‘GS&R’ for short is perhaps the most high impact meeting type I’ve used. I started using them in 1986 when I worked with College Pro Painters, and over the years I’ve learned how to make these meetings extremely effective.

GS&R is a one-on-one meeting that you have with each person who reports directly to you, and so on down the line. It’s when you set goals with your direct reports for the week coming up and ensure their goals are aligned with the objectives of your team and the company. I’ve even used this meeting very successfully in coaching franchisees.

These meetings are meant to be a blend of direction, development and support—it’s not an opportunity for task or project follow up.  This is a weekly thirty to sixty minute meeting during which you coach your team one-on-one, demonstrating to them how to be more effective in their roles. It’s also when a ton of ‘situational leadership,’ an idea developed by Ken Blanchard and Paul Hersey, gets used.

Done right, GS&R will eliminate 80% of the emails between you and your direct reports during the week. How? Instead of emailing each other with random questions and ideas, you add those to a list to be discussed at GS&R, saving you both tons of time during the week.  Needless to say, it also saves a lot of frustration caused by the miscommunication that occurs in email.

If you’re not routinely meeting with your direct reports on a weekly basis in a format similar to this, start today and you’ll see improvements quickly.

pic: from the movie ‘Fracture’ with Ryan Gosling and Anthony Hopkins (I hope your meetings go better than theirs)

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

Most top performers work for really average companies.

Your job is to find the amazing people that work somewhere else and get them to work for you.

Don’t make a habit of recruiting and hiring unemployed people.  Find the go-getters that have jobs right now!

On the day Intrawest Ski Resorts were acquired by Fortress, I was on the phone to all the top people at the company telling them I wanted to hire everyone good because it was going to implode.

I eventually hired five of their key people over the next three months because I knew that these people had already been working for a high performance organization. I just went out and got them. It was as easy as that.

Getting the right people can be easy if you’re willing to make it happen.  I often see entrepreneurs struggle because they don’t know how to seek out exceptional people or they don’t work hard enough searching for the gems.

My grandfather, Cam Shortts, who recently died at 96, taught me how to hire great people. He owned a hunting and fishing resort in Northern Ontario called Lift-The-Latch Lodge, and he’d take me duck hunting as a teenager.

Grandpa always knew exactly what kinds of ducks he wanted before we set out to hunt: blue-winged teals, mallards, wood ducks and canvas backs. He also knew what kind he didn’t want: fish ducks. Before we set out on any hunting expedition, he made it clear what his goals were, and that our reward was only as worthwhile as the ducks we’d selected.

Recruiting the right people is just like duck hunting: you must have a crystal clear picture in your mind of exactly what you’re looking for, and good aim.

You also need to be sure that all new hires will truly impress every person they interact with, whether it’s customers, strategic partners, vendors, the media, or the public at large.

So know exactly who you want to hire, go find them, and shoot them out of the sky.

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

I once had a mentor who asked me, “Do you have any of the wrong people in your company?”  And I said, “Yeah I’ve got one guy.”

He said, “How long have you known he’s the wrong person?”

“I’ve known for about six months,” I said.

“Why haven’t you let him go?”  He asked.

“Because I like him, because he’s been really good for the last couple of years. Because I really like him and he really cares.”

“Well why do you want to let him go then?”

And I replied, “Well he’s an emotional roller coaster…”

I had all these reasons why we needed to let him go and my mentor looked at me and said, “I need you to tell me the date that you’re going to fire him.”

“OK, I’ll let him go by Friday.”  This was a Tuesday morning.  We were at Denny’s on Broadway.

He said, “So you’ll let him go by Friday?”

And I said, “Yeah, Friday.”

Then he said, “That’s not good enough.”

I said, “OK, I’ll let him go Wednesday.”  Then he just stared at me, and said, “Chicken!”

And I said, “OK, I’ll let him go today.”

“Good. What time?”

This was 7.30 in the morning on a Tuesday. I’ve moved the firing from Friday to the very same day and he wants to know what time?!  So I said, “I’ll do it by noon.”

My mentor said, “Good. Call me at 12.05pm and I’ll be there for you, but you make damn sure you’re there for him. You make sure when you’re getting this person off your bus that you respect him, and his integrity. You treat him like a person, you mentor him to help him grow in his next career. You have an obligation to him because six months ago is when you should have let him go and for the last six months you’ve been stealing from him.  You’ve taken six months of this kid’s life because he didn’t want to quit because of you.  He wanted to be there to be loyal to you, and because you were too chicken to let him go six months ago when you should have, you’ve taken six months of his life. So you make sure that you’re there for him.”

That was some of the hardest-hitting and best learning I’ve ever had in business.  Hard to hear, easier to execute.

We both cried when I had to let him go that day.

I actually drove back to the office that day and I walked into the office and put my briefcase down and said, “Can I grab you?”  I hadn’t even sat down, but my mind was finally committed to do the right thing for the company and for him. I received emails and Facebook messages from the guy I let go even five or six years after it happened, “Hope you’re well. How are the kids? How’s Australia?”

The moral of this story is that you simply must get the wrong people out of your organization in the right way in order to build a very powerful culture.  If you remove people from your organization in the wrong way, you’ll destroy your culture.

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

Attracting the right people is crucial to becoming a cultural magnet. When you have great people who are over the top positive about your company, you’re on the fast track to creating a powerful culture and a successful business.

But you’ve got to get the right people on your bus and the wrong people off. This is especially true when it comes to cultivating the right culture in your workplace. One bad apple will actually spoil the whole bunch.

At times you may not have to get them off the bus so much as you may need to move them into a better seat.  Once you put them in the right position, if it’s the right person in the right seat, you’ll see the energy level increase, too.

Whenever I discuss culture and getting the right people, I almost always think of the time when I was president of Barter Business Exchange. At that point in time, I had a “Director of First Impressions,” which in typical business settings would be a receptionist or office manager. But since this wasn’t a typical business setting, and I didn’t want a receptionist–I wanted someone who would knock the socks off of any customers, suppliers or employees with positive energy as soon as they walked in the front door. Our Director of First Impressions, Tina Etchart, did just that.  She nailed the first impression every time with her smile, awesome tone and great energy.  What first impression are you setting right at the front door? As the saying goes, “you never get a second chance to create a first impression.” Remember that.

When Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were starting Apple they knew exactly what they were looking for in their employees. They hired people who wanted to challenge the status quo. They hired people who wanted to empower the human race. They weren’t about making computers.  Steve Jobs wanted to put a dent in the universe.  And he hired people who could help them achieve that goal.

Hire people who are passionate about their work. Hire people that have deep passions outside of work. And how do you know you’re creating the right energy? Prospective employees will say things like, “I just want in,” and “You’re the ONLY company I want to work for.”

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

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.

A few years ago, I read a book called The Dream Manager by Matthew Kelly, and it blew me away.

The general premise that I took away from this four hour business-changing read is that if you care more about your employees’ personal goals than the company work they are doing, they’ll go through brick walls for you to build your company.

Sounds odd, but focusing on employees’ dreams will change them forever, and they’ll associate that positive feeling with your company.

How to Use Dreams

One easy, fun and impactful system you can put in place is called the “101 Dream Goals.”  Give each employee thirty minutes and have them write as many things they can think of that:

· They’d like to buy

· They’d like to do

· They want to learn

· They want to try for the first time

· Personal goals they want to achieve

· Sights they want to see

· Places they want to go

I then coach and mentor CEO’s to start spending time every day or every week helping them to make their dreams happen, one by one.  Many of them won’t involve any time or money either. Employees will begin to feel a huge connection with you as you help them to achieve their personal goals with nothing expected in return.  When employees see the company really caring about them as people with dreams, some pretty awesome cultural stuff starts to happen. That’s why in my CEO coaching I talk about Employees personal dreams so often.

Three of my employees had student debt and they felt like they were being crushed by it.  They had no family support showing them how to get out of it and it never would have come up had they not written “get out of debt” on their list of goals.  I asked the three of them if they were OK with me getting them all together to help them out.  All expressed interest in meeting up.  We set up a dinner club – I was buying – and for a few months we met to review budgets that included debt repayment, investing and spending plans I’d put each of them on.  Within six months, all were either out of debt or substantially on their way to getting out of debt.  Two had started companies.  All three were investing, and two were actually using my stockbroker as an adviser.  All were thrilled.

Another one of my employees had on his list that he wanted to watch our national hockey league team, the Vancouver Canucks, have a pre-game practice and then sit behind the bench to watch the actual game.  For him it seemed like an unattainable goal. I made one call to Mike Johnson, the Assistant Coach from the Vancouver Canucks, who not only made it all happen, but a few of the players took Geoff out for drinks after the game.  And yeah, he’d go through brick walls for me now, too.

When you really care for your employees like the family you say that you are, that means caring for them personally and not just talking to them about what has to get done to build your company.

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

One of my favorite lines at the office used to be, “great day–take the rest of it off.’  I used to tease people with that and say it at 6pm.  I’d also say it to people at 10:30 am and blow them away.

Tell people to go home and relax once in a while.

We all know that as entrepreneurs we duck out of the office for our little stress breaks.  Let your team take some once in a while, too.

And if you really like your employees as much as you say you do, let them take the same amount of vacations, as you’d want.  Most employees feel that five weeks’ paid vacation (including their sick days) in addition to the statutory government holidays is about right.

Let them take it.

They won’t quit.  They won’t come into work sick.  And we all know the most productive time at the office is the day before vacation.

So give people time off.

To be sure they take this time off, force them to or they lose it.  The idea is to recharge your batteries regularly and not stockpile the time and have a meltdown.  As a business coach and mentor, I advise CEO’s to give their employees five weeks’ time, however, make them take all five weeks of time during the calendar year.

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

Building a magnetic and infectious culture isn’t accidental; a company has to make a conscious decision to foster and grow it.  Once a company decides to actively cultivate culture, the process required to grow it is sort of like chasing the horizon: you never quite ‘get there‘ since it’s always moving, but the journey is wonderful.

In every industry, there are companies with fantastic cultures and others with terrible ones: Google gets it, Microsoft never has—but both are tech companies.  Both have about the same amount of money and both do roughly the same thing.  However, Google decided that they wanted their culture to differentiate them from the Microsofts out there, and they succeeded.

When you walk through Microsoft’s main campus, you can actually feel a cultural void.  Everyone at Microsoft sits in the dark in their private offices cranking out code without anyone around them to engage them in simple human interaction.  Google, on the other hand, has open space and whiteboards everywhere so people can put up ideas when the spirit moves them, and have unstructured discussion time.

As one of my first mentors, Greig Clark, the founder of College Pro Painters said, “Building a great company means creating something that is slightly more than a business and slightly less than a religion.” What Greig was saying was that culture has to be more than a passing trend or some ideal to which you pay lip service—like any aspect of culture outside of the workplace, it has to be lived, experienced, and grown in order to be sustainable. It has to be a cult.  Cult-ure.

Your Painted Picture should include ALL aspects of the type of culture you want so that you attract people who fit your culture and repel those who don’t.

Pic: Tommy Panetta

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

I walked into my friend Kimbal’s company in Boulder, Colorado. He was an employee of mine 15 years ago and he’s been quite successful at building and selling companies since then.

Upon arriving at Kimbal’s office, I couldn’t help but notice the plethora of Herman Miller Aeron chairs—which used to go for about $800 USD. When I saw Kimbal, I remarked, “Wow, you’re really burning through cash on this new business of yours!”

Kimbal said, perplexed. “Why do you say that?”

“I saw your Herman Millar Aeron chairs everywhere!” I said. I was convinced he was already spending the millions he’d made in business.  I love Herman Miller chairs—I even have one—but I couldn’t imagine buying one for every employee.

So then Kimball asked, “You didn’t see the desks did you?”

I hesitated. “No, I didn’t see the desks.”

“Go take a look,” he said knowingly.  So I walked outside, took a look, and noticed he had all these white plastic fold-up tables pulled up to those fantastic $800 Herman Miller chairs. So I walked back to Kimball and said, “What’s with all of the fold-up tables?”

Kimbal paused for a moment. “Well, everyone wants to have an amazing chair.  You want to attract amazing people and keep them happy? Don’t give them a $200 chair.  Everybody out there buys $1,000-$2,000-$3,000 workstations or desks and they buy crumby $250 chairs.  So I buy $100 desks from Costco and Ikea, and $800 chairs.

My employees love me, never quit, and everybody walks in and sees we’re successful, but they don’t realize we spent $850 on each desk and chair while other companies spend $3,000 on their desk and chair – do the math!”

Expensive desks won’t support your back and make you more productive, expensive chairs will.

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

Zappos Gets Culture

This post is from a guest blog post I wrote last week for McNeill Nakamoto a great Vancouver recruiting firm.  Jessica Rozitis kindly let me re-run it here.

In October, I had the opportunity to visit the current cultural buzz factory ‘Zappos’ the billion dollar online shoe store.

I got a unique opportunity to have dinner with their CEO Tony Hsieh & their COO Alfred Lin.  The following day which was Saturday they set up a 90 minute exclusive tour for 12 of us followed by an additional 90 minute  behind the scenes Q&A session where they really opened up to us.

To start with – I was intrigued and a little bit cynical.  Where they REALLY as good as all this press was saying ?

I’d been the Chief Operating Officer for 1-800-GOT-JUNK? during the heyday of the companies growth and cultural buzz.  During the midst of my tenure I was lucky to be there when we ranked #1 Company to Work For in BC two years in a row by BC Business Magazine and then ranked #2 in all of Canada to Work For.  I knew how the whole culture thing worked.  I saw how we cranked it up – and I saw it go up and down at various points during our growth.  We were having tours & Q&A’s of our company every Friday during those days too.  Were they really this good ? What did they do differently ?

I’d also helped build a couple other companies over the years with awesome cultures. College Pro Painters was where I cut my teeth with culture, and Ubarter.com was where I had fun trying it the dotcom way.  1-800- GOT-JUNK? was where we nailed it.

So with Zappos, I just wanted to see if they were REALLY as good as all their press said (and I’ve had lots of experience getting Free PR too)…..

Here is what I learned at Zappos.  I wouldn’t say I was blown away – I wasn’t – but it was damn good and I learned.  I was and still am in awe of HOW DEEPLY rooted their CEO & COO both live the core values that eminate throughout the company.  I have to go back on a weekday now too – to be fair – in an office that seats 700 people only about 20 were milling about.  My bet is the energy is mind blowing when they bring me back.

Key Points I saw and learned:

—First 10 hires are the most important people to ever hire.  They hire everyone else and they set the direction of the company culturally.

—Core values first…Make all your decisions based on them.  They asked employees what the core values should be and they call each other on them daily.

—They grade employees on how they are living the core values in all roles, two times a year.

—They bring job candidates from the airport in a shuttle. And after they drop off the candidate they ask the driver for his thoughts on the candidates fit culturally – the interview starts at the airport.

—To figure out your company core values they really pushed to have us ask ourselves what are our own personal core values….the company values come out of those.

—Core values should be short phrases not just single words like “passion”

—They tell the employees that they are responsible for care taking the core values.

—Culture is like what makes a flock of birds work with out leaders as they all fly and turn as a group. It’s their cultural DNA.

—As their CEO Tony said – if you don’t fire people for not following core values they become a meaningless plaque on the wall (the values – not the people)

—In 2003 they decided they wanted to be about customer service. So they cut a profitable model of drop shipping to REALLY focus on Customer Experience – and um – it’s working.

—Most important thing they’ve done is exceed expectations.

—Every year they print and give out a Culture Book (I got copies of 2008 & 2009) and it is only edited for grammar and spelling.

—Tony is obsessed with Happiness  – and suggests we all read the “Happiness Hypothesis”

—I think their quirky decorating of all workstations is a little bit too cluttered, dusty, and could use a few days of junk removal – but if that’s the only negative I found then even a guy with all my A.D.D. could turn a blind eye.

These guys GET Culture.  I only wish I could buy shares in the company.  Too bad Amazon bought the whole company for over $900 Million a few months ago.

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

Cameron Herold, BackPocket COO at Zappos