I am reading a book called The Hard Thing about Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. What is jumping off the pages to me is the focus on People, Profits and Training–topics we have been looking at over the previous couple of weeks. These areas of focus could not be more important to the current state of the market so we will continue our focus there.
Rainmakers & Leadership are responsible for caring for your people, training, & profit.
Ben says, “Taking Care of the People is the most difficult of the three by far and if you don’t do it the other two will not matter.”
Take a couple of minutes, contemplate and digest that thought.
- How does that make you feel?
- What does that look like in your organization? If your business is a great place to work, then you may live long enough to enjoy the success and impact you have made onto those that worked with you.
- How often do you meet with those you work with or utilize in your business? Weekly? Monthly?
- If not, why?
- How do you react when things don’t go as planned? Are you calm? Are you vocal? How is that received?
Remember if the message is right but the delivery is wrong, they will eventually tune you out as your approach loses the desired effect.
Set expectations and train those to achieve them and why – these are the roles of the leader. If you have taken Career Visioning, you know how important taking the time to properly hire is. However, too often we as leaders go through the process to find the right people only to stop personally investing in them after they are hired, and we miss the opportunity to develop them into the leaders we hired them to be. It is the role of the leader to train your future leaders and not leave it entirely to others. Your productivity and retention depend on it.
Production: How many productive members have you added to the team? Do you measure production toward achieving goals both for the team and the individual? If not, they may not see the value in the training.
Training is quite simply, one of the highest-leverage activities a leader can perform.
– Andy Grove
Retention: Are they growing? Are they happy? Do they know the goals of the team? Do you know their goals and big WHY? Does your training show them how they can achieve those goals?
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