Adam Robinson's Blog, page 7

This Week on Inc.: According to Deloitte, This 1 Type of Data Is Critical to Boosting Your Team’s Productivity

We have a bonus second Inc. post to share this week!

Recent data from Deloitte found that 84 percent of business leaders surveyed view people analytics as important or very important, making it one of the top trends in human capital management. Learn how your team can embrace people analytics to improve your productivity and profitability.

Read my post on Inc. 

This Week on Inc.: The Top 3 Reasons Why New Employees Quit in the First 90 Days

More than 1 in 4 new employees quit within the first 90 days on the job. And when an employee leaves so soon, everything your business spent hiring and training the employee goes to waste. What is your team doing to keep new employees excited and engaged well beyond the first day on the job?

Read my post on Inc. 

New Podcast: Why Leadership Transparency and Passion Are Critical to Franchising Success

Susan Beth, Chief Operating Officer at NRD Capital, joined the podcast to discuss her experience as a franchisee, franchisor and on the private equity side of franchising. Susan touched on key criteria she looks for when investing in franchise businesses, including transparency, a clear direction on what will happen going forward, strong leadership and a continued passion for the brand and the service that’s being provided.

Connect with Susan Beth on LinkedIn.

Follow NRD Capital on LinkedIn and Facebook.

The Best This Week for July 27

Happy Friday – hopefully everyone has had an enjoyable and productive week. This week at Hireology, many of our employees met with their managers for quarterly conversations. And several Hireologists took advantage of the beautiful summer weather in Chicago by scheduling these meetings offsite, either at lunch or in a local coffee shop.

While employees have more formal performance reviews once a year and tactical one-on-ones each week, quarterly conversations offer managers and their direct reports a chance to catch up on how the past quarter went and expectations for the upcoming quarter. How does your team structure your check-ins between employees and managers?

This Week on Inc.: Top Performers Are The Most Likely Employees to Face Burnout. Here’s How to Prevent It

Recent data found that 20 percent of highly-engaged employees have faced burnout. Many businesses don’t recognize the signs of employee burnout, which can cause top performers to be physically and mentally drained, and cause productivity to take a hit as a result. Does your team have a strategy in place to prevent burnout?

Read my post on Inc. 

The Best This Week for July 20

Happy Friday from The Best This Week! Following our exciting summer onsite, many teams across Hireology have been setting aside either a whole day or half a day this week for quarterly planning. During these planning sessions, individual teams run through how last quarter went and key goals for the rest of the current quarter. Individual team members also run through their lists of what’s working and what’s not working and outline actionable next steps to resolve anything that’s not working.

Every team has a different strategy for quarterly planning How does your team plan for each quarter?

This Week on Inc.: How United Airlines’ Turbulent Year Caused Its CEO to Recognize the Importance of HR

Does your business include a seat at the leadership table for your HR team? Many businesses do not, and only include HR in leadership conversations after crisis hits. United Airlines learned this the hard way — when it waited until several incidents happened in 2017 to involve its HR team. Now, the airline is realizing the importance of seeing the HR team as a true partner. See how in my latest Inc. post.

Read my post on Inc. 

New Podcast: Why You Need to Focus on People Strategy to Scale Your Business

Lukas Krause, CEO of Real Property Management, joined the podcast to share how he’s helped his business scale by focusing on continuously improving the people strategy – including hiring the right people for the right roles and ensuring all employees are culture fits.

Connect with Lukas on LinkedIn.

Follow Real Property Management on LinkedIn and Twitter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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, Lukas Krause, co-founder and CEO of Real Property Management, located in Salt Lake City. It was founded in 1986. Lukas and team have been franchising since 2004 and have 320 locations across North America and US and Canada. Lukas and team have 100 employees at the franchisor level. And across the company’s franchisees, over 32 hundred employees out in the network. Recently the business was acquired by Dwyer Group, and we’re going to talk about that as well. Lukas, welcome to the show.

Lukas Krause: Yeah, thanks for having me.

Adam Robinson: So we are here to focus on the people side of your business. To set the stage for our listeners, give us 30 seconds on Real Property Management.

Lukas Krause: Well as you captured, Real Property Management is the largest single family property management company in the United States with over 320 locations across North America. Our core purpose is really about wealth creation. What our franchise do is help individuals participate in the real estate arena with allowing them to outsource all the property management activities. And so that allows individuals to focus on buying or their other careers and treat this like an investment. And so our whole job is to provide an end to end solution that allow those individuals who own the rental properties to not be associated with or tied into the headaches that come with it, whether it’s a maintenance and repairs, or the screening and placement of tenants. Those are the kind of things that we do.

Lukas Krause: And my role as president is really to further our growth and support our innovation as we aspire to elevate the property management category as a whole. And as you talked about, very passionate here personally about professional development and grooming talent. So much so that I wrote a book titled, The Business of You, and it’s really designed to help individuals manage their careers like thriving businesses. And so it’s funny that I see a lot of parallels between careers and running well-run businesses. And so I’m excited to be a part of this and talk about not only the people side of the business, but even strategically how you should attack different categories.

Adam Robinson: Outstanding. And so if listeners want to learn more about the business or about franchise opportunities, what’s the best way for them to do that?

Lukas Krause: RealPropertyMGT.com is our website, and it really will drive you anywhere you need to go, whether you’re learning about our services, whether you’re a resident or a potential homeowner, or even on the franchising side, it’s all there at RealPropertyMGT.com.

Adam Robinson: So Lukas, it sounds like you came aboard in 2012 to help scale the business operationally. Take us back to when you started. What was the state of the organization and the team, and what were some of the first things you knew you had to focus on.

Lukas Krause: It was definitely on the people side where the focus was. Two true entrepreneurs who start the business, and were almost of victim of their own success, did a lot of things well, but they had this huge tailwind. The property management space exploded after the housing bubble where a lot of individuals couldn’t sell their homes, and so on the staffing side, it was an area where I won’t say it was shortchanged, but it was rather aggressive and just throwing bodies at it to kind of plug holes, and not as deliberate as you would hope. And so there was quite a bit of retooling we needed to do. And starting with the HR and the people side especially. And so it was getting the right people in the right seats and transitioning those out, who are very talented, well-intended individuals, but often they were ill-equipped to handle some of the challenges that were in front of them.

Lukas Krause: And so that was where the primary focus was was kind of restoring and restocking our bench to get that in place to ensure that we could really scale to get to that next level. The individuals thought that it was some of the operational elements, but it really was more of a talent issue and just trying to grow too fast and really not screening as thoroughly as you should, or having the right people in the right seats.

Adam Robinson: So it sounds like in periods of high growth, the mindset may have been, “Fill the spot, we need the help,” versus, “Wait for the absolute right fit.” Was that the case, and if so, how do you change that mindset?

Lukas Krause: Oh, I think it’s spot on as you describe it. Because they were just growing so fast with the explosive growth and not having much of a background in HR, the individuals were just kind of plugging and going. And it was working, but it really didn’t see the challenges and the issues that were popping up. I had fortunate enough to have some perspective coming in with a fresh pair of eyes and start to see where the bottlenecks were and assess it from a true 30 thousand foot view. Where the individuals who are living in the day to day, it’s very difficult to get perspective. On the change side, it really is almost like triage.

Lukas Krause: You go through and look at the priorities and you understand what your market is. In Salt Lake City, it’s not an overly large market with a lot of big companies, but there’s some extremely intelligent individuals here that are well-educated. And so what we did is we started to put a process in place on onboarding to be much more thorough and go deeper into the types of individuals we need so you’re going through aptitude testing, personality profiles. But you’re also looking at what kind of personalities you want from a cultural fit to ensure you’re really building something here special. And its taking the time and doing the work.

Lukas Krause: It’s kind of like anything, right? Anytime you’re trying to, whether it’s losing weight, you have to chip away at it. Every decision will impact you losing weight. Well the same thing with bringing in talent is finding those right people, but spending the time rather than doing a quick surface level, 30, 45 minute interview, you got to dig deeper into it and see how their mind works, what’s their attitude, how they fit culturally. Do those reference checks and that background and it’s forcing that discipline, especially when it’s painful. When you’re growing and exploding as a business, you kind of can fall into those traps, not only on the HR side, but any parts of the business where, “It’s good enough, let’s just keep moving along.” But the HR side, I mean that’s where to me the people are your product and you need to make sure you invest the time there, because if you don’t, you can get yourself in a lot of trouble.

Adam Robinson: And did you find that these issues were pervasive at all levels of the organization? And I think about that line level versus senior leadership team. I mean, what was the magnitude of the fit challenge that you were facing?

Lukas Krause: It was across the organization. It was just as the group was growing, it didn’t matter if it was in the leadership role or even down to the junior role. Again, just various levels of talent, but it’s just getting people in the right seats. And so it was a pretty hefty overhaul. The majority of the staff I can say only a handful of individuals have been there longer than me. And so it kind of gives you an idea of what kind of turnover we had to experience.

Adam Robinson: Sure. One of the most challenging conversations is almost always when you have to let someone who was previously a go-to player or even a member of your senior team has just not scaled with the business. Their skills have been outgrown. How do you have that humane, fair, but necessary conversation?

Lukas Krause: Well, I think you nailed that. And to even amplify it [inaudible 00:08:03] times, there’s personal connections with the owner founders, and so there’s even a larger emotional entanglement. I always believe I’m tackling things head on and treating everyone with integrity. But when you’re going into that, you need to help understand why. A lot of times it can be very talented individuals who are just in the wrong seat. And so it is painting that vision on the front end with the organization of where we’re going and what we hope to accomplish, and what we need from that given role, because it’s kind of any time when you’re providing feedback, you’re attacking the behavior not attacking the individual. And there’s a lot of parallels when you go through that and have this difficult conversations with individuals of, “Here’s what we’re trying to accomplish as an organization, and here is ultimately what we need out of this role in order to accomplish it.”

Adam Robinson: Very good. So you talked about a hiring process that needs to be followed. Take us through your hiring process. What works now at Real Property Management?

Lukas Krause: It is an interesting process. We believe it evolves over time. I would love to say that we’re perfect, but we still make our mistakes. What we first is we work with the hiring manager to build out what the job description is and what the objectives for that position. And spend a fair amount of time on that because it’s important to get a clear picture of what you need and what you’re looking for. From there, then our HR team would do a little bit of … Or would post the job and then they’d go through a pre-screening process. After that initial pre-screen, we would have individuals take an aptitude test and a personality profile. And then, we’d bring in the hiring manager for them to meet with. Then, we’d go through a series of interviews with different team members focused on different elements, because we like to get a well-rounded perspective of the individual.

Lukas Krause: Sometimes, we have follow-up, just depending on the role and how deep we want to go in the interview process. But the last one then is kind of, as I joke with the culture I think’s very important, is they meet with the team they’re going to work with, and it’s kind of a group interview. I think that’s very important because we’re very try to be protective of that culture, and this individuals have a big say on whether people get voted on the island or not.

Adam Robinson: Yeah, absolutely. And so when you think about someone making the cut or not making the cut in the organization, what today most often prevents that thumbs up from taking place?

Lukas Krause: Well, I think a lot of times it’s just how they gel with the team. You need to make sure there’s a personality match. And it’s making sure the individuals who come in to that on the team understand what we’re trying to accomplish the role. Because it can be, if you don’t front load that work effort on the front end, it might just be simply a personality conflict that just doesn’t work, and again, an hour or two meeting with someone can go get off on the wrong foot and lead you down the wrong path. So I think it’s important that you educate the team on what you’re trying the accomplish because we went through this situation with our ops team when we were rebuilding it, we had these, I don’t know how familiar are with kind of the DISC profile, but these high D, these drivers.

Lukas Krause: And it was getting so aggressive, they were great output, but we needed to round that team out because you were getting a lot of groupthink. And so when we were going and recruiting roles, we were making sure that we were encouraging diversity from a personality profile to round that team out. And so again, I think a lot of times it’s making sure that the team knows what we’re looking for and what the end goal is so that it is accomplished, because if they don’t, individuals may be looking for someone similar to them to continue kind of plowing ahead. And so it’s a delicate balancing act as you educate, but you don’t want to taint their view because some of the most valuable insights come from those team members because they will see something that maybe myself or the hiring manager wouldn’t see.

Adam Robinson: What role does core values match play in the assessment of somebody’s fit for the job?

Lukas Krause: It’s a big piece. I think it’s an area where we’ve been working on improving. To wire the organization we require is a big core values in group. Same here as an organization and so what we’re going through is a little bit of a kind of an assimilation of what we do with our core values and how they blend with a larger organization. But it is important. If an individual isn’t going to be excited about what your core values and what your objectives are and vision as a business, there’s a real problem because you want individuals passionate about it who are going to drive towards that objective. And so early on, I always try to share the vision when I’m meeting with individuals. I try to interview with everyone of what we’re trying to accomplish. And if that’s not something folks are going to get excited about, there’s probably a better position for them somewhere else.

Adam Robinson: Take us through your philosophy about rewards and comp at your company. I mean, how do you approach what you pay people and what their total value of working in the organization may be? Both monetarily and non-monetarily.

Lukas Krause: Yeah, philosophy for compensation’s always been pay well and align incentives, which is idealistic and great to say, but you also have to balance that with some of the situational limitations. You can imagine, as I mentioned, a bit of a turnaround when I came in in 2012. We didn’t have as deep of financial reserves to pull from as we can today. And so there is somewhat of this evolution of getting winds when you can. And so simple things is starting to add benefits, and getting the 401K launched, having more of a social committee where there’s individuals invested in it. But there’s a lot of things you can do with team building events and having the team own it. And I’m a big proponent of that where we have a culture committee where they’re planning the social activities.

Lukas Krause: What we do is we do a field day here where our employees are planning out what we’re going to do and it’s almost a competitive day and it’s probably one of the most popular things we do. And it’s rather inexpensive. But the other side of it too is creating a culture of recognition. That’s not really costly. And it’s important and people want to feel valued. So it’s a great way to do that and you do it in public. You do it formally and you do it informally and you get a lot of returns on that. And it’s good because people want to feel good and get that pat on the back for job well done. So it is funny that you have to look at it from a lot of different fronts, and I know where I believe philosophically and what we should be doing, but at the same time, I run into it like any business owner. Their challenge is, “How do I balance that with the financial constraints I have?”

Lukas Krause: And so it is always a delicate balance and the goal is always to kind of take a step forward and improve it every year, and it’s served us well, and we’ve gotten to a good place. We’re not where we need to be in my opinion. We’ve still got some room to grow. But we got some good progress thus far and we’re going to continue to get better.

Adam Robinson: Let’s talk about the book. Sounds like your results and experience inspired you to share what you’ve learned with a broad audience. Tell us about the decision and just give us a sense of what you’ve learned and what you’d like others to know.

Lukas Krause: Yeah. The book is titled, The Business of You, and so it describes kind of the premise is to treat yourself like a business. I’m a very passionate person about professional development. It’s what I’ve enjoyed most in my career is getting to work with individuals, and I’ve been so fortunate to have some amazing mentors and people who’ve looked out and help develop me personally, and I always want to try to pay it forward. And so looking around and a lot of organizations with I’d say employees bouncing around seem to be cutting a lot of the professional development initiatives and going to undergrad and going to grad school, it seemed like there was not a lot of things out there about how do you manage your career?

Lukas Krause: And so the whole premise of the book is to treat yourself like a thriving business, have a vision and a mission, what you want to accomplish. Conduct a gap analysis of what you need to do and provide a road map on how you’re going to get there. And really the goal is to ultimately help individuals take ownership of their careers, find … Tie it into their passions so that they can find fulfillment and their definition of success. And so it truly is a road map of how to manage your career as a business. And so I love it and I’ve had some great feedback about it.

Lukas Krause: And it was funny, I was going through … At this time, we have a portfolio of companies and a lot of businesses, but this book was like a creative outlet. And so even though I was probably running four different businesses and working obscene hours, I could always find every night at least 30 minutes to chip away at it. And it just kind of flowed out of me. And a lot of ways because over the last 10, 12 years, I’ve just been pulling together all this information and going to different conferences and all the information that kind of accumulated, and have packaged it into this book really designed as a guide to help individuals maximize their career success if they have those ambitions.

Adam Robinson: Fantastic. And so tell me about the impact. I mean, you said you’ve had some great feedback. What do you think more than anything else, perhaps philosophically, would change from what you see businesses doing to what they should be doing based on what you’ve learned?

Lukas Krause: I think businesses are starting to realize that talent is such an important piece where it was the economy has changed, and the labor market has tightened, and they need to find ways to retain talent again. I feel maybe people took their eye off the ball with retaining talent and developing and grooming them after 2008 when people were more desperate for jobs. And hate to use that word, but there was that element of desperation because your gainful employment was removed. And so I think employers who are struggling to make ends meet, they cut certain things, and they employees weren’t as sensitive to that, because they were just happy to have their jobs.

Lukas Krause: And now, that supply demand dynamic has flipped on its head. I think organizations are starting to realize as employees are jumping, it’s not just because of compensation. Obviously, that’s a big piece, but it’s creating an environment where I feel connected to the bigger picture, I feel like I’m going to grow. And especially even the younger generation of employees. The millennial generation is now the majority of employees in the workforce. And that’s important. They’re early in their career and they want to grow and be challenged. And so I think you’re starting to see a little bit of shift, and I’m hoping that’s the case, so that companies get back to helping groom and develop talent, because I think it was sorely missed over the last I’d say five to eight years as kind of the recovering from kind of the economic downturn.

Adam Robinson: You just went through a M and A process and I can imagine that was as fun as it sounds. Tell us about what you needed to do to get ready for that and what you learned as a result of the transaction.

Lukas Krause: You captured it well. I think it took some years off my life going through the due diligence process, being poked and prodded from accounting firms and law firms and the parent company and their different departments. I learned quite a bit of just planning. If you’re going to go down that process, to lay that groundwork early. Start those conversations with the groups who are reaching out to you. We were getting called on a weekly basis. Start to understand what they’re going to be looking for. Obviously, clean books on the financial side are very important. But documentation of all your processes and documentation of your staff and what you’re doing is very important.

Lukas Krause: Now, we were pretty good as we went through and refining and codified a lot of processes, but we still had a ton of work to do. As an individual company of our size getting acquired by a firm like Dwyer, there was a lot they wanted to see, and so it felt almost painstaking at times, but I understood it was completely necessary. And so there’s a lot of preparation you can do from preparing your business, but it’s also just the documentation of your process, your people, all that information, making it easily accessible. But there’s also a mindset that you go to embrace that you know they’re going to poke, prod, and look underneath every rock.

Lukas Krause: And I’ll tell you, you’re trying to run a business day to day while you’re getting those calls, it becomes another full time job on top of it. So you have to be prepared and committed to spend that time, because it started to get to a bit of a tiring at the end when I’m starting to get asked the same question for the seventh time, but there’s a little different slant on it. And it’s well-intended, but they’re also trying to cover all their bases and there’s different people coming in and out of the process. And so it will test you, not only from your organizational skills, but your patience as you continue to get more data requests from those individuals who are looking to make sure they assess the business appropriately and manage out the risk the best they can.

Adam Robinson: So you mentioned documentation of team and the talent. From your experience in doing this, what are some things that business owners, or founder-led businesses can do now to avoid having to retrace steps later in a transaction as it relates to human capital and people?

Lukas Krause: Well, fortunately enough, the HR side was in pretty good hands. Our HR director did an amazing job of having all the census information available. On top of that, just the retaining all docs, information, personnel profiles, and having them in an organized place, whether it be performance reviews, performance improvement plans, having those files organized made such a difference. So that was one of the easier sides of I’d say the due diligence process for us because our human resources director did such an amazing job of it.

Lukas Krause: But if you don’t have all that documentation as you go through individuals comp and where they’re at, that will be a lot of work. And it doesn’t sound like a big deal, but if you have 10, 20, 50, 150 employees, going back and going through their pay history and going through their … Try to track down their performance reviews, trying to track through anyone who was put on warning or had a performance improvement plan. You times that by 100, 200, whatever number of employees you have, that can be a lot of work. And you can imagine the administrative burden associated with that as you start to go through your emails and files if you weren’t organized from the get go.

Adam Robinson: We’ve covered a lot in a short amount of time here. If you were to summarize your body of learning and experience as it pertains to managing the people side of the business, is there one overarching philosophy that you live by when it comes to people?

Lukas Krause: Yeah, I’ll tell you, it’s treat people how you want to be treated when it’s all said and done. And I always believe that everything is a journey. And the HR side, it’s all about the journey of improvement and working on. And as I looked at it as a leader, it’s funny, what’s the most important quality. At first, I’d probably have some misguided information early in my career. I’d say, “Oh yeah, you want to be the smartest person in the room.” And I realized how foolish that really is. To me, it’s more about the ability to connect with people is the most important piece of it.

Lukas Krause: Because as a leader, you must inspire or move obstacles. Keep spirits up in tough times, because you have to help pull that brilliance out of others. And if you can’t connect with people, you’re going to fail on all of these fronts. And remember, the people side of the business are the ones doing the work, and so as a leader, to me, your ability to connect is almost that most important piece because you’re going to help bring that brilliance out of those individuals, and if you can do that, you’ll thrive.

Adam Robinson: Ladies and gentlemen, that’s the final word. You’ve been learning from Lukas Krause of Real Property Management. Lukas, thank you for being with us on the show today.

Lukas Krause: Thanks, it was a treat. Really enjoyed it.

Adam Robinson: That is a wrap, ladies and gentlemen from 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 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 July 14

This week was especially busy for us, welcoming our remote teams into our Chicago headquarters for Hireology’s annual summer onsite. With so many of our product, engineering, UX, and sales roles spread across the country, we see this as an incredible opportunity to get together, recharge and share ideas in person. I recently shared my passion for such gatherings on Inc.,  and how these regular get togethers have been some of the best investments our company has ever made.

We also had the privilege of introducing our newly revamped office space to our team, giving us some much-needed room as we continue to grow. You can get a peek over on Instagram.

Gatherings help us bridge the gap and break down our silos for teams that are lucky to be under one roof. Are you investing in company onsite activities to focus on what matters most?

New Podcast: How Your Business Can Avoid the Risks of Under Management

Bruce Tulgan, Founder, Consultant and Speaker at Rainmaker Thinking, joined the podcast this week to discuss how detrimental under management can be to any business, and the importance of structured onboarding, meetings and employee feedback.

Connect with Bruce on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Follow Rainmaker Thinking LinkedIn.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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, Bruce Tulgan, founder, consultant and speaker at Rainmaker Thinking. Bruce is the best selling author of 20 books focused on career pathing, generational change, diversity, leadership and management. His best seller, It’s Okay to be The Boss, focuses on what he calls the under management epidemic in the workplace. We are here today to talk about how, Bruce, you help leaders improve the people side of your business and we are so excited to have you here. Thanks for being here.

Bruce Tulgan: Thank you so much for including me.

Adam Robinson: Let’s set the stage before we dive in. Give us 30 seconds on Rainmaker Thinking and what you’re focused on.

Bruce Tulgan: Well for the last 25 years we’ve been doing research on the front lines of the workplace. We’ve interviewed hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people of 400 different organizations. Our interviews are in depth, ongoing interviews. So, many of these interviews, thousands, thousands, and thousands of these interviews have gone on for years and years. We keep talking with people as long as they are willing to kep talking to us.

Bruce Tulgan: So, we’ve got three longitudinal studies going over the last 25 years. One is on human capital management, best practices. One is on generational change in the workplace and the third is on leadership and management and supervisory best practices. So, everything we do at Rainmaker Thinking is based on this ongoing research and we provide training and consulting services for organizations of all shapes and sizes.

Adam Robinson: If listeners want to learn more about what you’re doing, what’s the best way for them to do that?

Bruce Tulgan: Rainmakethinking.com is our website and of course, there’s always @brucetulgan on Twitter.

Adam Robinson: All right. So, let’s dig in here. What is the under management epidemic? What does that mean and what do listeners need to know?

Bruce Tulgan: What our research shows is that most leaders, managers and supervisors just don’t do enough leading, managing, and supervising. There’s not enough high structure, high substance communication. Too many managers just don’t practice the fundamentals. They don’t meet with their people on a regular basis in a structured dialog, where they clarify broad performance standards, spell out expectations, talk through the work, plan, trouble shoot, problem solve, resource plan, hold people accountable, and help people go the extra mile and help people get credit and recognition and reward for going the extra mile. Those are just the basics. Under management is a lack of the basics of leadership and management in the workplace and what passes for management and leadership in most organizations is relatively unstructured ad hawk communication. What we call management by touching base. “How’s everything going? “Everything on Track? Any problems I should know about?” Management by interruption, which is, “My dor is always open,” but that leads to people interrupting each other all day long.Management by monitoring email. Management by being in group meetings together. That’s what passes for management but none of that is structured, focused, communication.

Bruce Tulgan: What happens is people convince themselves that they’re managing because they are touching base. They are interrupting each other all day long. They are on shared emails. They are in meetings together. So, they convince themselves they are doing the work of managing but really what happens is they’re not drilling down, they’re not getting into the details and so problems hide below the radar.

Adam Robinson: So, it’s symptomatic of a lack oof skill or awareness of how to do it right but what does doing it right look like in your estimation?

Bruce Tulgan: Well, what we look at is, what are the consequences of low structure, ow substance communication and the consequence’s are huge. Problems occur that never had to occur. Problems get out of control that could have been solved easily. Resources get squandered. People go int the wrong direction for days, weeks, or months on end. Low performers hide out and collect paychecks. Mediocre performers mistake themselves for high performers. High performers get frustrated and think about leaving and managers end up doing tasks that should have been delegated to someone else. Those are the costs of doing it wrong but when we look at the leaders, managers, and supervisors, who have the best outcomes, the ones who are doing it right. So, we start with outcomes and the say, “What are they doing?” The managers who have high turn over among low performers and low turnover among high performers, the managers, who are able to delegate responsibly, managers who are always helping people get better, managers who have fewer unnecessary problems and fewer squandered resources, mangers who employees have high productivity and high quality, what are they doing?

Bruce Tulgan: What they’re doing is just the fundamentals. They’re having regular, structured, one on one communication with their direct reports. They’re having team meetings, but only for what team meetings are good for, and they’re having good team meetings, quick, effective, focused team meetings with good meeting discipline but then, they’re having one on ones, regular structured one on ones. Structured means that there’s enough schedule to the one on one, enough predictability that the manager can plan in writing and the direct report can plan in writing and then they have a regular structured one on one. Once a week, maybe it’s every other day, sometimes it’s every other week and they talk through the work. That’s the time for planning, for trouble shooting, for problem solving, for clarifying expectations, for making sure people are following standard operating procedures, they’re making sure that problems aren’t hiding below the radar and for helping people plan how to get what they need and for holding people accountable every step of that way and helping people go the extra mile. Regular, structured, one on ones. That is the centerpiece of practicing high structure, high substance, communication in the workplace.

Adam Robinson: Say I’m an entrepreneur. I’m a founder of a business or I’m a new manager in the role managing people for the first time. I look around and I say, “Oh my gosh, I’ve got eight direct reports all of a sudden. I need to get really good at this,” so structured one on ones are the framework but what does a structured one on one look like? What are the elements of a quality conversation based on your research?

Bruce Tulgan: Well, it’s different for every person and the key is building a unique structured conversation with every person you manage. That’s the key is customizing a dialog with every single person based on what you need from that person, based on what that person needs from you but here’s what should be in every one on one. The one on one’s need to be planned. You need to prepare in writing and you need to talk about priorities because most people have more work to do than the available time. So, you need to go over, what are the priorities. What might not get done. Priorities aren’t just about what’s going to get done, priorities are about what might not get done. Then, planning the work. If its ongoing tasks and responsibilities go into standard operating procedures.

Bruce Tulgan: If it’s a new project, then starting to go over the stages of planning and then making sure expectations are clear. Keeping track in writing of how performance is lining up with those expectations, and then trouble shooting, and problem solving, and resource planning, and holding people accountable for the commitments they’ve made, and helping people go the extra mile, and giving them recognition and reward, when they do go the extra mile. Those are the elements.

Adam Robinson: You mentioned team meetings have a time and a place. What is the appropriate function for team meetings? Most team meetings are just so terrible. The end up quality is just so bad, lack of agenda, people are on cell phones, all of the reasons people complain about having to be in meetings. How do you feel team meetings fit into the context of structured one on ones?

Bruce Tulgan: Well, for one thing, you have to make sure that good meeting discipline is required and enforced. That means people need to prepare for meetings. They need to know why they’re at a meeting and be there for that reason. If they don’t need to be at a meeting, maybe they need to second guess why they need to be there, why they’re being invited and you need to know why you’re going, be prepared, and practice good meeting discipline.

Bruce Tulgan: Here’s the thing. There’s only four good reasons to have a team meeting. Now, the first reason is a feeling of belonging and togetherness. You create feeling of belonging and togetherness. The second reason is, if you have a bunch of information you want to communicate to a bunch of people in the same way at the same time. The third reason is if there’s an open question that people need to be able to listen to each other, hear each other, and respond spontaneously to each other. So, brainstorming, or planning interdependent work, where you need to be able to all be there at the table, having the conversation at the same time.

Bruce Tulgan: The fourth thing team meetings are good for, often the best thing about team meetings is that, they often make it clear that what’s really necessary is a bunch of one on one huddles. Almost always, if you have a team meeting, it makes clear that at least one, one on one huddle is what’s really necessary and that’s why those one on one huddles so often follow these meetings.

Adam Robinson: Right. Let’s transition and talk about new hires and onboarding. A lot of time has been spent on this podcast talking to CEO’s and entrepreneurs, who are struggling frankly, with anything more than a trial by fire onboarding experience. What role does structure meeting play in the simulation of new hires and integrating them into a team? What recommendations do you have for listeners who are struggling with that today?

Bruce Tulgan: Well, our research shows that you need to start communicating clear expectations every step of the way, in the attraction process, then in the selection process, and then in the onboarding process, and onboarding needs to be structured. There’s an organization, I’m sure you’ve heard of it, the United States Marine Corp.

Adam Robinson: I have.

Bruce Tulgan: They have the best onboarding program in the world. It’s 13 weeks. It’s 24 hours a day and they call it boot camp. It works like charm. What they do is they take an ordinary human being, they tear them apart, and then they rebuild them and they turn an ordinary person into a United Stated Marine. No small thing. What they do is they have a critical mass of new hires and they have a shared experience that they put everyone through and obviously, most employers don’t have 13 weeks and they don’t have a huge critical mass of new hires, and they don’t have a proving ground, and a firing ranges but you don’t need that. You don’t need to make people do push ups in the sand at 4:00am, but what you do need is an intensive process, where you make the connection between the individual and his or her new role and the mission of the group, the mission of the team.

Bruce Tulgan: Then you make a connection between the individual and the other team members. You don’t just give the person some paper work like, “Here’s the organization chart. Here’s the employee handbook. Here’s where the clock [inaudible 00:13:50] is and here’s where the restroom is. Now start moving your arms and legs and do what everybody else is doing.” Too often that is what passes for orientation. You’ve got to make an intensive experience, where people are making a connection to the mission, a connection to the people, and then they’re starting to understand the basic building blocks of their role.

Bruce Tulgan: Onboarding then turns into up to speed training. Our advice is that you want to have a schedule for every new hire. Even if you only have one person starting on one day, you’ve got to have that person meeting with everybody he or she is going to interface with, saying, “Tell me your job. Where does my role fit with your job,” and then train that person one task at a time so that they can also then get up to speed and start in value and then, this transitions naturally into the one on one structure with their immediate leader, manager, supervisor. It just will start every other day and then every third day and then maybe once a week eventually.

Adam Robinson: What role do a companies core values or just the value system of the company play into the fabric of one on one’s or coaching at this level? How do you see organizations doing this effectively to reinforce culture, I guess is another way to ask that.

Bruce Tulgan: Well, what our research shows is that every organization has a culture. It’s just that most organizations have a culture by default instead of a culture by design. Most cultures, by default, are tied directly to this sort of path of least resistance, unstructured communication, where people are scrambling to do more and more with less and less and everybody’s sort of out for themselves. Companies can’t just announce a culture and then enforce it. What a culture is, is shared norms and values, shared meaning, shared practices, shared language. So, companies have to decide what are the things that we’re never gonna change? What are the things that are gonna be simple to our identity and then, that language, those practices, those norms and values need to be communicated in everything that’s done, every step of the way.

Bruce Tulgan: In one on one’s, one on one’s should not be shooting the breeze. One on one’s should not be career discussion or counseling or pastoral work, one on one’s should be talking about the work. What are you going to do? How are you going to do it? What do you need? What resources do you need? What problems do you need help with? What expectations do you need clarified? Every step of the way, of course, you want to be making the connection to core values and reminding people wherever it’s necessary about the connection to core values.

Adam Robinson: Most managers are really just not comfortable giving what we used to call constructive feedback. Some people call it radical candor. Some people like it Some people don’t. Most managers are really bad at it. It strikes me that it’s a critical and necessary ingredient for strong management in coaching. What’s the right mindset are content of a critical conversation that you coach your clients and client managers to embrace, when it’s time to have that tough conversation?

Bruce Tulgan: We ask managers every day, what’s the hardest thing for you about managing people and the number one answer is, “I don’t have time.” The number two answers, “Well, everybody’s different. What works with one person doesn’t work with another person,” and the third is, “Giving people critical feedback, negative feedback, when they haven’t done as good a job as they think they have.” What’s funny about that is that most managers, they’ll tall you, “My people know if something goes wrong, then they’ll hear from me.” Most managers, the one time they make sure that they’re gonna talk to their people is if things are going really, really wrong.

Bruce Tulgan: If the buildings on fire then you’ve got to go talk to them, right? So, what ends up happening is what we call bad news management. It’s gonna be hard to give people negative feedback if up front, in advance, you’re not spelling out expectations and trying to help them succeed, trying to help them avoid unnecessary problems. If you’re not reminding them, coaching them, helping them get the resources they need, if you’re not setting them up for success and then when things go wrong of course it’s going to be hard to tell them, “Oh, this all went wrong.” They might even be thinking, “Well, gee, you don’t have all the facts,” and you might think, “Well, gee, I guess I don’t have all the facts.” They might think, “You didn’t make it clear,” and you might think, “gee, I guess I didn’t make it clear.”

Bruce Tulgan: The problem with negative feedback is that most mangers are not making expectations clear up front, in advance, every step of the way, following up, following, up, following up, setting people up for success, reminding them over and over again, as many times as necessary, helping them make a plan, helping them follow a standard operating procedures. When managers are doing that and then they’re giving people feedback right, wrong, and average, every step of the way, when managers are giving people positive feedback when they do a good job, and corrective feedback when they’re not doing a good job, coaching can’t be a special occasion.

Bruce Tulgan: You can’t build trust and confidence necessary to coach someone if it’s a special occasion whenever you sit down to have a serious conversation, but if you’re talking to people every day, every other day, once a week, guiding, directing, supporting, coaching, giving feedback, positive, negative, and average, then it becomes much easier. Then when things are going wrong, that’s just that part of the conversation.

Adam Robinson: With your benefit of seeing hundreds of organizations and talking with lot;s of new mangers over the years, not entirely possible to boil this down to one thing, but if you were to name one thing a new manger could focus on that’s listening today, one practice, one approach, one structure, that they could take to the office tomorrow morning and start to implement, what’s the one thing, the most impactful thing, you think new mangers can do to improve their results as mangers?

Bruce Tulgan: Well, there’s a tool that we use, we call the who, why, what, how, where, when tool. So, with every single person that reports to you, ask yourself, who is this person? Not, who is this person [inaudible 00:21:49]. Is this person an A player, a B player, or a C player? When it comes to productivity, when it comes to quality, when it comes to attitude, who is this person? Then, the next question is why? Why does this person need you? Why are you managing this person? Another way to think about that is, what’s the purpose? What are you trying to help this person get better at?

Bruce Tulgan: Then, the third question is, what is your message for this person right now or what questions do you need to ask this person right now. The fourth question is how. How should you talk to this person and that’s a two part question because it’s like, in writing, or on the phone, or in person, but it’s also how? Should you ask questions, or should you give orders. Should you ask questions like an auditor or like a [inaudible 00:22:39] or should you just spell out instruction, or should you talk like an older sibling, and then where. Where are you going to have this conversation? You should remind yourself if you’re in a remote location, okay, where is remotely, so, I better be really good at that and when is, when like, what time and when like, how often because some people if you coach them every day, twice a day, all of a sudden, they’ll do great. Some people you could talk to them once a week or every other week.

Bruce Tulgan: Who is this person? Why are you managing this person? What’s your message? How should you talk to this person? Where and when? Ask and answer those six questions about every person you manage and you’ll be one the right [inaudible 00:23:24].

Adam Robinson: Fantastic Bruce. Ladies and gentlemen, that’s the final word. We’ve been learning from Bruce Tulgan, founder of Rainmaker Thinking. Bruce, thank you very much for being with us today.

Bruce Tulgan: Thanks so much for including me.

Adam Robinson: That’s a wrap for today’s episode of The Best Team Wins Podcast, where we’re featuring entrepreneurs and business leaders, who’s exceptional approach to the people side of the 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. Thank you for tuning in and we will see you right 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.