No B.S. Ruthless Management of People and Profits: No Holds Barred, Kick Butt, Take-No-Prisoners Guide to Really Getting Rich

by Dan S. Kennedy

Most people even lack systems for managing themselves.

They do not budget time as they would money.

Frankly, if you can’t or won’t manage yourself, what makes you think you should or can manage others?

If you can’t or won’t measure, daily, your progress toward specific goals, how will you pers...

If you won’t hold yourself ruthlessly accountable, how dare you hold an...

Running in and out of your business like a whirling dervish creating chaos or reacting randomly to whatever and whoever pops up are not the marks of a creative leader—

There’s really no excuse for sloppy dysfunction.

That same situation can, instead, be a means of profitably multiplying your know-how and ideas,

creating a sustainable and secure income, and creating wealth.

“No person will make a great business who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit.”

but in almost all businesses employees are needed to really grow,

and when managed properly, they can create the ultimate leverage, job security, and wealth for you.

You will take total control of your business when you create systems to control your business.

“Let systems run the business and people run the systems. People come and go but systems remain constant.”

The bestselling business book The E-Myth Revisited, by Michael Gerber,

“let systems run the business and people run the systems” because “people come and go but systems remain constant.”

Gerber’s book is excellent, and I sugges...

It’s that simple. You create a System when you document—put in writing—something that needs to be done in your business.

You create an Effective Business Management System when you have everything you do documented and you have an Effective Performance Management System in place.

Performance Management System,

motivating Personal Development Interviews that actually lead to the results you want.

When it’s time to sell your business, what is it worth if you’re critical to it? Not much!

What if you’re not only not critical, but the business gets better whether you’re there or not?

When you have Systems in place for everything you do, Personal Development Interviews implemented (next chapter), and systems to consistently deliver world-class customer service (chapter after next), your business will improve whether you’re there or not.

The goal I have with all my clients is to make them irrelevant to the day-to-day, then week-to-week, and then month-to-month operations of their business so they can create real wealth.

There had to be something better. I was a business school graduate for crying out loud. Why didn’t what I had learned in college and from previous managers work?

In people businesses quality is meeting, and preferably exceeding, your customer’s expectations every time.

You do that when you have systems in place to make sure you do each task correctly every time.

A number of years later the Make-You-Happy Management System led us to being named “The Best Small Business to Work for in Washington State” by Washington CEO magazine.

We earned it because Washington CEO magazine determined that the management of our company and our entire team were committed to the same Belief, Vision, Mission, and Goals.

Washington CEO magazine

They told me we did a lot of things right, and the number-one reason we were named the best small business to work for was because our management philosophy and company goals and objectives could be verbalized and were committed to by our frontline people better than any other entry.

Y Theory is what I learned in college. It says, “I’m the owner, I’m the boss, I built this company with my blood, sweat, and tears, this is what I want you to do; tell me what you think, and I’ll tell you whether it’s OK.”

Z Theory says, “I’m the owner, I’m the boss, I’m the manager, I built this company with my blood, sweat, and tears. I know a lot, and when we have something that’s important, I understand that my team knows a lot also. In fact, in regards to their job they likely know far more than me. On those important decisions that involve others, I’m going to get stakeholders involved and find the best answer.”

I hate to break this to you, but you just ain’t that smart. You and your team are that smart, but you, alone, ain’t!

In the Make-You-Happy Management System your team, and you, are the experts.

There is no question that the guys in my warehouse know more about what works in the warehouse than I do. The employees in purchasing know their problems and issues better than I do. And there is no question that my combined team is a whole lot smarter than I am.

When your entire team knows that you value their input and expect their help to make things better every day and you get their input on the big issues bulleted above, yo...

Personal Development Interviews

(PDI).

Whether you’ve ever been the parent of a teenager or not, ask yourself: Do you think you could get the behavior you want from a teenager if you had a performance review with him once a year?

Self-knowledge tells you that only stopping to contemplate your own thinking, actions, and progress once a year is too little, too late.

My own informal survey indicates more than half of small businesses are operating without an organized means of measuring performance and giving fair and useful feedback about it to their staffs.

Traditional management focuses on catching people doing things wrong. If every time I do something wrong, the boss catches me, but he doesn’t catch me when I do things right, my creativity is stymied and I stop using my creativity, stop stepping out front, and stop helping the organization grow.

when we start catching people doing things right, we encourage empowerment.

People start to do things in the ...

Productivity improves on an on...

Improvement doesn’t just come from management but from the whole organization interacting with each other and picking each other ...

Another benefit of this type of management is you create a le...

Researchers tell us that as we move forward, people are going to stay with organizations where they have an...