 3 - How to select the right job candidate. How to interview, ask Behavioral Interview Questions and use System 2 decision making. This goes along with Part 1https://youtu.be/iLLXQjdMZxk and Part 2 from Learn what's even better than a…

In this session from htps://CEOBootCamp.com we cover the 2nd part in the hiring process. You'll learn ideas to find candidates and ways to filter out the inappropriate ones. 0:06 Intro. 0:30 4 Parts of an Effective Hiring Program. 2:13 Find…

The Training Grid is a tool that shows you who's been trained on which tasks. It's something I use with my clients as But don't be fooled by its simplicity. It's a very powerful tool and I cover several ways…

Part 1 of How to Hire Better. These are tips from my work at If you want to build a great company, you need to have great people. But the hiring process is hard. Here we break down the first…

3 Reasons Management is hard and ways to make it easier. We define management and discuss why interaction with the people you manage is not like social interaction. There's a different skill set involved. This video is a bit different…

Hiring can be the most problematic part of running your business - but when done well the rewards of a good team are critical to success. Most job descriptions describe a person's position in the org chart (who they report…

First let's define management. . MANAGEMENT is getting work done through other people. There are two parts to that - the work and the people. A great manager melds those two together to produce an amazing outcome. The work is…

Put a Careers link on your website. . This is one way you can get the word out when you're hiring. Putting ads out is nice but most jobs get filled by people who know people. The good ones aren't…

I have a client who needs a new CPA. . Part of the reason is technical. They are in a narrow niche of the construction industry but have a general purpose CPA. They need someone with the experience to answer…

A manager gets work done through other people. This is impossible without delegating. But delegating is a skill that must be learned. There are three things to communicate in order to delegate well. I said communicate, not broadcast. That means…

What? These are one-on-one meetings that you have with each of your direct reports on a regular basis. . Why? These are not status updates - not about the work. They are more important (and less urgent) than that. The…

It takes commitment to build a business - or for that matter, to build anything. But what exactly does that word mean? I've been thinking about it lately and I've come up with this short cut. Commitment is not measured…

Mark Suster just posted a great piece on taking time to THINK as an Entrepreneur. Here’s the money quote (paraphrased). 1. I think the best leaders are Thinkers. They often need teams of people to help them Plan how to…

My wife broke her leg recently so I’ve been doing all the driving and grocery shopping. She is able to use a wheeled stool to get around the kitchen and cook again which she is very grateful for – as…

It's simple: Give them what they want! Hey, just because it's simple doesn't mean it's easy. If you don't have happy employees this will change everything. I mean EVERYTHING. The good news is it works. And the better news is…

Think for a minute about what would happen if your employees were better motivated. Would there be fewer problems at work? Would you get to spend your time doing different things? What kind of things? Would it mean more money…

Animal trainers have a saying "It's never the animal's fault" Because animals don't speak, trainers need to find non-English methods to communicate what they want. If the animal doesn't perform, they try to find a better way to communicate, they…

Joel Spolsky recounts his move from a Microsoft to (eventually) Juno Online Services in New York. Eventually, though, I started to discover that the management philosophy at Juno was old fashioned. The assumption there was that managers exist to tell…

Leadership has been getting all the spotlight in recent years, but management is really where the action is if you want results. Management is the hard work of developing (as well as sustaining) an environment that supports people to be…

Everyone knows that to grow a business you have to delegate. But it's hard. Here's why. Most of what you do (and want to delegate) is knowledge work. Peter Drucker coined the term Knowledge Worker to mean someone who works…

Why you should hire the best: In almost every category the best is way beyond good. You'll get 10 times the results from the best people than you will from really good people. It will be more fun to work…

I agree with Peter Drucker that this one is overrated when running a company. Skill in management is much more important. Nevertheless, leadership can be a useful skill, and it's much simpler than you'd believe by reading or listening to…

Being a leaders means people follow you. That's all. If you look historically at the leaders that people followed fiercely, you'll find some of the most destructive, self-serving, and vicious leaders in government, religion and yes business. Hitler was Time…

I've been asked whether management is one or the other. How we ask a question often blinds us to a useful answer. Management, like most aspects of running a business involves both. My quick distinction is that the science of…

Guy Kawasaki has a great post on how to fire someone. I was conflicted by one point that he makes: his dismissal of the idea that you should fire someone quickly. He says you should give them a second chance.…

Work is defined as moving objects at or near the surface of the earth, or telling others to do so. The first is uncomfortable and ill paid, the second is more enjoyable and better paid. ~ Old Joke (which isn’t…