Adam Robinson's Blog, page 6

This Week on Inc.: Interviewing Job Candidates? These 4 Things Should Trump Experience Every Time

When it comes to the hiring process, prior job experience often has the least level of correlation to actual job performance. But job experience tends to be the topic employers spend the most time asking candidates about in interviews.

While asking about job experience is important, it shouldn’t be the focus of the entire interview. Instead, consider asking questions that will help you determine whether or not job candidates possess the super elements of top performers. Read my latest Inc. post to learn what they are.

TBTW Podcast Highlight: Building a Culture-First, Mission-Driven Organization

Leading into the Labor Day weekend, we’re taking a break from the podcast and sharing one of our most popular episodes.

Eric Savage, President of Freedom Automotive out of Pennsylvania, joins me on the podcast this week for our deep-dive into the people side of retail automotive. Eric tours the country talking to folks about building a company that is mission-first, not money-first. He’s discussing how he’s built his renowned company culture on this episode of The Best Team Wins Podcast.

Eric was a featured speaker at last year’s Elevate conference, the premier event for human capital transformation in retail automotive. Learn from other leaders in retail automotive human capital management at Elevate 2018, taking place October 1-2 in Chicago. Click here to learn more and register.

             

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Transcripts:

Adam Robinson:
Welcome to the Best Team Wins podcast where we feature entrepreneurs and business leaders whose exceptional approach to the people side of their business has led to incredible results.



My name is Adam Robinson. For the next 25 minutes, I’ll be your host as we explore how to build your business through better hiring.



Today on the program, we have Eric Savage, president of Freedom Automotive Group in Pennsylvania. Eric is a maestro with the talent side of a business that, from the outsider’s perspective, has not always been known for being good at that kind of thing.



We’re excited for Eric to share his experiences with us today, because we know the best learning happens through hearing about these experiences shared by our fellow entrepreneurs and leaders. Eric, we are really excited to have you on the program. Thanks for being here.


Eric Savage:
My pleasure, glad to be here. I’ve never been called a maestro, usually it’s just very handsome, but I’ll take maestro.


Adam Robinson:
There you go. Add that to your list, a very handsome maestro. We’re glad you are here. As is the the tradition here on the podcast. We always start off with what we call the right foot. That’s the best news business, or personal that happened to each of us in the last seven days. Eric, why don’t you kick us off? What’s your right foot for last week?






Eric Savage:
The best thing that happened in the last week dates back actually to Christmas, so it’s a little more than a week. The good news that comes with it is about a week old. That is that my daughter, for Christmas, she’s 11 years old. She gave me a present that she had entered a contest, an essay contest, with the local newspaper about what she would really want to give someone for Christmas.



It was a beautiful essay that she had written about a project that we do that we call Holiday Helpers here at the dealership where we help really needy families, provide them with about a week’s worth of food. We give them a great Christmas party and a wonderful experience. We do this every year. We’ve helped we think somewhere around 12,000 people in 10 years. It’s been really extraordinary.



Long story short, she wrote her whole essay about this, submitted it to the paper. She thought she did not get published. We found out a week ago that, in fact, it was published in the paper. She was just really excited about that.



It’s just great to see an 11 year old who’s so thrilled about our concept for living, which we call the Life Improvement Business and how she was demonstrating that in this essay that she had written and how it got published. It was just great.


Adam Robinson:
Incredible and congratulations.


Eric Savage:
Thanks.


Adam Robinson:
On our side, we packed up the family. I have three young boys. We drove to grandma and grandpa’s house in Jacksonville, Florida from our home in Chicago.



We made a lot of memories, let me tell you. We’re already looking back fondly on the things that were good and we’ve immediately forgotten the near Lord of the Flies experience we had passing through Nashville, both ways. Excited to be back home. The kids had fun and nobody got left behind.


Eric Savage:
That’s good. I’m amazed that everyone survived that long a drive with three little kids. That’s amazing. Good job.


Adam Robinson:
Yeah, there we go. They’ll always remember. That’s what we hope. All right. Let’s jump right in. We are here today to focus on the people side of your business. Before we get into that, let’s set the stage. Give us the 30 second pitch on Freedom Automotive.


Eric Savage:
Sure. If you look at us from the outside, you’d see Freedom Auto Group. You would see four car dealerships in two different locations. That’s what we would look like. In fact, from the inside we don’t believe we’re car dealerships at all.



Freedom, we believe we are in the Life Improvement Business, which means that our one and only job is to improve the life of any and every person we meet in any and every way possible every single day.



To boil that down, what we really mean is we don’t sell cars to people, instead we make car buying fun, easy, and hassle free for people. We’ve really transformed our concept of businesses instead of doing things to people, to doing things for people.


Adam Robinson:
Excellent. If listeners want to learn more, at the end of the program, what’s the best way to reach you?


Eric Savage:
Best way to reach me is on email at savagecars@aol.com. Don’t make fun of the A-O-L address, please. I’m a very late change agent on those things.


Adam Robinson:
Retro is in. That’s authenticity. They call that authenticity now, Eric.


Eric Savage:
My son said to me, “Dad, the Smithsonian called. They’re looking for your email account.”


Adam Robinson:
That’s pretty funny. Yeah. Listen, what that says is that you were an early adopter of one of the most important technological innovations …


Eric Savage:
There it is.


Adam Robinson:
… to hit humanity. I applaud you for that. Again, the maestro reference is apropos, so well done. All right. Let’s talk about the people side of your business. So excited to dive into this, because I know how passionate you are about this stuff.



Let’s start off with core values. Do you have defined, specific core values for your organization?


Eric Savage:
We have defined, redefined, and over-defined core values for our organization. We believe that defining, redefining, and over-defining is really what makes one organization better than another. The more we talked about, in detail, things like core values, mission, purpose, vision the more time we spend on that, the better we become, so absolutely we do.



Our core values spell out the acronym reach, R-E-A-C-H. The R stands for results. The E stands for enthusiasm. The A stands for accountability. The C stands for connection. The H stands for honesty. Again, that spells out reach.


Adam Robinson:
That’s great. Take a few minutes and walk us through what they mean in daily life.


Eric Savage:
Sure. Results is pretty simple. The idea behind it is that we are a mission based organization. We are not a money based organization. Not saying we don’t have profitability. Of course, we do. We’re not money first. We’re really mission first. Results means that we can’t disregard getting results, or creating results. Our purpose about results is different than most.



What we say about results is this. I deliver results. I work hard to deliver the desired results for my customers, co-workers, community, and company. I want you to hear the order of that. Customers first, co-workers second, community third, and actually company last.



We believe that developing results for all the other parties first will end up yielding results for the company in the end anyway. First, let’s get those results for our customers. Let’s get those results for our co-workers and then certainly for the community. The company will end up it’ll all work out. That’s results.



Enthusiasm is pretty simple. Our people believe that Freedom, Freedom Auto Group, without fun is no fun. Why would we do that? Enthusiasm is required. If I give a statement that says,”I approach each day and each task and each moment with energy and humor,” then in fact, I am an ambassador of smiles. That’s a really important statement. I love the fact that our people felt that our company could not exist without fun.



Accountability, this is the 800 pound gorilla. That’s the A in reach. That is I’m responsible for what I see, what I hear, what I think about, what I say, and what I do. That is the most important of our core values.



If we can’t be fully responsible for everything we see, hear, say, think, and do, then we have no place here in this company. This is one that takes a lot of training and dedication to learn and to express to our people.



We have connection. This is really important. C is for connection. A lot of people say, “You mean communication.” No, C is for connection. Communication is just the exchange of data. It’s just what you and I are doing. I’m sharing information with you and you’re receiving it. You’re share information with me and I receive it.



Connection is when we take a deeper dive. What we do is we use the communicated information and leverage it for a greater purpose of shared. By the way, we use that leveraging to create better results for our customers, our co-workers, our community, and our company. That’s really what connection is about. It’s about being together, in a very symbiotic way instead of just exchanging data, actually leveraging it.



Finally, is honesty. This one’s very interesting. Honesty starts with, “I am true to myself.” I believe we are the only organization that has the definition of honesty first about the person being true to themselves and then I have earned the trust of my …. You guessed it, customers, co-workers, community, and company.



We believe that until you can be true to yourself, you have no ability to be true to others. That’s why we have this as part of the definition. Every word was carefully weighed out and measured before it was put into this process.


Adam Robinson:
Yeah, I get the feeling, Eric, that you’ve communicated these once or twice before. That was as crisp as I’ve ever heard anybody walk through core values. How do you communicate and promote those daily inside of your stores?


Eric Savage:
That’s a great question. It’s funny. We talk about this in advertising all the time. I’m a big proponent of radio advertising. I know that a lot of people think that’s dead. Let’s argue that it’s not for my sake.



It used to be that you needed a frequency of four in order for people to hear your radio ad and remember it. Then it went to seven. Then it went to 11. Then it went to 14. Today’s it’s somewhere around 17 to 19, which means that somebody has to hear your ad 17 to 19 times before they remember it.



The reason I say this is because here we are knowing this works for the external world, but internally, is that how we communicate? Is that our process? The answer is most people don’t. They say, “I have a great idea.” They bring people together. They say it one time. They say, “I did that.” They check it off their list and they move on. They’re dumbfounded when, three weeks later, no one remembers what was talked about.



The reason is because we have to talk about the things that are important to us, not once, not twice, but all the time. We have to talk about it all the time. Every time that we’re observing behaviors, leaders in our company, regardless of what your position is, everyone can be a leader.



Leaders in our company will say, “Adam, I saw what you did there. Man, that looked exactly like a REACH value when you did such and such for the customer. I saw you connect in a way that was fantastic. You leveraged that information to create an outstanding result.”



That’s a beautiful thing to see that happening. That’s a great example of how we talk about this stuff every day. The best leaders we have in our organization, they do that. They speak every day on that subject.


Adam Robinson:
That’s fantastic. Let’s shift and talk about the structure of your leadership team, the organization. You can’ do it all yourself. Walk us through the senior roles at the weekly management meeting. Who’s sitting around the table? Who are you relying on to execute on your behalf?


Eric Savage:
We have general managers who are really the operational managers in charge of most of the departments. Like most car dealerships, you would see people that resemble things like sales managers, or finance managers, service managers, et cetera, et cetera.



We are changing the way we apply that. For example, our sales managers are no longer sales managers. They’re customer experience managers. Their real job isn’t to sell cars. Their real job is to really elevate the experience for customers. That’s an entirely different aspect.



What we really find is this. Most of the duties and work that we do in this business, the behavior sets that we have aren’t all that different on the surface from what most dealerships do. The major difference is the motivation for those behaviors.



Our dealership is a Life Improvement Business. We don’t engage in any behavior to get something from someone else. Our motivations are entirely the other direction. Our motivations are entirely to give to someone else. Our job is not to go close a deal if we’re a a sales manager, or a customer experience manager. Our job is instead to go create a fit and offer outstanding value.



When we change the language, the behavior changes behind it. The motivations for those behaviors change. Yet, they can still look tactically similar, but they have very, very different origins and very different outcomes because of that.


Adam Robinson:
You’re saying, for our listeners who are not as familiar with automotive retail, the language and how you describe what you’re doing daily, you’re saying that really matters. Tell us why that matters in your business.


Eric Savage:
In short, what I find is that it’s one thing to talk culture say the things we believe. It’s another thing to behave consistently with that culture and that statement. Every day we’re on a tightrope walking. We’ve stated what our belief system is. We have very clear values. It’s very well understood. Our mission is entirely crystal clear to everybody here. It’s a totally different thing to actually walk that talk.



Every day is a tightrope. How do we make it easier to get on that tightrope? The answer is it starts with language. The more that we can shape the language to resemble the behaviors we want, the more the behaviors will start to resemble the language.



The more the behaviors start to resemble the language, the closer we get to executing the culture the way we want it to be. For us, we believe it starts with language.



We don’t have salespeople anymore. In fact, everyone’s title on our sales floor is a Life Improvement Specialist. Their one and only job is to improve the lives of every person they come in contact with. You don’t have to sell cars. Your job is to make car buying fun, easy, and hassle free for people if they want to buy your product. If not, you want to serve them as best as you can to help them find the answer to their problem for their automotive need anywhere.


Adam Robinson:
I’ve heard you talk about this, to improve someone’s life no matter whether they’re a customer, or not. Give us an example of that in practice.


Eric Savage:
You might have somebody who walks in the dealership here. We had a situation, I don’t know, about six, eight months ago. There was a customer who was looking to buy a truck.



They came looking at one of our Toyota trucks. The truth is is that this customer was driving a Ford F250. They were looking at our Toyota Tundra. They didn’t want it. They were thinking about buying it. It was just a very odd moment. The customer’s giving us buying signals, but not happy about it.



The manager involved, the customer experience manager involved, said, “I’m just picking up that you don’t really want to do this. What’s the real story?” The man said, “The truth is is I want another F250, but I was up the street at the Ford store. They would not give me enough for my trade. They really ticked me off, because I want to buy that truck, but they won’t give me enough for this trade. You guys are giving me enough for the trade, but I really don’t want the Tundra.”



The customer experience manager said, “Tell me which dealership you were at.” He told him. He said, “I happen to know the used car manager there.” Right in front of him, he picked the phone, calls the dealership, talks to the used car manager and says, “Listen, I have this customer here. He was just there. You’re $500 away on this trade to make this deal. Are you willing to put another $500 on the truck?”



This is all happening right in front of the customer. The used car manager agrees. The customer experience manager says to the customer, “Go on back. They’re going to give you the $500, so you can buy the truck that you want, because it’s what we’re really about is helping you get what you want.” He did. He went back. We lost a sale, you could argue. That’s easy to see, but in fact, what we did was we built a relationship.



What I want to tell you is that this is not why we do this, but the serendipitous outcome of this is that that customer ended up referring his daughter and his neighbor to us. We sold a Camry and a Rav 4 to his daughter and to his neighbor, respectively.



What could have been a single vehicle transaction to a person who would’ve been unhappy with the product ended up becoming two transactions to people who love their products. That’s a much better deal for everybody.


Adam Robinson:
Yeah, I agree. What an awesome story. For listeners tuning in on this, just the impact of people knowing the values and having the confidence that they’ve got leadership’s back to execute against an authentic set of core values, leads to results like that. Pretty awesome.



Our listeners also love to hear about the people model for the business. That’s the business model that governs your human capital processing. For example, are you hiring entry level, high potential hires from outside of your industry and investing in training and development, or are you more the model of hiring the veterans and just bringing the high producers in having a little higher comp and just working on retaining the best? Walk us through how you’re approaching this.


Eric Savage:
I think part of that is a departmental question. Let’s take the sales department as an example. What other dealerships call sales people, we call them Life Improvement Specialists. How do we hire there? The answer is that we’re less interested in whether or not you have skills, or you’re a veteran. That’s uninteresting to us either way. Whether you have a lot, or don’t have a lot, it’s not really relevant.



We’re looking for cultural match. If you have a high cultural match, we want to hire you. If you got a great wealth of experience and lots of skills, that’s great. They may or may not be useful in our environment. If you have no skill, that’s not a problem. We can certainly train on that.



The bottom line is that what we’re most interested in is are you a match for us. We’d like to say that our culture is very distinctly flavored. If we were an ice cream, we’d be butter pecan. There’s only one butter flavored ice cream and it’s butter pecan. We’re not a chocolate, or a vanilla, which is the standard in the industry.



If you come to our dealership, and you work for us, if you’re in life improvement business, we’re going to serve you heaping scoops of butter pecan ice cream and we’re going to watch you eat it. If you are not eating that ice cream like it is the best thing you’ve ever had every day of your life, then you’re not going to make it with us and we know that.



If you’re allergic to pecans, you’re totally screwed. The bottom line is we want cultural match. That’s it. I don’t really care about your skills.



What’s more interesting, though, than that is that we’ll do skill base training, because we know that we do need some skills. Believe it or not, 90% of our training budget’s, and it’s phenomenally large — it’s outrageously large.



Our training, 90% of our training budget is about personal development. It’s not even about skills. It’s not even about business. It’s about how to become a better human being, how to become a bigger, better, and brighter version of yourself.



The more I can invest in helping one of our associates, one of our family members become their biggest, best, and brightest version of themselves, the better they are going to be at serving our customers, serving our co-workers, serving the community, and serving the company. That’s really where we spend most of our dollars is helping people just become better people.


Adam Robinson:
That’s great. Let’s talk then about the pitch to candidates and talk recruiting. What’s your single biggest, or best source of new applicants for your stores?


Eric Savage:
I don’t mean to give you a call out so intentionally on your radio show, but right now, it’s Hireology. The work that we’re doing with you is generating a lot of lead activity for us and quantity of applicants that we’d otherwise …


Adam Robinson:
The gratuitous plug bell has gone off. I’m sorry.


Eric Savage:
Is that what that was?


Adam Robinson:
That’s was. It’s exactly right.


Eric Savage:
The shameless plug bell?


Adam Robinson:
There you go. Thank you, sir.


Eric Savage:
Yeah. Anyway, that’s definitely a meaningful chunk of what’s going on there. The truth is is that the very, very best candidates that we’ve ever had have always been referrals from people currently working for us.



Someone working for us, who’s a butter pecan eating Freedom lover life improvement business associate, who really gets it and they bring somebody in who they know, those candidates work out really well.


Adam Robinson:
Fantastic. If I’m a new candidate, take me through your hiring process. What should I be expecting?


Eric Savage:
You should be expecting, especially today, utilizing your platform, is obviously there’s going to be a fair amount of testing that’s occurring prior to the interview proper.



We would probably conduct a phone interview after that, then an in person interview if things are going really well. We’re applying Caliper testing to make sure that we’re seeing the personality traits that line up with us culturally.



We have a series of interviews that occur depending on the department. We do some cross-functional interviewing. A service manager might interview the sales consultant position. A sales manager, or a customer experience manager might interview a technician, or a service advisor position. There’s a lot of that cross functionality to make sure that everybody’s seeing the same picture the same way, or getting that wide perspective.



Upon hiring, we do a lot of different onboarding pieces. Some of them are interesting. We’re very celebratory about onboarding. When somebody comes onboard, we have a cupcake party. If you’re getting hired, the day you’re hired, there’s a big thing of cupcakes. Everybody comes around. We’re all loving, and hugging, and kissing, and thrilled. We post it up on Facebook with your picture, because we’re super proud you joined the team.



We go through a process of having that associate shadow somebody for a period of four, six, sometimes eight weeks depending on how quickly they acclimate to the environment.



Then we start moving through the real more vigorous training, the book learning training after they’ve got a feel for the department and the area where they’re working.



All these things are departmentally based, and skill based, and discipline based. The bottom line is we are believers in a quality onboarding process.


Adam Robinson:
Amazing end to end process, Eric. I love the cupcake party. I’m often surprised with companies that throw parties when an employee quits. When a good person leaves, they get the cake. You’re turning that on its head. You’re throwing the party the day they start. I think that’s awesome.


Eric Savage:
We do both, by the way. That’s important to us. I’ll just make a mention about that. If we believe we’re in the Life Improvement Business and we care about our associates’ lives improving, if somebody has an opportunity to go work somewhere and receive a promotion, or to receive more pay, or to work closer to home, or to have better hours than we offer, if that’s going to improve their lives, then we celebrate that movement.



That means that we bring everybody together and we say, “Congratulations. This a wonderful opportunity for you and we’re thrilled for you and what this means for your life.” We don’t see it as negative. Even if they’re going to a competitor, we still give you a party. The only way we don’t is if you’re leaving on really bad terms like you just stop showing up for work, we’re not going to give you a party.



Otherwise, if you do it the right way, and you give notice and you share the information of what’s going on and you share why you believe that it’s going to be better for you, we love you all the way out the door and we mean it and we keep the relationship open.


Adam Robinson:
What if you’re looking back on your experience in transforming into this model that you have now that’s really culture and people first, what’s the biggest people related lesson you’ve learned since embarking on this journey?


Eric Savage:
Yeah, that’s an outstanding question. Number one is that people will often prefer to be told what to do, or they will seem like they prefer to be told what to do. The truth is is they want to know what to do. In order to accomplish that, they need to learn and grow. They can’t learn and grow if all I do is bark out orders.



I can’t solve problems for people even if I know the answer. My job, instead, is to ask really hard questions to help them grow themselves and figure out the answer for themselves.



That means that I have to allow them to make mistakes. I have to allow the process to be slow for learning. I have to allow repetition to occur and be patient about it. When I do that, people grow. They used to line up at my door and ask me every day, “Hey, this just happened. What should I do? This just happened. What should I do?”



That used to be my daily life. I got to tell you this is what happens now. Someone shows up at my door and they say, “I already know the questions you’re going to ask me. I just figured out my answer. I got this solved, boss. Don’t worry about it.” They turn around and they walk right back out.



That is the mark of true growth in a human being is that they can come to their own answers. They know the right thing to do.


Adam Robinson:
That’s awesome. Not to mention that just improved you life pretty considerably, I would imagine.


Eric Savage:
Yeah. My whole role has changed. That’s a beautiful thing.


Adam Robinson:
How would you describe your role as the leader of the organization? Give us your job description.


Eric Savage:
My job is to ask questions of people, of processes, of preconceived notions. When you’re a question asker and there are no boundaries to the questions you’re willing to ask, you basically become this hit man for sacred cows. I spend most of my day lobbing off the heads of cows, sacred cows in our organization.



I’m not talking about people. I’m talking about those processes, or those notions that we have of this is how something has to be. Those limited view perspectives that we have, those are the sacred cows that I have to kill every day. It’s amazing. They spontaneously generate at a rate that’s terrifying. I kill one off and three magically appear.



The truth is is that that’s the most important thing that I can do, is everything that we have an assumption about, go challenge the assumption. Go ask questions about it. If you do, people really rally around it. Yeah, why are we doing it that way? Why do I always think it’s going to work out that way. What’s the data that I have to prove this? What am I willing to do to change that? Those are the types of things that we rally want to try to stimulate conversation around.


Adam Robinson:
Excellent. Thank you for taking us through that. Here we are in the final couple of minutes here of the show. Time for a lightening round. We’re going to throw some questions at you here about just broad sentiment.



Do you think the US economy is getting better, or worse over the next 12 months, Eric?


Eric Savage:
Holy moly. I’d love to give you a trumped up answer. That was supposed to be funny. I truly have no idea what’s happening. I think we’re in a new era because of the politics of this world. The predictions were that post-election are we going to see a stock market slump. The opposite happened. We had this incredible rally.



I think it’s anyone’s guess honestly. The other thing is that they don’t worry about it. What the economy is, the economy is. I still need to create the maximum value for the people that I interact with every day. That’s all that matters to me.


Adam Robinson:
There you go. Do you think it’s getting easier, or harder to find the people you need over the next 12 months?


Eric Savage:
I think finding people in general gets harder and harder. In fact, we’re low  in employment, it gets even harder to find really good quality people. That’s all the reason more why you want a mission driven business. It’s so much easier to attract people when there’s a strong mission at the core.


Adam Robinson:
What book are you reading right now? Would you recommend it to our audience?


Eric Savage:
Yeah, Leaders Eat Last. That’s a Simon Sinek book. It’s an outstanding book on leadership. Everything that Simon Sinek says is pretty freaking awesome. That’s a really outstanding book. I’m certainly enjoying it.


Adam Robinson:
All right. All right. If you were to come back on this show a year from now and report on whether or not you accomplished what you consider to be the most important thing on your plate for this year, what’s that going to be?


Eric Savage:
It would be that people here, the associates at Freedom have lifted themselves to a new kind of space with their personal relationships, their professional work, their relationships with their customers, that they are in a completely different zone than they are today.


Adam Robinson:
That’s the final word. You’ve been learning from Eric Savage, President at Freedom Auto Group in Pennsylvania. Eric, thank you for being with us on the program today.


Eric Savage:
Completely my pleasure. Thank you for having me.


Adam Robinson:
That’s a wrap for this episode of the Best Team Wins podcast where we’re featuring entrepreneurs and leaders whose exceptional approach to the people side of their business has led to incredible results.



I’m Adam Robinson, author of the book, The Best Team Wins, which you can find online at www.thebestteamwins.com. We will see you next week.

New Inc. Post: You Need a Great HR Leader to Help Your Company Grow. Choose One With These 3 Skills

Many startups make the mistake of hiring an HR leader too late. But any business that doesn’t take HR seriously is at risk of facing crises with no resource in place to help resolve them. And without an HR leader in place, it’s challenging to hire the best team possible and turn your people into a source of competitive advantage.

Is your business looking to hire an HR leader? Read my latest Inc. post to learn about the key skills to look for in HR leaders.

New Podcast: Taking a Neuroscience-Based Approach to People Strategy

Christine Comaford, CEO and Neuroscience-Based Leadership & Culture Coach at SmartTribes Institute, joined me on the podcast this week. In the episode, Christine talked about how she uses the latest neuroscience research to improve the people side of the business, including: hiring right, and boosting employee engagement, employee performance, creativity, innovation, collaboration and more.

Christine was named one of the Top 50 Human Behavior Experts to Follow in 2017 and one of the Global Employee Engagement Influencers in 2017. She has also built and sold five of her own businesses with an average 700% return on investment and served as a board director or in-the-trenches advisor to 36 startups and invested in more than 200 startups (including Google).

Christine is the author of three best-selling books: Power Your Tribe: Create Resilient Teams in Turbulent Times, SmartTribes: How Teams Become Brilliant Together, and Rules for Renegades.

Connect with Christine on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

Connect with SmartTribes Institute on LinkedIn. If you’re interested in partnering with SmartTribes Institute to improve your people strategy, visit workwithsti.com

Here’s a link to a sample impact description similar to what what discussed on the show.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Transcript:

Speaker 1: Welcome to The Best Team Wins Podcast with Adam Robinson. He’s talking to today’s industry leaders and entrepreneurs about the people side of their business.

Adam Robinson: Welcome to The Best Team Wins Podcast where we feature entrepreneurs and business leaders whose exceptional approach to the people side of their business has led to incredible results. My name’s Adam Robinson, and for the next 25 minutes, I’ll be your host as we explore how to build your business through better hiring. Today on the show, Christine Comaford is the CEO and neuroscience-based leadership and culture coach at SmartTribes Institute located in San Francisco, founded in 2010. The business is focused on helping organizations navigate the complexities of leadership, development, and team building.

Adam Robinson: Christine has a pretty amazing resume. She was named one of the top 50 human behavior experts to follow in 2017 and one of the global employee engagement influencers of 2017. She has built and sold five of her own businesses, so she’s one of us, with an average of 700% ROI on invested capital, pretty impressive. She has served as a board director or in-the-trenches advisor to 36 startups and invested in more than 200, including Google, which I heard probably worked out pretty well for her, and is the author of three best-selling business books, including Power Your Tribe, Smart Tribes, and Rules for Renegades. So much to talk about today. Christine, welcome to the program.

Christine C: Thank you, Adam. It’s awesome to be here.

Adam Robinson: We are going to focus on the people side of business today, but before we dive in, give us 30 seconds on SmartTribes Institute and what you’re up to.

Christine C: Yes, okay. We take the latest neuroscience research. We map it down to super practical tools, which you guys, we’re going to talk about them today. You’re going to learn a handful today. Those super practical tools tap into the optimal parts of the brain to boost employee engagement, employee performance, creativity, innovation, collaboration, et cetera. We work primarily in the areas of leadership, culture, and these tools work great in sales and marketing. We work with companies of all sizes, but our sweet spot seems to be around 100-ish employees and sometimes less, so kind of startups all the way to Fortune 10, but kind of in that middle area where we’re really emerging growth companies and we’re zooming through revenue inflection points.

Adam Robinson: Absolutely. If folks want to learn more, what’s the best way for them to do that?

Christine C: Yes. If they go to workwithsti.com, work with STI, as in SmartTribes Institute, then you can sign up for our digest. It’ll take just a sec, and then you’ll be getting more and more cool, powerful tools every couple weeks.

Adam Robinson: All right. We’ll make sure we put that URL in the show notes. Let’s jump in and talk about the people side of what you do. You’ve built a number of successful businesses, and it sounds like you’ve taken that experience and translated that into SmartTribes. Talk about the common threads in the businesses you started and what inspired you to take this and help others do better for themselves.

Christine C: Yes. Well, I figured out a little while ago that employee engagement actually has a recipe. Employee engagement requires one hormone and two neurotransmitters. It requires oxytocin, the experience of bonding, feeling connected. It requires the two neurotransmitters of serotonin, feel good, and dopamine, reward-oriented behaviors, anticipation of reward. What we found was that, since there’s actually a recipe, what if we use that recipe, that physiological cocktail if you will, and we actually design cultures with that in mind?

Christine C: The first thing that we discovered and that I found, the hard way so I’m glad you guys know this now, is that safety, belonging, and mattering must be present in a culture for people to perform at their peak. If people feel safe, certainty, freedom from fear, I’ve got your back, you’ve got my back, belonging, we’re all in this together, we all have equal value, we’re all contributing and making a difference, mattering, my unique gifts, I’m not a cog in a wheel, my unique gifts are seen, are appreciated, are acknowledged here, then that’s the very basic foundation for great performance in a culture.

Christine C: Now, growth creates change, right? Change creates stress. What are the tools that we need to use to help people come together when they’ve kind of come apart a little bit, to be aligned when they have different directions that they want to go, and to actually say, “Thank god it’s Monday,” even when things are crazy uncertain? That’s what we do. I’ll just follow your lead and keep throwing out tools, or start throwing out tools, as soon as you’re ready.

Adam Robinson: Let’s wind back the clock a bit and talk about you starting business number one. What did you know about this team building stuff?

Christine C: I didn’t.

Adam Robinson: How did you figure out that there was more to it than what you were doing? Take us through this process of experiencing doing it wrong and then understanding where the genesis of these ideas came from.

Christine C: Good, yes, okay. My first business, I was 19. It was a bank for high net worth individuals. It was sold to Union Bank. In the beginning though, I was 19, and I partnered with all these folks in their 40s. They were like, “Oh, you could be the receptionist.” I’m like, “Uh, that’s not going to work. From the amount of stock I have and such, I want to have more responsibility.” What I learned early on, through stepping on people’s feet, through bulldozing instead of relationship building, was, whoa, you know what? If you’re driven, if you’re intense, if you want to get results, you actually can’t just plow people down. It’s going to work a lot better if you learn influence techniques.

Christine C: That’s one of the key things that we teach, how to enroll and engage people, how to give people the experience of same as. I gave them different as, and that didn’t work well. I learned pretty early on, you know what, connecting with people requires some really basic things. Since we’re animals beneath it all, and there’s only a 4% difference in our DNA versus monkeys, primates, what do monkeys do? Well, they keep watching their leader and trying to match their emotional state to their leader’s. I learned pretty early on, whoa, if I’m going to lead people, I better keep my act together, because if I’m upset, then everyone’s going to be scared and think that the sky’s falling. There goes productivity down the drain.

Christine C: I made that mistake by not managing my emotional state. I made another mistake of not building relationships. Then a third one, and Bill Gates busted me for this, he sat me down when I was 27 years old and he said, “Look, you need to understand something. Your brain moves really fast. It moves faster than you can speak, and you keep leaving people in the dust. That’s not working. You need to slow down, and you can’t go from A to L. You have to go from A to B to C to D, and keep checking to make sure people are with you.” I could tell you, Adam, to this day, I struggle with that a little bit. I get feedback still on that one, so making sure that people are with you, and I see so many visionary leaders miss on this one.

Christine C: We had a client recently who they … He had this great vision for a product, and so he basically said to the team, “Here’s a cool product that we’re going to do. Let’s do it.” They threw it out there in the marketplace, and it crashed and burned. Nobody wanted it, Adam. It was a train wreck. Now all the engineers are bummed out. Everybody’s depressed. Everybody’s pointing fingers, and the blame fest starts. The CEO made a couple of mistakes, right? He didn’t test it with the customers first. He didn’t enroll and engage his team. He just said, “Thou shalt.” He didn’t listen to any of the feedback that they were trying to give him, because he was very strong-willed. I said, “Look, we’ve got to get everybody aligned.” He used one of our tools. He used it really successfully, and it’s called the Outcome Frame.

Christine C: He sat everybody down, and he said, “Okay, you guys, what would we like here?” Because everybody was looking at the problem, and we had to get them looking at the solution or the potential outcome. What would we like? Well, we want the product to be successful. We want this. We want that. Okay, great. We know what we would like. What will having that do for us? Well, when the product’s successful, we’re going to feel positive. We’re going to feel empowered. We’re going to feel like we’re making a difference. We’re going to make money on it, et cetera. What would you like? What will having that do for you, the benefits you’re going to get? Third, how will we know when we have it? Okay, well, we’ll be successful when we have X dollars in revenue with Y percent of profit, when we have three case studies. We got all the criteria of how will we know when we’ve actually achieved that outcome.

Christine C: Then, when, where, with whom do we like it? Well, we really want to have it within six months, because some of this criteria’s going to take a little while, with these particular customers or prospects in this particular way. Then my favorite question, what of value might we risk or lose? What side effects may occur in getting this outcome? Shoot. Well, we’re going to have to go back to everybody and fall on our sword. We’re going to have to make a bunch of refunds, or at least see if we can beg forgiveness to turn this around.

Christine C: We’re going to have to come together more powerfully as a team. The CEO’s going to have to listen when people from his team are trying to give him feedback. We’re going to have to loop in the customer service people that were never consulted in the beginning. We’re going to have to loop in the marketing people who also were ignored in the beginning. Once we got all this together, we had this rich, cohesive, aligned, engaged, enrolled team. Fast-forward four months, not six, and they nailed it.

Adam Robinson: You said something early in our conversation about different as versus same as. Tell me about those two concepts.

Christine C: Good, good, thank you, okay. Think back to the cave person days. The cave people were out there, hunting and gathering, et cetera. When they met another person, the first thing we were trying to gauge was, are they the same as us, meaning not a threat, friend, or are they different than us, foe, potential foe? We had to figure this out pretty quickly. Since we haven’t had an upgrade in our prefrontal cortex, which is decision-making and problem solving, for 50,000 years, a lot of us still do that. The vast majority are always scanning friend or foe, friend or foe, safe or not, dead or not. That’s what the reptilian brain does. It’s very important for us to understand how to give somebody the experience of same as them. You can look different, have a different gender, none of that matters. What matters is the emotional experience they get from you.

Christine C: First we notice, is the person asking me through their behavior for safety, belonging, or mattering? The easiest way is, if they’re stressed out, are they talking about … Are they spreading fear, gossip, rumors? Are they talking about all the risks? Okay, they’re asking for safety. Are they isolating, withholding information, cutting off communication, forming silos? They’re not having an experience of belonging. You may need to bring them back into the tribe. Are they condescending, making people feel small, talking about how they do everything around here? They’re obviously wanting an experience of mattering and not getting it. First we look for, what emotional experience do they want? Because nobody buys products or services. They buy an emotional experience. Leaders are selling an emotional experience, like accountability. We’re selling all the time as leaders accountability, initiative, collaboration, et cetera. What emotional experience do they want?

Christine C: Then how can we actually show up for them so their creature neurology looks at us and gets visual, auditory, kinesthetic cues that we’re the same as them? This is where mirroring comes in, body, posture, gesture mirroring. They lean forward. We pause, breathe. Then we can lean forward. They talk quickly. We talk quickly. We keyword backtrack. If they keep saying, “We’ve really got to make a difference,” we say, “You know, to make a difference,” so we actually start becoming more of them, so we can soothe their nervous system and we can connect. That’s same as. Different as is when you don’t do that stuff.

Adam Robinson: Interesting, and the default switch for humans is set as what?

Christine C: This is hard. The default switch for humans is, if you just look at neurolinguistics, there are more words around fear in our vocabulary than there are around safety. Our creature neurology, our reptilian and mammalian brain, are constantly … They’re stimulus response machines coded for safety. Since we are getting tons of stimulus, we’re seeing things, hearing things, smelling things, tasting things, feeling things, we’re bombarded with sensory information constantly. I would say our default is to respond to our, excuse me, to react to our environment before we respond from choice.

Adam Robinson: I see. Translate these tools and others you would mention to our listeners that make up what you would define as quality leadership or the, quote-unquote, right way to do this is how?

Christine C: Good, good, thank you, okay. For starters, figure out what somebody is asking for. If you just pay attention to how they speak, you’ll understand if they want safety, belonging, or mattering. If they’re in what we call critter state, in a stressful state, it’ll be very easy, and just give them that experience. If they want safety, “Hey, would it be helpful if we sat down, and we looked at the plans, and we formed a plan and a backup plan? I’ve got your back here. I’m here with you.” If they want belonging, “I’m so psyched that you’re on the team. I love working with you. Who else can we bring on to the team? How can we collaborate and create something awesome together?” If they want mattering, “I really see you as a thought leader, as a visionary. Could I run a couple ideas by you? I really see that you’re making a difference here.”

Christine C: First, what emotional experience do they want? Second, as a leader, our job is to give people the tools to have their own insights and aspiration. That’s why the Outcome Frame, the questions I gave you guys before, what would you like, what will having that do for you, how will you know when you have it, when, where, with whom would you like it, what of value might you risk or lose, and then of course, what are your next steps, that helps people have their own insights. Yeah, we’re cold and hungry now, but we’re headed to The Ritz-Carlton with 24/7 room service. As leaders, how are we helping people have their own insights? Because a lot of us as leaders, we advocate. We tell people what to do instead of ask them, “Well, what would you recommend? What could go right? What could go wrong?” We don’t light up their prefrontal cortex. To get more from your people, you’ve got to ask them questions. Inquiry is really important.

Christine C: Then I would say next, we really have to look at performance and motivation. Everybody calls it performance management, which I think is wrong. We don’t need to manage people. We need to create intrinsic motivation. The three best ways we’ve found to create intrinsic motivation is first to use an impact description when you’re advertising for that role instead of a job description. Job descriptions are kind of boring and stupid. Take that job description. Add just a few extra fields to it, and it becomes an impact description which-

Adam Robinson: Give us an example.

Christine C: Yeah, good, okay. You know what? I’m going to send you a copy as well of an impact description example to put on your site, because I really want people to use this.

Adam Robinson: Okay, great.

Christine C: Yeah, you’ll recruit so much faster using these. It’s, “Here’s who you are. You’re a motivated, self-driven, blah blah blah person. You want to make a difference. You want to make a dent in the universe. You want to provide amazing customer service, whatever.” Okay, so that’s how it starts out, aspirational. “Here’s who we are. We are a company that’s making a difference, that believes in these values, that only wants to work with the brightest, et cetera, people on the planet. Here are the values that our company holds dear. Here’s this role, and here’s how this role makes a difference on the planet. This role’s customers are X, Y, and Z, internal customers, and external customers. This role matters deeply because it delivers such-and-such value.” We’re trying to create curiosity, urgency, relevance, value, and emotion. Remember back to serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin. This stuff is full of them.

Christine C: Great. Now we go into kind of the boring details of the job description, but in the very beginning, since we’re saying, “Here’s who you are. Here’s who we are. Here’s how this role makes an impact on the planet,” if people don’t get past that, they’re not your people anyway. You’ll save a lot of time using impact descriptions. You just post them up on LinkedIn, and people respond or they don’t. Then when they respond, so they respond to whatever, such-and-such email address, greatjob@gmail.com.

Christine C: Then you have an autoresponder. You say, “Hey, thanks so much for your interest in our such-and-such role. We do our first level of interviewing digitally. Please answer these three questions, and send the answer to email address number two.” The questions are, which of our values do you most powerfully connect with? Please tell me examples in your career where you’ve modeled these particular values. Then also, what are five adjectives that you would describe yourself as and that your past peers and boss would describe you as? Then from there, all we check in recruiting is email address number two, because if people don’t want to answer those questions, they’re not going to work at the company anyway.

Christine C: Then from there, we’ve got our impact description. Great. Then what we want to do is we want to make sure once they’re on board that we create an individual development plan, which is an aspirational plan for them to grow. Maybe they want to grow in accountability, or one day they want to be the VP of engineering. Figure out the timeline. We find that if you have an IDP that’s for a year out, that works best. If it’s like, “I want to be the CEO,” too far away. Okay, I want to be the … Right now, I’m the senior director of engineering. I’d like to be a VP somewhere in the engineering area. To do that, I know I’ve got to become more accountable, more collaborative, and take more initiative. For starters, I’m going to work on those three qualities.

Christine C: Once we have the impact description, that kind of loops people in and also tells them what the agreement is. At the end of the impact description, sorry I left this out, we say, “This is a leadership level such-and-such role.” For example, Adam, level one is wait to be told. Level two is ask what to do. Level three is recommend, then act. Level four is act and report routinely. Level five is act and report immediately. Level six is enroll and engage others, lead the company, lead the business, et cetera. It goes up to nine. People walk in saying, “I’m going to show up at this level, because that’s what this role requires.” Then whenever you have a slide, and you need to create some performance motivation, you can sit down with that person, dust off the impact description, and say, “You know what, I really … My experience is that you’re showing up at a different level of leadership than you signed up for. Where do you think you’re showing up?”

Christine C: I noticed this myself recently, Adam. I was showing up at six, and I’d like to show up at eight. One of my team members sat down with me and said, “How do you think you’re doing on your leadership level?” I said, “You know what, I think I’ve been slacking. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I wasn’t really paying attention till you mentioned this. I’m going to up my game.” It gives us a contract, if you will, a behavioral contract, which the vast majority of companies totally miss. So, a couple of thoughts there.

Adam Robinson: Yeah, I mean, so much there to dig into. If you were to give our listeners a single most important first thing to get right as it pertains to their own leadership, from your experience, if I’m sitting here evaluating myself going, “You know what, let me just do a quick check of the one thing I better be doing,” I know this is a tough question with as much broad work as you do and as much information as you have, but what would you say is … What’s the most important, lowest common denominator of leadership that if not present, most of the rest of it’s pretty tough?

Christine C: Yes, okay. May I have two, please?

Adam Robinson: Of course.

Christine C: Okay. The first has got to be purpose, like seriously, why are we here? If you don’t get up in the morning and say, “I am fricking proud to be at this company, because we are making a difference, because on my death bed, whenever that is, I will look back and say, ‘I touched the world that way. I did something bigger than just be little me,'” so purpose is huge. It doesn’t have to be … Yeah, you can be massive and transformative and organize the world’s information, and that’s the purpose of Google, but you’ve got to have something. For us, it’s create a million smart tribes. Well, that’s our vision. Our vision is to create a million smart tribes by 2020, and we’re at about 700,000 now, so we’re doing okay.

Christine C: Then our purpose, our mission, is we believe, think Martin Luther King, or we exist. We believe that every culture can be rich in safety, belonging, mattering. Every team can be profoundly engaged, enrolled, and aligned in the work that they do, because it matters. We get the mission, vision right. Then the third thing, the values, that’s our code of conduct. That’s our code of conduct. If you don’t have values that you actually live, breathe, walk, talk, you need to look in the mirror. I realized just recently that I’d been working way too hard, because I wasn’t modeling our values as powerfully as I want to, you know?

Adam Robinson: Yeah, and I noticed you put those values front and center on your own website. How do you leverage those to attract the right kind of customer and to build your own team internally?

Christine C: Yes, okay. Those values have questions attached to them, which are in the recruiting process to make sure we’re value-aligned. Then we talk about the values with our clients. First we ask them what their values are, and Adam, I cannot tell you how often people, CEOs, don’t know what their company’s values are. I’m like, “Whoa.”

Adam Robinson: I believe it. I believe it. I know.

Christine C: But that’s our code of conduct, right? Those are our behavioral norms. If we don’t have an agreement on how we’re going to actually behave and show up and be with each other, whoo, we’re hosed.

Adam Robinson: Undoubtedly. Undoubtedly. For your own businesses, what over the arc of that experience was the one thing you think you could have done differently that would have made a positive difference? It sounds like you’re doing a lot of things the right way. What’s one thing you look back and go, “You know what, that’s something I learned now with hindsight that I could have done to improve things”?

Christine C: Totally. Number one thing, focus on relationships. I seriously didn’t get that, Adam. I really thought, “I can just do this by the sheer force of my will.” There’s very little that any of us can do alone, so focusing on relationships is huge. Valuing people, spending the time to make sure they understand, helping them feel powerful, helping them have insights, investing in people even when you don’t have time, asking how their weekend was, seeing them as human beings, letting them be, accepting and embracing their humanity, because we have it too.

Adam Robinson: With the final moments we have here, if you were to come back on this show a year from now and talk to us about whether or not you successfully tackled the single biggest people-related opportunity that you have in front of you in your business today, what would you be telling us happened?

Christine C: Okay, because I’m really looking at the relationship stuff right now as well. It would be that I have found that investing in spending more time with my people actually saves me hours and hours and hours more than I ever imagined.

Adam Robinson: Ladies and gentlemen, that’s the final word. You’ve been learning from Christine Comaford, CEO and neuroscience-based leadership and culture coach at SmartTribe Institute. Christine, thank you so much for joining us on the program today.

Christine C: Thank you, Adam.

Adam Robinson: So much to dig into. Check the show notes for information on SmartTribes Institute and some of the content that Christine’s offered. Pretty cool. Thank you so much. That is a wrap, folks, for today’s episode of The Best Team Wins Podcast, where we’re featuring entrepreneurs and business leaders whose exceptional approach to the people side of their business has led to incredible results. My name is Adam Robinson, author of the book, The Best Team Wins, which you can find online at www.thebestteamwins.com. Thanks for tuning in, and we will see you here next week.

Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to The Best Team Wins Podcast with Adam Robinson. You can find out more information about Adam and his book, The Best Team Wins: Building Your Business Through Predictive Hiring, at thebestteamwins.com. Thanks again for listening, and we’ll see you next week.

 

New Inc. Post: Don’t Have a Skills Training Program for Your Employees? New Study Shows That’s a Big Mistake

More than half of employers (54 percent) surveyed in a recent Deloitte study indicated they have no programs in place to build employees’ skills for the future. This is leading to less traditional career paths and internal promotions being decided by tenure, title and internal politics. As a result, many employees are frustrated.

Read my latest Inc. post to learn how you can keep employees happy with more defined training and career paths.

New Podcast: Scaling Your Hiring and Business Operations for Long-Term Success

This week, Bob Glazer, founder and CEO at Acceleration Partners, joined me on the podcast. Bob was recently named #2 on Glassdoor’s Highest-Rated CEOs list, has an email newsletter called “Friday Forward” with more than 35,000 subscribers, and is the author of the book Performance Partnerships.

In this episode, Bob shares best practices for how he’s scaled his team for global success, including partnering with Entrepreneurs’ Organization and ghSMART, following a repeatable hiring process, adhering to defined core values, and investing in employees holistically.

Connect with Bob on LinkedIn, Twitter and his personal website. Learn more about his book, Performance Partnerships, here.

Connect with Acceleration Partners on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Transcript

Speaker 1: Welcome to The Best Team Wins podcast, with Adam Robinson. He’s talking to today’s industry leaders and entrepreneurs about the people side of their business.

Adam Robinson: Welcome to The Best Team Wins podcast, where we feature entrepreneurs and business leaders whose exceptional approach to the people side of their business has led to incredible results. My name is Adam Robinson, and for the next 25 minutes, I’ll be your host as we explore how to build your business through better hiring. Today on the program, Bob Glazer is the founder and CEO of Boston based Acceleration Partners, founded in 2007. Bob has 120 employees, a number that’s grown substantially this year, and is making it happen. Bob was recently named number two on Glassdoor’s highest rated CEOs list, with a 99% approval rating from his team. A few years back, Robert decided to email his Acceleration Partners team every Friday morning with a leadership theme that included a quote and related tip or article around personal growth. The email had such a positive response that Robert decided to expand the email outside of the company. Now that email newsletter, called Friday Forward, has more than 35,000 subscribers across 50 countries and six continents. This, and other great ideas, Bob, we want to learn from you today, so thanks for being on the show.

Bob Glazer: Thanks, Adam. I’m excited to be here.

Adam Robinson: We’re going to focus on the people side of Acceleration Partners. But before we dive in, let’s set the stage for our listeners. Give us 30 seconds on what you’re doing.

Bob Glazer: Yeah, so Acceleration Partners is a performance marketing agency. We help manage large scale affiliate programs for brands and increasingly on a global basis. I know the next question after that is, “Alright, I have no idea what that means, so can give me an example,” so I will. A brand such as … Let me pick someone who’s not a client. A brand such as Walmart, that sells things online, will partner with people that have great content online. That could be a deal site, a mommy blogger site, a comparison site. It could be the digital version of a magazine and because everything can be tracked, they will say, “Hey, instead of paying you per click or per placement, I’d rather pay on a performance basis. When we get a lead, or when you sell something, or any activity from your website results in an outcome that we want to pay for,” and they agree to sort of a price for that. It’s really performance based or affiliate marketing. We help companies set up large programs like that, that might have 10,000 plus different partners in them, and help recruit and manage those partners.

Adam Robinson: If people want to learn more, what’s the best way for them to do that?

Bob Glazer: They can go to accelerationpartners.com or my website, which is robertglazer.com, all one word, has links to all the various things that I do.

Adam Robinson: Let’s go all the way back to the beginning. It’s 2007. Give us a little bit of the genesis story, and take us through that point when you knew you needed to expand beyond yourself.

Bob Glazer: Yeah, so actually, [it’ll tie this 00:03:11] … I mean, we were talking about it before the show, but we started more as a consulting firm. I had a partner at the time, and we did more large engagements on, sort of, company growth, and even some fundraising. We both really believed in growing consumer businesses, had spent time in venture, and came to understand that really the differentiator for most consumer businesses is customer acquisition, or really, any business, but particularly in the consumers eyes, can you get customers profitably? As the company scaled, we moved away from helping companies with that fundraising strategy, and more towards that acquisition and marketing acceleration. That’s when we fell into the performance based.

Bob Glazer: I think it was 2011, and I had really hit sort of, a million in revenue, and that inflection point, when I was working 80, 100 hours a week. I was just selling as much time as I had to give. Had a couple people and that’s when I joined Entrepreneurs Organization, EO, and that was … I remember telling the recruiter, the membership chair, that I couldn’t even do the training day, because I just couldn’t possibly turn off my phone for like four hours. He put his hand on my arm. He’s like, “You need this more than you know.” That was sort of a turning point for me. I had someone that I was contemplating … I think my first performing meeting was really bringing in, kind of a number two, and someone to help me grow the business, and run the trains day-to-day. That person’s actually our president today, and has been a key role in helping to scale the business. In fact, I’m the least involved in operations that I’ve ever been.

Adam Robinson: Yeah, you know we talked about Entrepreneurs Organization, EO, on this show a number of times. A number of our guests have been current or former members, and I had a similar experience to you, Bob. I mean, you go into the first meeting a million or so of revenue, and just hair on fire, and thinking you’ve got it, and you’re looking for some tips on how to grow, and you suddenly realize you’re doing it all wrong, and that selling time doesn’t work, and everything you thought was right, was wrong.

Bob Glazer: The guy working five hours a week who has the 20 million dollar business has figured it out.

Adam Robinson: Yeah. Remember that first time you meet somebody, and you’re like, “Wait a second. You’re running a 25 million dollar business. You look calm. Everybody’s doing stuff, and it’s working, and man, I want that. How do you do that?” Turns out that’s a lot easier said than done.

Bob Glazer: That was a little bit of the genesis of our culture, because I was scared to grow. I think it was getting beyond myself. It was getting beyond anything I’d done. But also it’s like, I don’t want to be this big company where we have HR and all this stuff, and it’s not fun. Not like it was that fun working 90 hours a week with your hair on fire. But I did make a conscious decision, which I’d seed some of the oats of our culture, in terms of, if we were going to do this, I was going to do it a different way. I really wasn’t going to, kind of … I was going to do it how I want to do it, and not follow traditional playbooks, and not build a company that I didn’t want to go to work to. Actually, as we’ve gotten bigger and done stuff in different ways, it gets more interesting for me. That’s something I hadn’t anticipated at the time.

Adam Robinson: Let’s jump to culture. You know you mentioned an intentionality with wanting to build the culture. Describe the culture at your organization, and how you shaped it from that first hire through to 120. You’re approaching that point where everybody doesn’t know everyone, and it just gets a little beyond you, as the founder.

Bob Glazer: Yeah, our culture really is our core values, and we have three. We used to have seven. I think when we got to about five million in revenue, and we kind of culled it down, and said what worked and didn’t work. It’s not like we changed them, but I think a lot of companies go through this updating. Our three core values are own it, embrace relationships, and excel and improve. That really defines the people that work here, and how we work, and how we make decisions, and encourage people. We train on those things. We reward on those things. We incentivize, we hire on those things, so that really defines a lot of how we are. We have a flexible work culture. Most people work remotely. That has a lot to do with the “own it” part of it, and we have a clear mission and vision. It’s as simple and as complicated as being entirely consistent around those three things, in terms of, kind of what we think, what we say, and what we do.

Adam Robinson: Bob, let’s talk about some of the mechanics of how you source and hire people. I mean, clearly you’re doing something right. Glassdoor is just filled with people saying what a great place it is to be, and to build a career. With core values that specific, right, there’s three of them, and so, hiring people that fit those values is just not as simple as, “I think we like this person. Let’s give them a shot.” Take us through your process for attracting people, and understanding who might be a fit.

Bob Glazer: Yeah, so, two different pieces. I think on the attracting side, a lot of the culture and core value awards and that stuff, really has made a difference in terms of the amount of inbound resumes we get. I would say the people who are applying to work at the company as much as they’re applying to work on a role, so our investment in that really has … That’s paid off in terms of the flow that we get in. I will say that about one out of a hundred people that apply to a job here is probably a right fit, when we get through the process. Our interview process, which is pretty rigid and documented, probably about a hundred pages in total, it’s really combined on sort of core values, and then aptitude. Is this the right per … It’s like, right person, right seed, and then we have a third dimension. We always talk about right time, but that’s not really in the interview process. Is this the right person, and then, can they do the job? It’s broken up, really in those pieces, and interwoven in there.

Bob Glazer: When we talk about core values, we don’t leave that to chance. There are probably five, six, seven questions for each core value. Then there’s ratings on what a ten answer sounds like, and what a one answer sounds like, and over a couple rounds of interviews, we’re building a pretty good profile on that. One of the things that we always say, and we’ll say it to the candidate is, there’s a real difference between someone who likes our core values and is our core values. If you like the notion of “own it” but you’re really not an “own it” person, and you need group decision making, and you don’t want to make those calls, you won’t like this environment. You won’t work well here. But if you really are that person, this will be a great job for you.

Bob Glazer: That’s A, and then on the aptitude side, we always have some sort of test, or project, or something that mimics the work that people have to do in that role. We want to see them in their element. We want to see what it looks like. You know a lot of people who struggle with whatever that is in the past have come back to us, and say, “Oh, can I have another try?” Or, “Can I do this differently?” Or, “I wish I would have …” or something like that. The response is kind of, for the people that have … This is the work, so, for the people that have done well here, this is the stuff that’s easiest for them, so it probably is a good sign that it’s not a good fit if it’s something that you struggled with, because on day one, this is what you’re going to be asked to do.

Bob Glazer: Anyone can learn anything, but if that role requires you to be a great proofreader, and clean copy, and everything you write in your exercise has typos in it, it’s just not going to start well. If it doesn’t start well, it usually doesn’t end well. Our process is … That’s our process. There are multiple rounds, and we come together, kind of, a best practice from a lot of companies. We come together as a committee at the end, put all of the evidence on the table, make a decision. There’s always someone in that meeting who doesn’t have a vested interest in that hire, that can sort of think from the company’s perspective, because I think historically, some of the worst decisions we’ve made are where the hiring manager is rushing to fill a seat, because that feels like it solves the problem, and really it just creates more longterm pain.

Adam Robinson: I’m sure it wasn’t always a rigorous, 100 page business process. What informed your decision to move to a structured hiring process? How did you used to do it? Where did you learn to do this? Was it trial and error, or is there a particular system, or book, or experience that someone share with you?

Bob Glazer: Yeah, it was a bunch of different things. We worked with Coach Cam Herold for a while. We really … A lot of it is influenced by the ghSmart, and Top Grader, and Who material, which, I was in a private session with Jeff Smart for a couple of hours, for an EO event, which was invaluable. I think what we realized is that, you just don’t want to leave subjectivity. I think when people … If you created a repeatable, scalable process that had all your best practices, it was less likely to fail than leaving people to individual subjectivity, and there’s just tremendous confidence behind it. I mean, we hired some people, or I had some great interviews with people who I could tell just had a lot of similar qualities to me, but they also had a lot of differences to me, and I was attracted to the similarities, and I didn’t pay attention to the differences. I think it really, it forces you to get unemotionally out of the process. Do the work. See what the research comes back with, and then map it against what you said that you wanted.

Bob Glazer: One of the other key things that came out of, I think the Who process, or some of the stuff we looked at, was this notion of scorecards. The job description is pretty much the six month review or the 12 month review. We say, “Look,” and this is part of “own it” for us, “At six months, this is what we’re going to be evaluating on, and probably why we’re going to be talking about why it’s a promotion and it’s not working. You’re signing up for this,” and I think that creates a lot of self selection in itself. I have a lot of friends in recruiting, and who are headhunters, and it seems like the biggest problem is that most of these companies start these searches with different people, and no one has the same definition of success, or even what a good job is. I think on our team, everyone needs to agree in advance what success looks like six and twelve months in.

Adam Robinson: Listeners often ask me whether, or not the investment in employment brand is worth it, and how to start, if what they have today is a list of jobs posted with a, “Send your resume to info@mycompany.com,” transitioning from that to really retailing jobs, like products, which you clearly do. Talk about your thought process for representing your employment brand.

Bob Glazer: Yeah, I can’t stress how valuable that has been, where we used to have to really prospect, and search on LinkedIn, and find names. We just hired a VP of Marketing and a managing director in Asia that were both inbound. Someone once said to me, “When we write a job description, it’s a little more like ‘Hey, check out this company with great culture and great values that’s looking to hire X,” and I think that appeals to a certain type of person. But, look, it starts with quality. I think one of the things about Glassdoor is that it holds you accountable. It holds you accountable to making sure, kind of like TripAdvisor does for all these small travel businesses that you make sure that people have a good experience, and that when they leave our company, they go out into the world, and every … It’s the one thing we focus on. Every touch, for every person that we reject, which is 99 out of 100, people say, “That company was respectful. They were nice to me. It was a positive experience.” That’s for the people who worked here, or who didn’t work here.

Bob Glazer: A lot of times it’s the people who have problems who speak up about the company, so you’ve got to make sure that the really happy people are out there talking too, and you’re profiling your employees, and you’re sharing your values, and not sharing them because they’re wall art, because it’s what you do. It takes constant application of pressure, I think, in doing this stuff probably for two to three years before you really see the outcome. But it’s just a change in our business today. I mean, our recruiter is interviewing. She’s not needing to do a lot of outreach, unless we get very targeted. We probably have a backlog of resumes, but that’s taken hundreds of hours over years. It’s no different than building a company brand. It’s building a brand of your company for employees and prospective employees.

Adam Robinson: Let’s talk internally. You know you’ve got … I think when we first started talking about having you on the show, you had 100 folks on the team. It’s 120 now. That’s pretty substantial growth. How are you managing the business now that it’s gotten to, you know, it’s a pretty fair degree scale here. What does a manager profile look like, a successful manager in your company? Talk to us about who they are and what they’re capable of.

Bob Glazer: Yeah, and I think this is a key point. I think as you scale a company, you need to start delineating between contributors and managers and leaders. We’ll say manager and leader interchangeably, because it’s not one or the other. But there are people on your team who make that leap, go from understanding it’s about what they’re doing to making everyone else better. Then there are people who probably shouldn’t or don’t want to make that leap. We’re now at the point in our size where managers really aren’t doing. They’re leading, coaching, meeting, and they have people on their teams doing. Really, when you make that transition, and you have a lot of people make it as a growing company, you almost have to unlearn everything that made you a great doer. Some people really don’t want to do that, or they’re not inclined to do that. We’ve had discussions where, as people move up, they start managing people, and we said, “Look, we really think there’s a role for you as a contributor. You don’t seem to enjoy dealing with people, and making them better. You like doing.”

Bob Glazer: We try to have very honest, kind of Kim Scott, Radical Candor conversations with people around what their strengths are, what their weaknesses are, and getting that aligned. But my job should not be doing anything anymore. It should be setting the strategy, working on the vision, coaching with people. I’m actually working through a whole process of getting out of meetings now, where people want me in the meetings. It’s like, I can come in the meeting and solve the problem, but what I really need to be doing is spending time coaching with people, and outside of the meeting hear about the problem, and help them be able to address that problem themselves next time, or that’s the way to make myself obsolete, rather than make myself necessary. That’s a big change, and I think there’s a real difference on our teams, again, the people who are leading and who are doing.

Adam Robinson: You referenced radical candor. I’m a huge fan of that process. In fact, we have some folks from that organization running a workshop at our annual kickoff …

Bob Glazer: Oh, great.

Adam Robinson: … for the company coming up in January. Yeah, I mean, just, we could use a dose of speaking clearly and directly. Talk just for the education of the audience here. What is radical candor, and what’s been the impact in your organization?

Bob Glazer: Yeah, so we’re very focused on feedback. What we talk about is, and I won’t get the exact quadrants right, but Radical Candor is where you challenge directly, and care personally. It’s very attuned to, how we’re all about feedback to get better, and we try to make sure that it’s not personalized, and that it’s about what happened, and that people learn from it. Radical Candor, the concept is really caring about your employee, but not avoiding those things, tackling them direct on. Again, maybe having that conversation with someone and saying, “Look, it doesn’t … We want to support you here, but you seem like a much better doer than a manager. Or you seem like much more of an operations person than a client service person. You know we need to do something about this. How can we help and support you?”

Bob Glazer: It’s really about focusing on outcomes. We’ve all read the book as a leadership team, and people that have had these discussions have said they’ve just been so much more productive than they would have imagined. It’s mistaken, like in a Silicon Valley episode for kind of just saying whatever you want and being a jerk. I mean, that is actually obnoxious aggression in her matrix. That’s not radical candor. Candor is, it’s caring, but not, not beating around the bush in terms of what needs to be discussed or what needs to be said.

Adam Robinson: Talk to us about your feedback process. Let’s say you’ve got somebody either new to the team or new to a role that, for whatever reason, has got a little bit of a learning curve climate that maybe they need a push making … Talk to us about your philosophy for helping them achieve success, and the outcomes that you look for.

Bob Glazer: Yeah, we’re really clear from the beginning, I mean, I do the onboarding call every other week for new employees, that feedback is part of our. They’re going to get it, but they should get it in a depersonalized way. One of the frameworks that we like is kind of a situation-behavior outcome. You know, here’s what happened, here’s the impact, and here’s why, rather than, “Hey, you stumbled in that conversation and sounded like an idiot,” versus, “Hey, you stumbled when you didn’t have time to think of the answer. It’s probably better if you figure out a crutch. I know you like to process stuff. It’s probably better to figure out a crutch word, or say, ‘Let me think about that and then get back to you,’ so that the client doesn’t think you don’t know what you’re talking about, because I know you do.” I mean, those are two examples of how you could say the same thing differently.

Bob Glazer: We just get people used to it very early. I’m open to any feedback. I tell people they can send me anything, as long as it’s not whining, or it has some sort of … Like, well, here’s how I would address it, or some recommendation, and they see that. I mean, one of the things is, we started this before actually I read Ray Dalio’s book, but we’ve adapted it since then, but we have kind of, a debrief form that must be filled out any time there’s a mistake, or we lose a client, or there’s a certain … something has cost us a certain amount of money, and you have to share that. Again, what we’re showing is that, we’re taking a mistake, we’re learning from it, we’re sharing. Mistakes are fine. Repeating mistakes are not.

Bob Glazer: I think feedback is part of making sure that you don’t repeat mistakes. I mean, if you’re doing the same thing over and over again, it’s driving everyone crazy, and you don’t know it, then that’s going to be a problem. But some of these debriefs are great, and they’re really vulnerable, and people are expected to say, “Look, here’s what I messed up, and here’s what everyone can learn about it, or here’s what we need to change going forward, so that this doesn’t happen again.” Then you do this stuff enough, and you see people talk about their own mistakes, or we’ll start off a call with, “Hey, what …” We started off a quarterly leadership call with, “What’s one thing you would have liked to have back this quarter as a do-over?” You just get people comfortable with, discussing these things, and understanding that it’s about the outcome, and it’s not about them personally.

Adam Robinson: You mentioned in a previous answer, we were talking about an inbound hire for us leading part of the business in Asia. It sounds like you’ve grown beyond the four walls in the home office. How are you managing remote work, and what does the future of your business look like from that perspective?

Bob Glazer: Yeah, I tell everyone, I think everyone is surprised that comes here, about the amount of communication and systems that we have. That remote work, for the type of culture that we’re … You know we won the Small Giants award this year. It said something like, “Even though they’re a great place to work, they don’t have a place to work.” It was pretty funny. But I actually think it forces us to be really, really measured, and calculated, and planned. When someone starts off working here, their entire first two, three weeks are scripted out every day. A lot of companies, someone just shows up, and they go, “Oh, they’ll start, and they’ll figure it out.” It’s forced us to be more intentional.

Bob Glazer: When we started in London, and now we started in Singapore, we’ve got people coming back and forth almost every month, really cross pollinating culture, making sure that they’re working with our team here, we’re working with our team there. I’m going to London in a few weeks, that office. I’m then going to Singapore after, just to sit, and listen, and interact. We’ve done that pretty consistently. I think we’re really clear that each region needs its local nuances, and to know the market, but we’re one company, and we’re one operating system. As we talk about it, we talk about adjusting the operating system, and upgrading the code, but we all run the same software. I think when you …

Bob Glazer: The two mistakes I’ve seen people make, expanding internationally, is either, it’s going one or the other. You know, like sending the whole US team to the UK, and not understanding the market, and not understanding the context, and really failing. Or hiring somewhere there, and having them run almost as an isolated island, and not be tied to the culture. I think we heard enough of those mistakes on others, and we’ve specifically budgeted for it, even that investment of all those people go back and forth in the first six to twelve months to make sure you have the right foundations of the culture.

Adam Robinson: I see in your bio, you’re everywhere, doing all kinds of stuff, speaking, contributor thought leadership. You write for Inc, and Forbes, and Entrepreneur, and all kinds of great outlets. What’s your message to businesses out there, when you’re writing and speaking?

Bob Glazer: Yeah, I mean, my focus now, I actually just did a book deal for my second book, which is based on Friday Forward, which is tentatively to be called Outperform. It should come out next year, and it’s on this concept of capacity building, so it’s one of my key messages. I think, A) culture is reflective of the self awareness and the clarity of the founder, about who they are and where they want to go, and being authentic about that. But the key leadership tool that we have used is this notion of capacity building, and that, when you’re growing a company like you did, or we are, you know, 20-30% a year, your ability to not outgrow your team is that you need to actually grow the team. We have focused on holistic capacity building. How do we make people on our team better? You know, better over all, more … healthier, more efficient with their time, better with priorities, all of that stuff.

Bob Glazer: What happens is, we get the best version of themselves at work, but their kids get a better version of them, and their spouse gets a better version of them. We have people right now, you know we have a lot of focus on personal goal setting, and really tying that and sharing those with each other. We’ve got people running marathons for the first time, and doing all this stuff for the first time. I really can see a corelation with performance. Rather than just burning people out, and hoping they’ll work more, and changing them out, we’ve really focused on this investment in employees holistically, and trying to grow their capacity across these four dimensions, which are spiritual, intellectual, physical, and emotional, and we’ve seen great results with that.

Adam Robinson: For listeners who may be in that aspirational spot, you know, perhaps hair on fire, and hoping to scale, all of this sounds good. They’ve got to go execute it. What’s one experience you could share, or a piece of advice you could give for someone looking to start managing the people side of their business with intention? What’s step one, for someone looking to do this differently?

Bob Glazer: I actually, and this goes to another EO event I went year ago, my leadership style for years was very patchwork. I took things from person … You know, I saw that Adam did this, and I like that. Steve did this, and until I really went to a leadership retreat, that was very introspective, and figured out who I was and what I wanted, it was hard to then figure out what the company wanted, and align all that stuff. I really think the founder needs to step back, schedule in three to four hours a week where they’re out of the office, really thinking, writing, planning. But I think the key to longterm success is really figuring out what you want, and then getting alignment with your business and all aspects of your life around that.

Bob Glazer: If you’re not clear about what you want and where you’re going, it’s really hard to then ask others to join that mission with you, or even be consistent. I think you’ll find out, you know, people every day saying, “You wanted this on Monday, and this on Tuesday?” You can just see the difference with people who’ve gotten real clarity around what they want and where they want to go. It translates, I think, into clarity for their business.

Bob Glazer: The other one thing that I think we did was, we did the Cam Herold Vivid Vision, and that exercise of really drawing a picture of where your company’s going to be in three years, what it’s going to look like, getting everyone’s input, putting that out there in the world. Everyone I have talked to who has been part of programs where they have done a version of that has been shocked that these ridiculous, ambitious goals that they sat for three years, and really wrote it out there, and made it clear what it was going to look like, and shared it with the company, that it all happened, and usually at a faster rate. I’m a big fan of planning, and so, I think if you want to get somewhere, really understand who you are, and then paint that picture and that road, so that you can get the right people onto the bus with you.

Adam Robinson: Speaking about the future for the business, and specifically for the people and culture side of Acceleration Partners, if you were to come back on this show in a year and talk to us about whether, or not you’re able to successfully accomplish what you see as the biggest issue or opportunity in front of you to move culture, the people side of the business forward, what will you be telling us happened a year from now?

Bob Glazer: Yeah, so, I’m trying to globalize our culture, which is a new challenge for me, and for the company. One of the mandates is, no politics, and we’re really trying to explain to people what that means, and how to identify when they’re making decisions that are right for them and their team, and not the company as a whole, and the destruction that, that will cause. I think if I was here in a year, I’d be, really wanting to talk about that we had launched, you know we’re in our second region now, and we’ve learned from our mistakes on the first region, and that we were launching a third region, and we had just really figured out how to launch, how to solve the culture thing, and how to find the right people who have the company’s core values, but have what we need locally, and that we felt like we had taken the same formula that made us such a great place to work in the US, and then really translated that into whatever the global translation is.

Adam Robinson: Ladies and gentlemen, that’s the final word you’ve been learning from Bob Glazer, founder and CEO at Acceleration Partners. We heard about all kinds of great tools today, and resources. Cam Herold and his COO Alliance with the Vivid Vision, great program. Jeff Smart we’ve talked about a number of times and the ghSmart team, with Top Grading and the book, Who, all fantastic resources. We’ll put those in the show notes. Bob, thank you so much for being with us on the program today.

Bob Glazer: Thanks, Adam. It’s a lot of fun.

Adam Robinson: Alright, that is a wrap, folks. Again, Bob Glazer, founder and CEO at Acceleration Partners. This has been The Best Team Wins podcast, where we’re featuring entrepreneurs whose exceptional approach to the people side of their business has led to incredible results. My name is Adam Robinson, author of the book, The Best Team Wins, which you can find online at www.thebestteamwins.com. Thanks for tuning in, and we’ll see you here next week.

Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to The Best Team Wins podcast with Adam Robinson. You can find out more information about Adam and his book, The Best Team Wins: Building Your Business Through Predictive Hiring at thebestteamwins.com. Thanks again for listening, and we’ll see you next week.

 

The Best This Week for August 10

Happy Friday from The Best This Week! For the podcast this week, I had the opportunity to finally use one of the best new features of our revamped office space – our podcast and video recording studio. This studio is one of many recent updates to the Hireology office, including a new cafe and a conference space that accommodates over 200 guests with video conferencing capabilities for our 40 remote employees.

What are some of your favorite office features that contribute to employee productivity?

New Inc. Post: These 4 Letters Are the Key to Understanding and Retaining Your Customers

The probability of selling to an existing customer is 60-70 percent, while this number drops to 5-20 percent for new customers. This means your team should be doing everything in your power to retain customers. One way to keep customers excited about working with you is by getting to know them on a personal level.

Read my latest Inc. post to learn about the four key letters that can help you build more meaningful relationships with customers.

New Podcast: Hiring and Onboarding Keys to Success for a High-Growth Sales Team

Dave Juarez, Sales Manager at Hireology, joined the podcast to discuss how he’s helped the Hireology sales team grow by 30+ sales hires in his first six months on the job. Dave shared how he goes about the hiring process, his favorite interview questions, what it takes to succeed in a sales role and his approach to new sales hire onboarding.

Connect with Dave on LinkedIn.

Follow Hireology on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

The Best This Week for August 3

Welcome to The Best This Week and happy August. One of the biggest stories in the business world this week is that Apple is officially the first $1 trillion company in the U.S. And this success comes only two decades after Apple was almost bankrupt.

While $1 trillion is an astronomical market cap, it’s critical for every business to be working toward its next growth target.  How are you setting your business up for success and continued growth?