“What’s the most important thing to do to grow my business?”

This is the question I am probably asked the most. The answer I want to give is long. In fact, it’s so long, it became entire book (it’s called Double Double, if you were wondering).

But my short answer is simple. To grow your business, you have to develop a world-­‐class culture. A commitment to building an awesome culture is also a commitment to making all aspects of your business better.

Think about it, you need top notch employees to build a successful company. To borrow a cliché from one of my favorite movies; if you build it, they will come. You’ll never recruit the kind of people you want if your company’s culture is stodgy or too rigid. Young, ambitious types feverishly avoid this kind of environment and you’ll end up with average applicants just looking for a paycheck.

But build a culture that nourishes and inspires, and entrepreneurial applicants will flock to you. Who wouldn’t want to work in an environment that encourages everyone to work their best?

A lot of companies shy away from building a truly great culture. They think it’s either too expensive or not important enough. Those companies are what I like to call ‘doomed’. Truly great enterprises look at money spent on benefits and perks as investments in their people and can expect it to be paid back tenfold.

Look at Google, one of the biggest and most successful companies on the planet. Their offices are bright, colorful and packed with nap pods, pinball machines and similar paraphernalia. Now is Google staffed by slackers and goof offs? Of course not. In fact it basically has its pick of the top candidates in any field any time it hires.

Some argue its high compensation and stock options do a lot of recruiting for Google, but I retort that its rich culture has attracted the kind of talent that allows it to offer such rich packages. Forget the chicken or the egg, focus on a nice, comfortable roost.

It isn’t just video games or funky furniture that create your culture. Things like vacation time, how you encourage ideas or even what you stock in the fridge go far in fostering an environment of success. In other words, there is no blueprint for how to create a winning culture. Companies that get this, ‘get it’. Emulate them and you’ll see your business take off.

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

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.

The Love Guarantee

The members that constitute a business community drive the bus and create demand. Providing an innovative product is only half the battle. Sustained success lies in keeping customers happy and coming back for more. Any company can claim superior customer service, but can they walk the walk?

I Love Rewards has been wildly successful in this, and we have the raving fans to prove it. Here’s why every company should develop their own version of our Love Guarantee:

Clients don’t have power, end users do. Clients won’t keep buying a product the user isn’t happy with. Dedicate a team to manage member happiness, and not only will that keep members happy, but clients loyal.

Customers are brand ambassadors. Marketing dollars buy presence and are essential, but reputation and credibility in the business community trump when it comes down to closing a deal. Keep customers happy and they’ll go to bat for you when you call on them for prospect referrals.

Competitors offer a viable alternative (and are trying to do it better). Competitors are well versed in your strengths and weaknesses, so don’t grant them an opportunity to fill a gap in your customer service. Establish a guarantee that is open ended and maintain a stop-at-nothing attitude to take satisfaction to the ultimate level: loyalty.

An I Love Rewards member, Michael McNamara, recently redeemed points to surprise his wife with a night at the Horseshoe Resort for a birthday, wedding anniversary, and Mother’s Day celebration. Unfortunately the redemption certificate was slow to arrive and upon booking his stay the reservation was refused based on a new two-night minimum policy.

His call to Member Support brought a happy ending. Within minutes one of our representatives found the problem, and an above and beyond solution. The bad news was that the vendor had failed to communicate the resort’s policy change. The good news was that they offered to cover the cost of the second night. We took an extra step to have flowers delivered to the room. In response, we received these words of praise from Michael:

“As a manager for front line Call Center employees I can be very hard to impress as my expectations are extremely high. I am very happy to say you not only met but exceeded every expectation I had”

The Love Guarantee Lesson: The Love Guarantee is our secret ingredient, ensuring that clients and their members love everything about their interaction with our company. Our promise to customers is, “We’ll stop at nothing to make sure your program members love everything about their experience”. We convert system hiccups and member concerns into opportunities to exercise the outstanding service and make continuous improvements. We welcome and challenge you to borrow our idea to do the same.

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

When it comes to paid vacation, the U.S. and Canada don’t get it. Giving two weeks paid vacation to employees says you’re a mediocre employer, at best. In fact, most people would never work for someone for years if they knew they only got two weeks of vacation.

Two weeks of paid vacation is particularly hard to swallow if you characterize your company as being “like a family.” Really? You call that family.

Would you really want your siblings or parents only getting two weeks of vacation? You know that would really suck. So, don’t do it.

European and Australian employers give five to six weeks’ vacation.  The argument in the 1980s used to be, “Yeah, but look at the productivity of Americans—they only give two weeks of paid vacation!”But we can’t in good faith argue that point anymore. Productivity has declined because we give our employees less and expect more, and that has to change.

The companies attracting and retaining the most qualified employees all give more vacation than their mediocre counterparts.

If you really want to be a great employer, here is one easy way to do it that doesn’t cost you any more money that you spend on people today: Give all of your full time employees five (yes, five) weeks’ vacation. Include sick days in those five weeks off.  In addition to those five paid weeks’ vacation, they obviously still get the other statutory government holidays like Christmas, New Year’s Day and so on.

Why does this work?Vacation time that includes sick days means employees won’t come into work as often when they are sick.  They know they have enough time off to cover those days, so they won’t come in and infect everyone else.  The number of sick days per year for your company will drop. You are also going to find that the only people who don’t love this are the people who smoke or are unhealthy and perpetually sick.  Well, you don’t want them on your bus anyway.

No one is going to quit.  Why would they?  Where else can they get such a great vacation package?  With lower attrition rates and increased retention of employees, your employee training costs drop.

Everyone knows that the most productive day at the office is the day before vacation.  So the more vacation you give people, the more days they’ll have those “before vacation” productivity gains.

Give all employees the same vacation time, too, otherwise if you give tenured staff more vacation time you’re saying, “we like them more than we like you.” Not a good move.

pic: Wayfaring

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

Greig Clark, my good friend and founder of College Pro Painters, used to say that in order to build a truly great company, it has to be slightly more than a business and slightly less than a religion. It has to be a cult.

The cult-like culture starts with people who have a fantastic cultural fit, who are strong leaders, have proven ability to perform their roles, and will do it at one hundred miles an hour.

To build a cult-like workplace find new employees that raise the average skill set of the entire group.

A business’ hiring process is just like when you’re rebuilding a sports team.  You need to get rid of the wrong players and bring in those that raise the average of the team. A sports team never considers bringing in a bunch of C players – they obsess about bringing in better players to win the cup.

All champion teams have a cult-like environment.  Your company should be structured the same way.  And in our lifetime, the Toronto Blue Jays will win the world series again.  My dad says so!!!

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

This question of the week is from CEO Jamie Scarborough of Sales Talent Agency.  He asked “A lot of companies seem to focus heavily on collecting “logos” like “Fastest Growing Company”, “Best Employer” etc…

I’ve covered the rest of his question & answered it here for you…

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

A cool lesson from the movie ‘The Secret’ is ‘like attracts like.’ It also repels the opposite of like, too.

So, if you’re building a company with a really fun, entrepreneurial culture with a great work/life balance, you’re going to repel boring useless lazy people cubicle drones who have no life (good they’re boring to hang out with).

Herb Keller, founder of Southwest Airlines, got a letter this letter from a customer:
“I need you to stop telling jokes on your airline or I won’t fly with you anymore!”

Herb Keller sent a letter back: “We’ll miss you!”

The practices of Southwest Airlines are so aligned with the vision of their future that they publicly say, “Customers are not #1, our employees are.” And they put it in writing!

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

Just like offices, communication needs to be open as well. What does that mean? For starters, no hidden agendas and share more than ‘the bare minimum’ of confidential information with everyone.

The more open the communication is across individuals and departments, the more trust that will be built within the company and its teams. Since these steps are an effort and fostering real communication, let’s discuss what staying “positive and open” means for achieving that end.

Communication has to flow top-down, bottom-up, and between peers and business areas, but it’s not always easy to make this happen. However, one of the most effective ways I’ve been able to maintain this flow of communication is to have an “open door policy.” In fact get rid of the freaking door, we know you’re watching porn.

Even though technically, if you have no walls, you won’t have doors, the phrase encapsulates the approach all leaders should take to fielding people’s thoughts and concerns. It shows everyone that leaders are willing to grab some time to listen to the concerns, fears, frustrations and ideas that are percolating throughout your organization.

“Town hall” style meetings also helps with the flow of communication to large numbers of people and back to you. These communication extravaganzas can be set up as an open forum, usually with a few beers being passed around to get people relaxed, and they allow for a top-down, bottom-up flow of information.

Most importantly, leaders have to walk the walk here—you have to be prepared to show people you’re working to resolve issues, or shine a spotlight on the areas that need one. That’s what it means to lead.

Fostering outstanding communication in your company need not be relegated to large-scale efforts like tearing down walls and having town hall style meetings. One of the most impactful things we did at 1-800-GOT-JUNK? and then later at companies I mentored and coach like I Love Rewards & Nurse Next Door to foster great communication is running the “daily huddle”

The power of sharing good news each day, the key numbers, missing systems and getting updates from different business areas really allowed everyone to get on and stay on the same page.  Everyone knew what everyone else was doing, and why it was important.

Stop surfing porn, and get rid of your doors.

pic Cartoon Stock

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

Years ago, my friend and brilliant speaker, Jack Daly, pushed me to ask myself, “What one thing did I do today to raise the energy level of my team?”

When I think about it, it makes sense.  The speed of the leader is the speed of the group.

One of your jobs as a leader, no matter where in the company you are, is to raise the energy level of your team. On the flip side, also ask yourself what you did to destroy the energy of the team?

I distinctly remember the times I’ve taken an entire team and destroyed their energy and passion for days by saying the wrong thing or by publicly coming down on them.  I’d even feel myself doing it and didn’t stop.  I had to learn how to listen to my conscience and let it guide me.  Trying to slow down before I’d say something would help, but it was hard for me.

In the must read book, The One Minute Manager, Ken Blanchard nailed it when he stated, “Two strokes for one poke.”  Others call it a “shit sandwich,” which basically means that if you give constructive criticism, try to sandwich it between things you are happy about and can praise the employee for doing.

By being a better communicator, you’ll produce employees that understand your goals and communicate well to others on the team.

As you walk into the office each day, think about the things you can do to raise the energy in your workplace.  Be yourself, but find ways to stir the Kool-Aid every day.

As my mentor said, if you want and awesome company culture “focus on building something slightly more than a business and slightly less than a religion.”  To really build that cult (culture) you have to always be looking to raise the energy of the group.  Find a way.

I’d love to hear what you do in your company to raise the energy level of your team.

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

Who made this sign ? Seriously ?

Fire them…

I never understand why some employees do tasks that they know are stupid, pointless, useless, redundant etc. just cuz “we’ve always done it that way”.

Make today Waste Less Wednesday. Ask your employees to find one thing that the company does that is stupid or a wastes time. And stop doing it. Forever.

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