The Blog

Team

The Struggle of Entrepreneurial Loneliness

Sometimes Entrepreneurship really sucks. It can be an isolating journey. The stresses and responsibilities fall squarely on Our shoulders. Friends and family can’t fully relate. They just can’t.

A great team is amazing, but you know that nobody will ever be invested as you are. It’s easy to feel alone.

Nobody Understands What You’re Going Through

As an entrepreneur, you live experiences that are foreign to most people. The highs and lows, the nonstop work ethic, the constant risk – it’s a 24/7 endeavor that only fellow entrepreneurs can truly understand.

When things get tough, support from loved ones, though well-intentioned, rings hollow.

They tell you to “hang in there” or “take a break” or “it will get better”, but it’s clear they don’t really ‘get’ your daily reality. The pressure, the lost sleep, the self-doubt.

This lack of understanding can make an entrepreneur feel depressingly alone. You have no one to confide in who can grasp the full weight of your stresses. It’s easy to think “nobody gets it”.

Your Team Has Limits Too

Surrounding yourself with a stellar team is one of the best things you can do as an entrepreneur. But even amazing team members have limitations when relating to your experience.

At the end of the day, they still get to clock out and detach. As the founder and leader, you live the company’s problems night and day. No matter how skilled your team is, they aren’t up at 3am agonizing over customer problems, payroll, HR, legal … everything – like you are.

Great team relationships can soothe entrepreneurial loneliness to a degree. But team bonds can only partially fill the gap.

Mentorship is Vital

To truly combat entrepreneurial isolation, you need mentorship from those who have been there before. Fellow entrepreneurs who have built businesses themselves are the only ones positioned to understand your day-to-day reality.

Whether you regularly meet 1-on-1 or join a mastermind group, having a community of mentors provides counsel that comes from a place of true empathy. They’ve navigated the same storms so their guidance is practical and heartfelt.

Building relationships with seasoned entrepreneurs will help you push past the loneliness phase that almost every founder experiences. Their wisdom and war stories are invaluable fuel to keep you going.

Share Your Experience

Once you’ve achieved some entrepreneurial success, one of the most rewarding things you can do is share your own lessons learned. Your experience becoming an entrepreneur will resonate with someone earlier on their journey.

You can do for them what others have done for you.

Be transparent about your highs, lows and mistakes. Pave the way for future entrepreneurs to avoid isolation. The battles you’ve fought through serve as a guiding light. Create a virtuous cycle where today’s mentors become tomorrow’s mentees.

Becoming a Better Entrepreneur

I often think there are two ways to become a better entrepreneur. The first is to learn from others. The second is to share what you’ve learned – because in sharing it you’re forced to truly process and understand the lessons you’ve earned.

The path of entrepreneurship is a lonely one, but with the right community it doesn’t have to be. Seek the counsel of those ahead of you. Be generous with those behind you.

August 21, 2023

4 Kinds of Employees That Can Skyrocket (or Destroy) Your Business

There are 4 kinds of employees. Two of them will wreck your company, and one will 10x the results. Here are lessons on how I learned to spot each kind, and how you can too.

I used to think there were two kinds of employees – ones that “got it,” and ones that needed help to get it. It was very simplistic. Especially because most of those who didn’t “get it” wouldn’t become productive – even after I through a ton of time and money into training them.

I later adopted something from a fellow entrepreneur who used to call his employees “adders” or “subtractors”:

ADDERS are team members you know will be doing their job well. They’re solid performers who add to the value of the company.
SUBTRACTORS are in it for themselves, and don’t care about the team and company much. The mission doesn’t interest them. Here for a paycheck, and not doing anything extra.

From this I had a basic performance model: promote adders, fire subtractors.

But could we do better?

We did, when I added two categories:

MULTIPLIERS – do their job well like an Adder – but ALSO make the rest of the team perform better. Their contribution goes beyond their own to lift the entire team. Realizing they exist catapulted the company’s results.
DIVIDERS – These are toxic and dangerous. They gossip or promote dissent in the group. They thrive in creating drama. It’s important to note: a Divider CAN do excellent work. It’s their effect on the team that determines if they’re a divider. So – what do you do with each type?

Here’s the super simple protocol:

MULTIPLIERS – Promote and recognize them immediately. Show them, and the whole team, that they are an example.
ADDERS – Show them a path for continued growth for the long term and give them the resources to grow.
SUBTRACTORS – Put them on a short fuse performance program, with objective criteria for success (more on how – and a hack – below). If they don’t upgrade performance, let them go. Help them find a new employer where they are a good fit.
DIVIDERS – I learned that the only thing to do is fire them NOW. Like immediately. There is no performance program to turn an agent of chaos and dissent into a good team member. If you have one, terminate them now. A divider nearly wrecked my company.

So it’s simple. Keep a list of names, and update it with a little note next to each: + – ÷ x

When you do see that divider – and fire them before they wreck morale at your company, you’ll thank me. Over the years I evolved this model further – even creating a script that could take Subtractors and turn them into Adders, which I’ll share in another article.

Get a weekly list of short, actionable steps to scale your company with simplicity in the Boardroom Bulletin™.

January 3, 2023

This Bad Advice Kills Your Company Culture

Leaders always point out how important company culture is. They hear it everywhere and repeat it so often that they spend all their time focused on the idea of culture, rather than the company’s overall goals. Then, they end up implementing culture initiatives that derail where they want the company to go.

Instead, it’s better to start from where you want the company to be, working backward to build a culture around the end goal. If not, you may end up experiencing one of the following common culture initiative fails.

1. Compensation is NOT Company Culture

Compensation is often confused with company culture. It’s not. Compensation is table stakes, and you should never confuse what you pay with what you get. You can pay someone a premium and still get terrible performance. Instead, pay what you think the job is worth, even if it’s more than you’d like.

2. Frills are NOT Company Culture

Don’t waste your money on ping pong tables, expensive break rooms, or open beer taps. Odds are, your in-office team will barely even use them – or the low performers will use them and drag others into distraction. Silicon Valley perks do not drive employee performance.

3. Protecting Feelings

If an employee is so fragile that they need their emotions protected, you’re going to have an issue at some point. Be professional, but don’t feel like you have to walk on eggshells with your team. Every interaction is a learning experience.

4. Hiring for “Culture Fit”

Asking your team to hire for “culture fit” means you’re asking them to hire people like them. In truth, the highest performer may be nothing like the existing team. A good social club does not equal good performance.

Check out how to upgrade your team with A-players.

5. Being a Democracy

Your team should feel comfortable sharing ideas that aid the company’s goals, but that doesn’t mean they should speak out on everything, meaning that if enough of them want something, they get what they want. No. Your company, your rules.

Accountability: Company Culture that Matters

Now that we’ve outlined what makes for terrible company culture, let’s talk about what really matters: accountability.

When every team member is accountable for their actions, they work together to drive performance. Accountability means every person is focused on what matters: the KPIs that illustrate their success.

They will collaborate because their success is dependent on their team members, and they’ll speak out about what matters because it’s in the way of them hitting targets.

Sure it may be less warm and fuzzy than the traditional “company culture” you’ve come to know and think you love, but you’re not paying people to be friends. You have a business to run.

Want unfiltered strategies for building your business? Get a weekly list of short, actionable steps to scale your company with simplicity in the Boardroom Bulletin™.

November 8, 2022

How To Hire A-Players: The Complete Hiring Process

This hiring process got me the best employee I ever had. A serious A-Player. Performance was an 11 on a 10-scale.

These counter-intuitive steps will help you get the best talent – and avoid bad-fit team members BEFORE you give them an offer. Using this process, over time you can upgrade your whole team to be A-Players.

Focus on Results

Most people make a job post describing what the employee does + qualifications.

Don’t do this.

Define what needs to be done in the role and what success looks like. Put that in the job post.

A-Players are attracted to knowing what success looks like. By changing your job description to not describe “who” but “What” you change the kinds of people who respond to the job posting.

Instead of finding people who fit the box of a typical employee, you get people who know they’re expected to hit a certain benchmark. The ones not afraid of a performance based culture.

Weed the Lazy

Think through how the application process usually works – you post the job somewhere, it’s distributed to thousands of people who may or may not fit … and let’s face it, only a really tiny percentage of them are A-players.

The job sites make applying very easy. Too easy in fact. They can apply with a single click.

So what happens? You get dozens of resumes of maybe-fits, and D-players. It’s hard to tell who is who.

Here’s the fix: in the job posting ask a very specific question that couldn’t be answered with an application blast.

Example: “What’s the last webinar you attended relevant to this job & what did you learn from it?”

Then, you every resume that doesn’t answer the question.

See what we’ve done here? We’ve shifted the burden from you reviewing a ton of resumes of applicants just applying because they can, to reviewing just the ones who take the time to thoughtfully answer a relevant question.

Never forget – this same person will later be someone you’ll want to effectively delegate to. If they can’t follow directions now, what do you think the odds are the will when they’re not supposed to be putting their best foot forward?

Find the Gems

Ask the ones that are left to record a very short video answering a question that’s relevant to the role.

What you’re doing here is introducing a little bit of friction into the process of applying. We want that friction, because it’s doing the job of bubbling up the great – and more motivated – applicants to the top.

You’ll be shocked how many won’t bother to do the video (cut them) – AND how many outstanding answers you get from resumes that didn’t look special.

See Them Work

The standard interview process is a 1:1 screening interview. By ditching convention you have another opportunity to find A-Players.

Instead, do a group interview where candidates cooperate solving a problem. Cuts down your interview time and you get to see how they collaborate, communicate, and think.

A-Players will shine. The “good interviewee/bad employee” will be exposed.

Do Outcome-Based Interviews

Don’t waste your interview just going over each position on their resume.

In your 1:1 in-person interview, go over the success criteria for the job. Then, ask them to describe past experiences that will directly apply to achieving these criteria.

Look for the ability to learn & adapt. Look for if they’ve learned from each job and will bring those learnings with them.

C and D-Players are just taking the next job they get. A-Players aren’t just in it for the job. They’re in it for elevating their skills.

Watch Yourself for a Common Mistake

Nearly everyone suffers from this problem, and it will lead you astray. And that is, hiring people because You Like Them or because They’re Like You.

You’re hiring for company success, not a social club. Employees aren’t are partners in getting the company to realize your vision.

If you overindex for liking people (You Like Them) then sure, you’ll initially enjoy the social element – until their poor performance makes it unpleasant.

If you overindex for them being similar to you (They’re Like You) then you won’t be getting complimentary styles that can lead to breakthroughs as you grow.

Getting It Done

A hiring process that incorporates these will reliably surface better candidates than the old “Take the 3 best resumes and hire the best interviewee.” However, there are two things you need to do to put it in place.

First, treat hiring like a process. Every candidate needs to go through the process. Don’t short-cut it, because all you’re doing is compromising the effectiveness of the method. You won’t get A-Players.

Second, you’ll need more candidates than you think for this. And for good reason – if you’re looking to get the top 1-2% of performers on your team, what do you think the odds are of finding them only having a handful of people going through your process?

Remember I said that I used this process to get the best employee I ever had? I had over 120 people start the process – to end up with that one person. Sounds intimidating, but remember the system is doing most of the work – not you. It was SO worth it.

Now you have the blueprint. Go build yourself a dream team.

Get a weekly list of short, actionable steps to scale your company with simplicity in the Boardroom Bulletin™.

November 3, 2022

7 Reasons Your Employees are Underperforming

Think your staff might be at risk of “quiet quitting” due to low compensation? Think again. Recent research suggests that salary is one of the least-important facets of a role that drive employee performance, keeping your employees happy and motivated.

So, let’s take five to explore the real factors driving staff performance.

Why are my employees underperforming?

Poor performance at work is rarely down to incompetence. It’s much more likely that your team’s lack of effort is down to one of a myriad of business culture factors that can derail performance.

1. They don’t understand the WHY behind their role

Purpose is key to exceptional performance. How can you expect your employees to care about what they’re doing if they don’t understand WHY they’re doing it?

Having a purpose drives motivation and morale. If your employees lack any context in their actions, especially repetitive ones, then they’re going to burn out and lose focus.

2. They don’t understand the WHY behind their company

Showing up to work can’t simply be about a paycheck; we’ve already established, above, that salary isn’t a driving factor in work-related motivation.

Actually, sharing key strategic milestones and successes can directly improve your team’s motivation. Don’t withhold information from your employees; it could be harming your organizational success.

3. They feel like they’re working in isolation, not as part of a team

Nothing corrodes company performance faster than having your employees feel like they’re working in a silo.

Working in isolation and lacking team collaboration can quickly degrade your employees’ mental wellbeing. Positive wellbeing is linked to everything from engagement, to performance and productivity.

Focus on promoting team and cross-team collaboration and communication, and don’t treat your staff’s wellbeing as an afterthought.

4. They don’t realize how their actions impact customers, colleagues, and the company

Staff that aren’t pulling their weight often do so because they don’t see the impact. They don’t understand how their lack of performance is affecting colleagues, customers, and even the company itself.

But don’t focus on the negatives; highlighting employee failures is a good way to kill their job satisfaction and trust in management, which we know impacts on organizational performance.

Happy workers are around 13% more productive. Focus on the positive impact that their role and direct actions have on company performance, and reinforce this through performance reviews or by any other means you can.

5. They’re demotivated by toleration of poor performance

The real value driving your organization is your “A-Players.” The top talent that constantly seeks out new and innovative ways to improve your organizational performance and delight customers.

These people are excited by innovation and improving processes and products. They enjoy the thrill of rising to the top, and they like to keep score. They constantly want feedback on how they can improve, and most importantly, they motivate other team members.

As a CEO, your goal is to nurture this talent. And whoever isn’t an A-Player, whether you want to call them “B-Players,” or something else entirely – they require guidance to reach their full potential.

If you’re coddling B or C-Players and accepting sub-par performance, then you’re not only diluting your talent pool; you’re also demotivating your star performers.

6. They don’t feel empowered to make decisions

You’ll know when your employees lack empowerment, because they’ll be seeking your input on every minute detail.

Research highlights a strong link between empowerment and job performance. Ironically, by guiding every decision your team makes, they’re more than likely to deliver worse performance in the long run.

7. They feel micromanaged at every turn

Without trust, your organization will stall. Micromanagement will kill any motivation that your employees have to better themselves and drive your organization forward.

Trust has been closely linked to job satisfaction, which in turn drives productivity and thus organizational performance.

Similarly, micromanagement in the workplace has been found to:

Lead to lower employee morale
Reduce productivity
Increase staff turnover

All of these factors can hit your bottom line, hard.

Instead, you should be focusing on the goal; the output that you expect. Let your employees discover the path to that goal by themselves. They’ll learn more, learn to trust you, and their performance will naturally improve.

Get Actionable Insights in Your Inbox

If you’re looking for ways to upgrade your team, see how many of the above behaviors you can identify in your own team.

Curious about the best ways to improve staff performance and drive your company forward?

Discover a weekly list of short, actionable steps to get out of operational deadlock, build a self-managing team, grow strategically, and increase company value in the Boardroom Bulletin™.

November 3, 2022

How To Upgrade Your Team with A-Players

One of the most decisions any business owner can make is upgrading the team with the right people. Some companies upgrade to A-Player Talent and crush it. Others repel these MVPs, and greatly underperform as a result, with the CEO wondering why.

Here’s a step by step guide to get A-Players.

First, what is an A-Player? I define it as a team member who:

Is excited by making something bigger,
Likes to keep score on performance,
Wants feedback & to get better, and
Is a Multiplier: they make other team members more effective

And anyone who isn’t an A-Player – whether you call them “B”, “C” – it doesn’t matter. We only care about A-Players.

Your goal as CEO is to upgrade everyone that touches your business to be all A-Players. The more A-Players you have on your team, the better your odds are of an outsized success.

And in terms of A-Players, that’s NOT just referring to your team members, it’s:

full-time employees
hourly/part-time staff
outsourced providers/subcontractors
your vendors, and
(dare I say it) Your customers

So not only should new hires be A-Players, but your marketing agency, your CPA, your lawyer … This applies to everyone that touches your business. If you’ve ever been frustrated by performance in your work world it’s because they didn’t meet that benchmark.

Why are CEOs plagued by underperformers?

The first reason is the hiring process. Today I’m focusing on what you can do TODAY with your existing team.

You have underperformers because of one reason: you tolerate it

It comes down to whether your organization has a culture of accountability, or not. This is a binary thing. Either everyone, including you the CEO, is accountable, or they’re not.

You make that culture. For those left-brained folks out there (like me), in this case “culture” doesn’t mean foosball tables. It means the social contract of your organization. How the people around your business interact. The Rules of Engagement.

If you let things slide, if you don’t keep score, then it tells the entire organization that performance isn’t what matters most. So then what becomes important? Gossip, office politics, messing around on the Internet all day, or other behavior that’s deadly to results.

Remember how I mentioned that A-Players like to keep score? They like to know how they’re doing – they keep score with themselves. They believe in Accountability (how old-fashioned, I know).

Also, because doing their job means they need to rely on other team members – when other team members aren’t accountable, your A-Players are keeping score. This impacts A-Player performance … And thus morale. They won’t stick around for long. Or they’ll stop performing like an A-Player.

So it’s essential to create an environment of performance.

I’m sorry. 99% of the time you don’t get that by “this business is like a family”

Not telling someone they are underperforming is doing everyone a disservice. You get underperforming people. They don’t know how to do better. Nobody can rely on others to get their part done. Everyone loses.

It’s better to tell an underperformer the truth – then have them get on program, or find another employer where they’ll thrive.

So what do you do?

First, realize that everyone needs to be accountable. That means everyone needs to know the objective criteria for success is for their role. That way you can build a company performance scorecard.

Objective success ISN’T: you and other team members like them.

Objective success IS: there’s a number, they know that number, they’re focused on that number, and they hit that number. And when they don’t, they own it. And learn from it.

With everyone knowing that there are benchmarks of success, A-Players know everyone is keeping score. It increases their confidence. They stick around longer.

What’s best is, when you’re interviewing someone new, the expectations for the role are clear … And A-Players on your team tell the candidates:

“This is a place you can get better”

“You can really own your job here”

“Everyone pulls their weight”

“We’re doing amazing things – together”

So, are you up for upgrading your organization? It involves more work, and hard conversations. But if you do this … You’ll have a high performing company. With real results.

And LESS work for you.

Discover a weekly list of short, actionable steps to get out of operational deadlock, build a self-managing team, grow strategically, and increase company value in the Boardroom Bulletin™.

October 27, 2022

How To Lose Customers and Make More Profit

My business lost a major contract, so I cut the headcount of my company in half. It wasn’t a good start to that year.

Even after the cuts, I thought we might not make it.

I made some quick changes, and the opposite happened – we were more profitable and started to grow faster than before. Here’s why:

The contract we lost was almost half our monthly revenue. Everyone in the company knew, and gave them ‘all hands on deck’ service. Even when that customer made unreasonable demands: insane deadlines, pulling me in, second-guessing the team, and renegotiating price down every quarter.

Then they had a management change. New management had “their guys” that they brought in. It happens a lot (and you should plan for it, if you’re a vendor). But I wasn’t as prepared as I should be.

And just like that, we were out. They didn’t have the courtesy of even calling me, let alone a meeting. They sent a breakup email.

I’m sitting there stunned reading the three-sentence message. Wondering what the (BLEEP!) I’m going to tell the team whose livelihoods depended on this account.

I had no idea this would be the best thing for the company in the long run.

We helped team members we let go find new positions as best we could. That cut the company down to breakeven. We weren’t losing money – but not making any, either.

Yay, no salary for me (again).

Next – figuring out how to support our remaining clients with a demoralized team. That was trickier, because they all had lost friends to the layoff. Each one was wondering if the company would survive, or whether they would be next.

The key to solving it?

Doubling down on process.

We’d spent so much time delivering for the Big Client (and their unreasonable, out of left field demands) that we spent no time making delivery better. We realized that we’d been ignoring some far more profitable smaller accounts.

And I asked a critical question – how could we revise everything to support far more smaller, but more profitable, customers? (Have you analyzed your customer base?)

We made a two month plan to refactor how we delivered. I doubled down on marketing and sales – which I could do, now that I wasn’t being pulled into delivery.

Do you know what we found in just a couple of weeks?

That we could deliver for clients with 20% fewer labor hours, and more reliable results, with better process.

It just required that we take the time to do things differently. Time we didn’t have with the Big Bad Client monopolizing every spare hour. We went to work doing what we should have all along:

Document the process (the right way)
Communicate differently, both internally and with customers
Lean on automation more to reduce manual labor on the team and increase reliability of delivery for the customer
Analyze who should be doing what

The 20% decrease in workload let us take on new clients. Which drove higher profitability.

Within seven months we were more profitable than before. AND I wasn’t pulled into anything. AND the team wasn’t second-guessed by a bully client.

This was early in my career. I came up with some rules that I’ve held to since:

The first is never let a single customer become a material part of revenue.
The second is the point of this article – don’t scale before you’ve optimized delivery, because-

Stuff’s gonna break
Your team’s gonna break
The company’s gonna break
You’re gonna break

OK, so how do you apply this in your company? It depends on what you’re delivering, your labor mix, and a few other important factors. The important part isn’t what I did, in my situation with my team and my customers.

The point is the thought process you go through to fix the problem.

Step back to first principles: is a small number of customers risking your company’s revenue? Are they preventing you from doing a better job for higher-margin customers?

Start by asking those questions – and go from there.

Discover a weekly list of short, actionable steps to get out of operational deadlock, build a self-managing team, grow strategically, and increase company value in the Boardroom Bulletin™.

October 20, 2022

How I Narrowly Avoided a Coup at my Company

She went behind my back, destroyed morale, then tried to hijack the company I founded.

The story of a hire gone very, very wrong, and how you can prevent it from happening as you grow your company.

It started when I needed a head of operations. We had three account managers, two sales reps, and a bunch of back-office delivery staff.

My head was exploding running from fires in delivery to fires in sales, and back again. I’d waited too long to solve the problem.

It wasn’t just small things falling through the cracks anymore. Customers were starting to churn at increasing rates – and that’s the beginning of the end for a business built on long-term relationships. It wasn’t just a problem for me. I owed it to my team. I didn’t have time to create an environment where they could grow.

So, I did what you’re supposed to do. Hire a head of operations.

But this was before I developed a good hiring process. So, I did what most people do. Maybe what you do: put out a job posting, collect resumes, interview the best three, pick the best one.

Spoiler alert: This is the crappiest way to hire. If you’re doing it this way, you’re asking for pain.

Job posting out, and resumes piled in. Over 50 of them. I felt pretty good – lots of options. I phone screened about a dozen, and interviewed three of them.

Felt pretty good.

Picked the best of the three. Amazing interview, and she fit the position to a “T” (or so I thought).
She seemed like a real go-getter who wanted to be promoted to COO after earning her stripes.

So I hired Charlotte (not her real name).

I would regret that decision for two years as the fallout from this one hire caused good team members to quit.

When Charlotte started I did do one thing right. I used the Scorecard that I had created to ensure her performance was matching with the company’s objectives.

As you’ll see in a bit, that saved my ass. Though not as much as avoiding the hire in the first place …
She started and on her first day was off to the races. Absorbing everything she could about the company, how it worked, the products, the sales process, how we delivered.

I got more confident by the day that this was going to be great. My team was cautiously optimistic.

After three weeks I’d watched her sit in on customer delivery calls, work with the team on their objectives, and do market research I’d never had the time to do. So I turned my attention to growing the company.

And that’s when things started to go downhill. Fast.

One of my sales reps had an uncanny ability to read people. She came to me and asked if I’d seen any change in Charlotte.

I hadn’t. I was busy with a six month backlog of projects that hadn’t gotten done.

I kept one eye out, but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. I should have listened to a loyal staff member – but I was caught up in digging out. Bad.

Another week goes by, and an account manager pops in.

“Are you selling the company?” she asked.

“No, haven’t even thought about it”

“Oh, OK.”

“Why? Do you have any concerns”

“Just curious”

I didn’t think much of it.

Until the next week.

Second account manager comes into my office.

“So Charlotte is in charge, and we report to her?” she asks.

“Yes, she’s head of operations. Do you have a concern?”

“OK. No, nothing, no.”

Now I got paranoid. What was really going on?

In my meetings with Charlotte, she seems like she’s digging in. So why do things seem off?

I learned that the next day, when Charlotte was out for lunch and the entire team walked into my office.

“Are you giving the company to Charlotte?” they asked.

“WHAT?”

“Charlotte says that she’s running the company now, and she’s moving you out next month. And we’re all fired if we don’t help make it happen.”

I guess this is what a coup looks like.

After Charlotte returned from lunch I sat her down.

Asked her what was going on. “Just doing my job” she said.

I wasn’t in the mood to have this discussion. I opened the Scorecard I made when she joined. I asked her five questions from the scorecard – and I could let her go on the spot with no bickering. The criteria for success were clear, and she didn’t hit them.

It didn’t have to be a who-said-what situation.

I later learned she’d been micromanaging and verbally abusing the team the second I stepped out of the room.

The team bore the scars of that for a long time.

A few of them quit. The whole incident set the company back over a year as I waded back into the fray … And couldn’t hire another manager for a while.

And it was my fault. I let her in with a poor hiring process. I didn’t have a process to ensure the team was protected.
It made me gunshy for hiring managers for a while. Until I hired Adrienne as COO (yes, that’s her real name, and she’s a rockstar).

It also focused me on developing ironclad processes for hiring, managing, and letting go staff that avoided this kind of employee disaster.

If you haven’t done so – install processes for this. I do this for companies I work with because it’s mission critical.

Without a team you won’t go far.

Do it, and thank me later – for the coup that never happened at your company.