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September 18 - November 25, 2020
Be careful who you take advice from. Are they really an expert, or just someone with an opinion and a publisher?
A world-class advisor will always tend to have better questions and far fewer answers than the run-of-the-mill quack.
They know that knowing that they don’t know everything is critical for controlling risks.
Thinking Time
What shortcuts are we attempting to take that are not really shortcuts but rather mirages of greed, laziness, or impatience?
Realistically, how much additional time and practice are required for me to attain my outcomes?
Who can I hire as a coach or mentor to help guide me and hold me accountable?
Where do we need to pick up the level of intensity in how we are playing this game?
The 4 Hats of Business
While passion and technical competence are extremely important, they are of primary value in the “getting traction” and “creating a niche” stages of growth.
Operational competence requires honing professional and technical skills. Business success requires mastery of business skills and tools.
The entrepreneurial curse is the naive belief that spectacular artistic success in one arena is transferable to another
In the world of business success, four primary roles must be performed: Artist (Creator); Operator (Technician); Owner (Business); and Board (Investor).
The primary crisis of most start-ups and small businesses is usually cash, traction, or operational structure, any one of which causes the Owner (Business) and Board (Investor) roles to be ignored.
There is no such thing as a rich victim.
Artist (Creator) An Artist is highly creative. Artists love their ideas and their art.
They live to create art and find producing it highly energizing.
customers applauding its creativity and beauty, but they make the faulty assumption that the key to more applause and hig...
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money. If McDonald’s was run by an Artist, the management team would spend the majority of their time trying to create a health...
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this century. An interesting aside is this: artists and operators tend to be control freaks.
Unfortunately, growth and control work inversely. The more growth you desire, the less control you can have (and vice versa).
Operator (Technician) An Operator is a great Technician who adds value th...
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Operators focus on getting it done. The erroneous belief is that the harder they work...
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the bulk of all operators find themselves in a defensive mode, reacting to the problem du jour. New ideas and opportunities are difficult to take advantage of because there simply is no time.
chance to figure out who is starting them. The Operator is not running the business; the business is running her.
Owner (Business) An Owner is engaged and involved in the planning, execution, measurement, and corrections necessary to proactively lead and manage the business and employees.
Owners add value primarily through leverage (team) and measurement (dashboards and financial analysis). Growth and control are balanced because the rules of delegation (vs. abdication) are being followed.
owners establish the direction, unify employees, set the tempo, listen critically for the beat and performance of each team member, and correct/coach mistakes as necessary.
A great Owner runs the business end of the business by measuring results and then either fertilizes the activities that produced the good results or changes the activities that caused the bad ones.
Board (Investor) A valuable Board of Directors uses the same skill sets and brain cells as a great Investor does. The key attributes of both are the abilities to question, probe, think sequentially, substitute rational thought for emotion, anticipate crisis, predict 2nd-order consequences, and identify risks.
This is the hat that all owners must have and use because it minimizes the likelihood of an interception or a fumble at critical junctures in the game. The problem is that diagnosing your own disease, correcting your own golf swing, or defending yourself in a courtroom are impossible to do well; there’s too much emotion, not enough perspective.
A Board of Directors serves as a coach/trusted advisor to the CEO.
The majority of dumb taxes incurred are a direct result of having only one voice in the conversation when the original decision was made. Adding experienced, wise, thoughtful, trustworthy voices to the conversation exposes risks, curtails faulty assumptions, and minimizes stupid.
The single best business decision you will ever make is to intentionally work with a peer group on a regular basis to question assumptions,
While an Artist is “creating” it, an Operator is “doing” it; an Owner is “leading, structuring, and leveraging” it; and the Board is protecting the business and keeping it alive.
Thinking Time
Which hat has been my comfort zone and which hats are not getting worn often enough? For that matter, which hats do I not even own, and how can I acquire them?
Artist Hat: What needs to be created? Operator Hat: What needs to be done . . . today? Owner Hat: What needs to be structured? Measured? Planned? Delegated? Board Hat: What could go wrong?
flow. The vast majority of business management teams—whether
have drunk the Kool-Aid that stocking the kitchen with free protein-enriched smoothies and heart-healthy pork rinds are drivers of culture. Having a corporate concierge service pick up your dry cleaning and arrange for a back massage do not promote culture.
perks drive culture . . . and that is dead wrong.
Perks are wonderful for employees, but they come closer to driving entitlement than culture.
Look at any business magazine when they rank “The Best Companies to Work For.”
Dumb! That’s analogous to saying more money can fix a broken marriage.
Culture is how we treat each other, how we talk to each other, whether or not we trust each other, and how we handle conflict.
Culture is about accountability, measuring, a bias for urgency, a focus on solutions, calling it tight—saying what needs to be said—being kind and generous, acknowledging one another, and expressing appreciation.
Regardless of the relationship, certain ways of acting and “showing up” are permitted and acceptable and others are strictly out of bounds and inappropriate.
The key to a great culture is creating and fostering a never-ending conversation about the “rules of the game.”
I always tell prospective employees that their talents and willingness to hit my outcomes is what will get them this job, but their ability to perform inside our culture is what will allow them to keep their job.
Culture teaches people how to treat each other.
