All In: How Great Leaders Build Unstoppable Teams (Entrepreneurship Simplified) - Hardcover

Michalowicz, Mike

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593544501 ISBN 13: 9780593544501

Verlag: Portfolio, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

The bestselling author of Profit First shows you how to build unstoppable teams where everyone wins.

It’s never been harder building successful teams. With challenges of work-from-anywhere, flex-schedule and generational divides, business leaders bend over backwards searching for solutions that work. They’ve tried everything from food perks and ping pong tables to endless team-building exercises and training—but nothing sticks.

Now, in his long-awaited book for leaders at all levels, bestselling author Mike Michalowicz reveals his proven formula to build an unstoppable team for any work environment:

All In shows readers how to:

• Recruit the right talent
• Transform struggling employees into superstars
• Match individual abilities to client and company needs
• Elevate your company to where every employee cares as much as an owner

You want a thriving workforce that shines and sticks around. One that takes full responsibility for their work and outcomes. A community of employees who love your organization and are invested in its growth. With All In you will discover how to build a team where everyone flourishes–including you.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Mike Michalowicz founded and sold two multimillion-dollar businesses by his thirty-fifth birthday. He is the bestselling author of Profit First, The Pumpkin Plan, Clockwork, and Fix This Next. He has built two additional multimillion-dollar companies and has become one of the world's most popular speakers on small-business topics. Fabled author Simon Sinek deemed Mike Michalowicz “one of the top contenders for the patron saint of entrepreneurs.”

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1

Why Most Teams Just Don't Care

There's busted. And then there's busted.

On paper, Elliott seemed like the one. We needed a solid computer tech and he seemed to have all the right credentials. He was proficient in the right hardware and software. He had years of experience doing the same thing we did. I didn't notice one single typo on his résumé, a clear demonstration of his attention to detail. And a bonus-he was fluent in Spanish!

His interview went well. He was articulate and likable. His suit fit and his tie complemented his shirt, which is a small miracle for a computer guy. Even though I had only met with three candidates at that point, I hired him on the spot. It wasn't that I had necessarily hit the jackpot with Elliott. I chose not to interview anyone else because he checked all our boxes-and I was already overwhelmed. Wasting time interviewing more folks would be costly and draining. I needed someone pronto, as in yesterday.

My business partner and I couldn't handle the workload anymore. We had started our company, Olmec Systems, to provide tech support to local businesses, and as we grew, we both kept doing the client work we'd always done. By the time we posted the job announcement for a tech, we were beyond exhausted. We felt paralyzed and helpless. Helpless to find the help we needed. Isn't that frustrating? When you need help the most, you have the least amount of time and energy to make it happen.

Those days, I dragged myself home from work, long after my kids went to bed, and then got up early to do it all over again. Every Monday I told myself, If I can just get past this week, I'll have the time to find and develop the right person. But it never happened.

We needed our clones, or as close to clones as we could get. Someone who had a pulse, could type at a keyboard and plug in a few wires. The other two candidates we interviewed were questionable on the pulse part. So a guy with the experience we were looking for, who wore a fitted suit and had a résumé on heavy-stock paper, was nothing short of a godsend.

On his first day on the job, I immediately sent Elliott out into the field to support our clients-with no substantial training. Clearing my throat here-when I say he received "no substantial training," I really mean he got none. Squat. Zilch-ola. No meeting. No "get to know you" chat. No there's the bathroom, there's your desk, feel free to walk around. When Elliott showed up on the morning of day one, I gave him the addresses of clients to visit, problems to fix, and pushed him out the door-literally.

We had clients who urgently needed services that day, and when Elliott turned back to ask, "What should I . . . ?" I put my hand on his shoulder as if to say, "You've got this," and gave him a gentle shove (aka, a hard-ish push) out the door. As he walked toward his car carrying the tech tool kit I gave him, I cried out after him, "Call me if you need me."

Yeah, sending him right out into the field was another hasty move, but I didn't have the time to train him. We needed him to pay for himself starting from day one. Plus, that's how I started my first job. Trial by fire! On-the-job learning! If it's on your résumé, you can do it.

Within hours, Elliott started calling with questions. "How do I do this?" and "How do I configure that?" and "Why won't this thing work with that thing?" And my favorite question (as in my least favorite of all time): "Hey, this client only speaks Spanish. How do I ask them where the bathroom is?" Didn't the résumé specify he was fluent in Span . . . ugh, forget it.

The person we hired to help us manage our client load couldn't handle anything on his own. Instead of freeing up our time, he put more of a burden on me and my partner. I couldn't do the tech work I needed to do when I was talking Elliott through his. But wasted time was the least of our problems. He quickly formed the infamous reverse "golden handcuffs."

As he became familiar with our clients and their systems, Elliott started to learn elements of their technology that only he could support. He set up computers his own way, not ours. I wasn't aware of how he configured certain technology and (sinfully) didn't know some of the passwords he set. Within a month, Elliott didn't feel that he had to stay with our company; I felt I needed him to stay.

Elliott had tied my hands behind my back and the handcuffs were locked. He had the golden key. I was at his whim. If one of our clients had a problem, I was required to have Elliott do the work. Talk about leverage. I couldn't fire Elliott, he could "fire" me, the leader, and leave me in the lurch trying to figure out how he supported our clients.

Even though he seemed incapable of doing much of the work and uninterested in taking direction from me, his boss, he had become indispensable. He knew stuff I didn't, so firing him would screw up client relationships and exhaust me further. I was frozen in frustration.

Then Elliott said, "We need to talk compensation. People at my level get paid double what I make. I feel I'm getting shortchanged, Mike. I don't feel good about that and suspect you don't either. I hope you will fix that for me before I'm needed to save a client from a network disaster." OMG. Seriously? Was my employee shaking me down?

I started to think, Maybe if I pay him more, he'll be more motivated. He'll listen to me. He'll do better. That moment introduced me to the weirdest employment vortex I have ever experienced. The exact guy I wanted to fire so badly was the exact guy I was trying to figure out how to pay more. Maybe if I took the few dollars I had been allocating as a salary for myself and gave it to Elliott, it would convince him to stay, and stay happy. (I made $17,000 in my third year of owning a company in 1998. In today's dollars that's negative $500.)

It wasn't so much that Elliott was shaking me down. I was shaking myself down. In the hopes of converting him from a bad employee to a good one, I wanted to pay a guy who sucked at his job more money. I held on to a not-working-out worker because I was terrified of the hiring process that clearly didn't work. The thought of the effort needed for training and retaining made it worse. And now I planned to forgo the few dollars I took home to pay an employee who had all the power.

Maybe I could work with him to improve his job performance.

Maybe I could come up with a way to motivate him to be more invested in our company's success.

Maybe unicorns would fly down from Mars and sprinkle him with magic "caring" glitter, so he'd suddenly start doting on our clients instead of on himself.

In mid-December, about three months into his employment, all my "maybes" were answered with a clear "F no." Elliott left a voicemail for me with some sad news. "My grandmother passed away yesterday, unexpectedly. My family and I are devastated. I have to go to Georgia for her funeral this Friday. I will be gone for a week."

Elliott seemed dismayed about losing his grandmother, and yet something seemed fishy. First, his voice sounded funny, as though he had cupped his hand over the receiver to block out surrounding party noise. And he left me the muffled message at 1 a.m. on a Saturday. And, and, I could hear the infectious beat of "Jump" by Kris Kross cranking in the background. Not the typical mournful music played when a loved one passes. We all grieve in our own way, but with wiggida wiggida wack hip-hop?

Despite my apprehension, I would never deny an employee time off to go to a funeral, so I left him a return message offering my condolences and gave him a week off-paid, of course. Then I immediately went to work covering our clients, with one-third of our staff out of commission.

That's...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Portfolio
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2024
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593544501
• ISBN 13: 9780593544501
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 288
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: M.E.G Cards & Gifts; 443000000000; paula@megcards.com; ; 48 Cloyfin Road; Unit 4, 48 Cloyfin Road; Coleraine; Londonderry; BT52 2NY; Irland