In the past, I’ve not been shy about my disdain for private offices. I’m a fan of open office environments, and while I was at 1-­800-­GOT-­JUNK?, we lived by it. No one had private offices. In fact, I often sat at desks in other business areas just to keep the pulse.

I have also always worked hard to ensure that silos don’t get created inside a company. “Cross Pollinating” can prove to be more successful than imagined.

The most obvious and immediate change is a big bump in company morale. Everyone’s social circles expand and department-­‐specific cliques disappear. Team relationships continue to be fostered in the day-­‐to-­‐day collaboration, but suddenly when business areas are working together, and walls are taken down both physically and metaphorically, you see members of the IT team eating lunch with HR staffers and sales guys reminiscing with folks from operations about their weekend hijinks. Human resource gurus spend their careers trying to foster that kind of team spirit, and it can be done by moving a few desks, and ensuring teams work together to select key projects to work on, and in working on them as well.

Another unexpected by-­‐product of cross-­‐pollination is a major improvement in how the business parts work together. Without silos, stakeholders from different departments develop a much better idea how other divisions function. Fresh sets of eyes and different backgrounds bring new solutions and better ways of doing things. Its remarkable.

In one instance, I witnessed a senior employee from sales was sitting amidst compliance and operations people. Through the regular office chitchat that surrounded him, he began to hear of repeated instances of waste we’d never even considered. He reported it up the chain and steps were taken to remedy it. That’s the kind of intel businesses need to stay solvent. It’s also the kind they pay consultants top dollar to unearth.

Some employees might pine over the plethora of knickknacks and photos they use to create a sense of home at their desk. This mobility doesn’t preclude them from personalizing their spaces, it only means they have to cut back a bit on the teddy bears or pictures of their cats.

Office managers might balk at the logistics of a rotating seating chart. But we are in an age where the entire contents of an old school office can fit inside a laptop the size of a legal envelope; there is no real need for rigid floor plans. Office workers are as mobile as ever, and the benefits of untethering and mixing them are great. Add that to the benefits of teams working on projects to drive the company goals & profitability as well, and the silos will fall.

I cover a lot more on culture here but only click if you’re keen to turn your company into a magnet for great employees.

For more information on this topic, check out: Building a World Class Culture.

When you are recruiting people, your job postings have to be like a magnet.

Magnets both attract things, and repel things.

Your Job Descriptions have to do the same thing to be really effective.  They have to be written in such a way to get the right candidates vibrating with excitement, and have the wrong people running away in fear or disgust.

Try it.

If you’d like email me Cameron@BackPocketCOO.com and I’ll send you a sample of the job posting I used to recruit my Exec Assistant – we nailed it using this strategy.  And if you want to know how to interview all your job candidates there are some awesome systems here too.

Meetings can’t be effective if there’s no system in place to ensure their regular occurrence. You need a series of different meetings to achieve various objectives, and these meetings need to happen even when you’re not there.

When you get into a rhythm with regular, effective staff meetings, you’ll wonder how you ever got things done before.

You need meetings for Strategic Thinking, Planning, Reviewing Dashboards, Team Meetings, Coaching etc.  Figure out what your meetings need to be for 2013 – and put them in the calendar for the year.

For more information on this topic, check out: Leadership at 100MPH.

A great way to come up with a laundry list of potential projects for the year or quarter is through an exercise I learned at GE called ‘Workout.’  And while this list can be exhaustive, your resources probably aren’t. As a result, this list serves as a starting point from which you’ll determine critical projects, what order they should be in, and move forward with them in order to make the Painted Picture a reality.

Have your leadership team come up with a list of all the projects you could complete as a company in the upcoming year.  I love using the Post-It note exercise again for this. It draws out a long list of all the potential things you could do and it gives everyone a chance to be heard. Categorize all the projects that you touch on by business area (sales, marketing and so on).
Once you have all the projects categorized, it’s time to vote.  Count the number of projects in each area and divide by the number of people on your team.  Give each person a rounded number of projects for which they’ll be held responsible.

For example, if there are twenty-two projects listed in marketing, and six people on the leadership team, then there are four votes each.
Then, have each person come up and vote on which projects they think are highest impact and most urgent in terms of the annual goals you’ve outlined.  If they get four votes each, they can distribute them however they wish: four projects, one vote each, two projects, two votes each, one project with four votes and so on.

Once that’s done, tally up the votes on each project and rank them for each category.  Throw out any projects that don’t get any votes.  In fact, I usually try to limit the projects being committed to two to three maximum, per area, and fifteen to twenty maximum for a company for one year.

Remember: Focus on the ‘critical few’ versus the ‘important many’.

► Map Them

Once the most critical projects are identified, place them into a simple spreadsheet with these columns for each project:

· Project name

· Project number

· Goal supported

· Number of votes (helps get rid of a few more when you see how overwhelming it looks to get a few done in one year)

· Quarter start date

· Month project ends

· Cost/savings (NOT including current staff salaries)

· Days until completion

· Business areas (one column for each; e.g. IT, finance, sales, and so forth)

Show all the areas that will have to be built or implemented

Once this task is completed, everyone on the team should have an overall view, which will allow him or her to remove a few more projects that looked important, but now in the overall scheme, can wait a year.

Informed Pessimism is the point in your business that follows Uninformed Optimism. This is when you’re not as excited as you once were. Coffee is helpful to get you started on your day.  You are worrying at times. You aren’t depressed or really scared – but you’re somewhere in between scared and excited.  You’re just a little bit pessimistic now.

The great thing with this stage is that it prevents you from making careless mistakes from overly optimistic thinking. You’ve rounded the corner and have uttered the words, “Oh shit!” And unlike the first stage of Uniformed Optimism, you don’t want to be talking to the media.

When you’re at this stage and nervousness sets in, you want to start doing some planning!  Some budgeting, too. When you’re nervous, you’ll make better and tougher hiring decisions. You’re going to be a lot more critical and discerning when you’re interviewing an employee and making sure that these people have really done what they say they’re doing and not just learned it in a textbook.

When you’re at Informed Pessimism you should be doing things like:

• Planning the next phase of your growth
• Strategic planning on how to make your future unroll
• Budgeting
• Hiring – you’ll be more cautious and interview better
  
• Purchasing things like advertising – you’ll be careful with where you spend your money and how much you spend and you won’t over-buy advertising based on potentially exuberant sales forecasts.

When you’re at Informed Pessimism, there are also some things you should avoid doing:

• Don’t talk to the media or do speaking events.
• Don’t work in roles where being excited would help you get a better result – wait until things turn around emotionally for you.
• Remember these stages are cyclical, and soon you’ll be on to yet another stage.

For more information on this topic, check out: The Emotional Roller Coaster of Entrepreneurs.

Rule Number Six.  Works every time.  It doesn’t matter what business you’re in, what country or state you live in, etc.  If it resonates with you, please share it, but first read on…

Ronald Reagan & Mikhail Gorbachev were having an all day meeting discussing affairs of state.  Suddenly an aide burst in, shouting and stamping and banging his fist.  Gorbachev quietly said, “David, remember Rule Number Six.”  David was instantly restored to complete calm, apologized for the interruption, and left the room.  They resumed their discussion.  Several minutes later, another person ran in, shouting and stamping.  Again Gorbachev said, “Please remember Rule Number Six.”  They calmed down immediately, apologized, and left the room.

Reagan then piped up and asked the simple question “I’ve seen many things in my life, but never anything as remarkable as this.  What is this Rule Number Six?”  Gorbachev laughed and said, “Ahh – Rule Number Six – it’s simple ‘Don’t take yourself so fucking darn seriously.’”  After a moment of pondering, the Regan said , “What, are the first five rules?”Gorbachev smiling said, “There aren’t any.”

For more information on this topic, check out: Building a World Class Culture.

Other than thoroughly reviewing a job candidate’s past employers online, dig around on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube to see how they portray themselves. Social Networks are public domain, so don’t feel like you’re infringing on anyone’s rights.  Some of the things you find may surprise you!  Read on, and get more insights here too.

Formulate a list of questions related to the preferences you’ve already decided you need in a candidate. Your preparation should give you a list of areas to delve into deeper. I love making my questions right on their resume and then, once I’ve got a ton of questions written down, putting a number beside each in the order I’ll ask them to ensure I cover it all.

One-on-one interviews should always be two hours and can often go as long as four hours if you’ve really prepared and really grill the candidate, asking multiple questions around each area.

The setting for the interviews should be appropriate. Use your intuition to know whether a more or less formal atmosphere is appropriate.

The interviewer explains this stage of the process to the candidate. Build rapport with the candidate, but don’t do all of the talking. The interviewer has to stay in control of the discussion, so don’t let the candidate control the time or the questions. They’ll have their turn to ask questions later.

Always look for transition points in their job history because that’s where the most illustrative stories lie, and if a candidate shares them, you’ll begin to see more of them as a person. Moving between jobs, schools, career changes, and marriages help you get a better idea for who the candidate is as a person.  Probe into the transitions –respectfully – and find out why they happened. Don’t assume all transitions are bad – ask the candidate why they made the choices they did in order to get a comprehensive picture of them as an individual.

1. Get out of your office. When creating a Painted Picture for your company you must leave your office.  If you sit at your desk or ‘hide’ in a boardroom, you’ll get dragged back into your typical routine and your mind can’t wander into the future.  Working from an office tends to put specific constraints on your mind, and that’s the antithesis of this exercise.  Forget current metrics, daily tasks and obligations, and the looming question of ‘how?’ and simply let your mind wander.

I have found that the best way to start your Painted Picture is to sit by the ocean, go up into the forest, find a spot in the mountains, or even do what I did when I wrote the Painted Picture for BackPocket COO: lay in your backyard in a hammock and just start sketching or writing.  Chapter 1 FREE here gives you more tools too…

2. Abandon your computer. In this specific instance, your computer is considered a negative device that will suck you into the vortex of daily emails and tasks. Get a sketch pad with unlined paper. Initially, it was hard for me to think abstractly because I’m so left-brained.  I turned the sketch pad sideways so it was in ‘landscape mode’ and I started mind-mapping.  I just began writing down my ideas about what my business would look like three years in the future.  Once I had put on paper all of the ideas in my head, I was then able to write a three page description of all of my thoughts.

3. Look at the road in front of you. Don’t focus on how you’ll make it happen.  Even with 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, I was by choice never a part of the process of creating the Painted Picture because I was the ‘how’ person.  I was able to attract the people and figure out the systems and processes that were scalable for implementation once everyone had conjured up their ideas.  In contrast, Brian was the ‘where’ person—he could look at the road ahead and see where he wanted it to go.  If I’d been involved in crafting the Painted Picture for that company, I’d have gotten in the way by constantly thinking about how we’d make it happen.

4. Get Creative – YES YOU ARE! Creating a Painted Picture requires you to get out of your comfort zone, and I encourage you to do so. Everyone is creative, so don’t even utter those words.

To ensure you’re getting creative, think about crazy stuff—maybe something too outlandish to share at a meeting or really spend too many ‘work hours” thinking about. I like to use a technique called ‘mind mapping,’ which allows you to plop down thoughts on paper without having to provide explanations of strategies for achieving the desired goal. Here’s a good rule: if what you think about during one of these sessions seems bizarre or unlikely, then include it in your Painted Picture.

5. Enlist support. When you finish your Painted Picture, share it with your employees, suppliers, bankers and lawyers. You’ll then start to see people align with your goals, and the picture will become a reality. It’s incredibly beneficial for your employees, who will use your Painted Picture as a means to understand their role in the grand scheme of things. I’ve even seen business areas within a company form their own version of a Painted Picture that then dovetails into the overarching one. Overall, sharing your Painted Picture with staff will prompt them to make decisions subconsciously in alignment with your vision.  Others with whom you share your Painted Picture will also consciously help you make it happen because they are energized by the clarity of your vision.

Here’s my painted picture (link).  I don’t care if competitors see it.  I want the whole world to see it because then I get everyone working for me for free!

6. Stick to a three year Painted Picture. Sometimes an entrepreneur I coach shares with me their frustration upon returning from vacation to find that their employees made ‘ridiculous’ or ‘bad’ decisions in their absence. Employees don’t wake up in the morning to make bad decisions.  They WANT to do the right thing, but if leaders don’t share company goals, then what do they base their decisions on? Employees can’t read your mind.

In order to create an effective Painted Picture, you need to keep one foot firmly planted in the present, while the other reaches out and taps on the soil of the future.  If you go much further than three years into the future, you’ll lose your balance and fall over.  Stay about three years out and then write down what you see.

Chapter 1 FREE here gives you more tools too… Make it happen!  The results will change your company and your life.

For more information on this topic, check out: Building a World Class Culture and Leadership at 100MPH.

I have been recruiting thousands of employees for 25 years now – and this is easily the best recruiting tactic I’ve ever heard of for getting true A Players.  It’s a twist on the old internal referral bonus…

I cover a ton of other systems on recruiting and interviewing here – but this one is fantastic…

• All employees are eligible.
• Any employee referring another person from outside the company who gets hired earns a bonus of 100% of that employees starting salary.  i.e. refer a person who earns $120,000 and you earn a bonus of $120,000
• The bonus is paid out 10% a year, for 10 years.  So you’ll earn $12,000 a year for the next 10 years…
• Caveat is – both of you need to be working for the company for the bonus to keep being paid out.  If either of you leave for any reason – it stops.
• Keep referring new hires, and you’ll keep adding new bonus amounts on top of the others.

The best part of this is, internal employees will work to keep people happy so they stay, you’ll have a built in happiness machine.

Seems expensive at first blush – but it will drive great new people into the company, and the longer people are with you, the more skills and culture they’ll build up for you.

More great tools about recruiting here…

For information on this topic, check out: Leadership at 100MPH.

What to Say to the Media

I’ve found that this simple script works best to land Free PR and I’ve used it since 1986:

Start with “Hi, my name is [Your Name].  Do you have a couple of minutes, I think I have a great story for you?”

The writer will say one of the following:

a)   “Sure. What have you got?”  – To which you say – “Well, I have this cool story about this  [Your Angle].  Here are a couple of quick bullet points.”  Then, like a salesperson, you ask: “What do you think?”. Continue to ask questions, and listen.

b)   “Sorry. I’m on a deadline” – to which you say – “OK, I’ll call you tomorrow or would the day after be better?”

c)    You also have the opportunity to ask what they’re working on and listen. When you’re trying to pitch your angle, ask them what stories they’re working on currently.  Suggest helpful options for achieving their goals, and you’ll be achieving your own at the same time.  Potentially suggest ways you could be an expert with comments for their current story.

As the saying goes, in sales, you have two ears and one mouth–use them in that ratio!  The conversation should go something like this: you ask questions, you listen, you listen, you ask questions, you listen, and you listen some more.

And then, remember this:   Don’t show up and throw up.  Don’t start giving them the entire story.  Instead, give them your quick little angle. It’s a seduction. Say, “What do you think?” after you’ve offered them a taste. They’ll give you their thoughts, and then you can narrow your angle a little bit from what they say, or switch to your second angle, or your third angle that fits better. If you are alert, you can turn an apprehensive writer into a zealous fan, just by listening.

Everyone asks me about email pitches.  Sorry, that’s not my gig.  I’m all about picking up the phone, so I’m not writing about how to email members of the media because everyone is doing that –this is like competing where there is no competitor!

There really isn’t much difference in terms of my approach for radio or blogs.  In fact, in speaking with many bloggers, it’s clear they’re getting frustrated with people spamming them by email with story ideas and they’d love a phone call too.

If I have to leave voice mail, I usually leave a message like this: “Hi Susan, sorry I missed you, but I think I have a great story angle for you.  I’ll give you a call tomorrow about it.  If you have a chance before then, you can call me at: 604-XXX-XXXX.”

Follow-up emails are fine for thanking the writers for their time.  Follow-up emails are perfect after a writer covers you, but a handwritten thank you note mailed (with a stamp) to them is far more memorable.  No one sends thank you cards to just say thanks anymore – and you should—you’ll stand out. This is how you’ll land tons of Free PR.

For more information on this topic, check out: Generating Free PR.