Tag: Interview Series

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Interview With Bob Burg: Speaker & Author

Posted on by Mike Goldman

Bob Burg is an author, speaker and expert on how to succeed in today’s business world. By sharing his knowledge with Fortune 500 Companies, franchises and direct sales organizations, Bob has become a prominent resource for many business leaders. I invite you to read my interview with Bob as he shares his beliefs on leadership and the ever changing world of business.

Mike Goldman: We seem to both be members of the very small pool of business parable writers. What inspired you to write The Go Giver and It’s Not About You as stories instead of standard non-fiction books?

Bob Burg: My first few books had been “how-to” nonfiction, including my biggest seller up to that point, Endless Referrals. However, I’d always enjoyed reading business parables and felt they were a great way to connect with a reader in such a way that the message could be received while in an entertaining, easy-to-read and absorb format. For a while, I’d carried around the idea of taking the basic premise of Endless Referrals, which was that, “All things being equal, people will do business with, and refer business to, those people they know, like, and trust” and putting it in a parable format. Fortunately, I was able to team up with the brilliant writer/storyteller, John David Mann and collaborate on what eventually became The Go-Giver. It’s Not About You was our second parable together which just seemed like a good follow-up to the original.

MG: I’m a big fan of your “Five Laws of Stratospheric Success.” For readers who might not be familiar, these are:

  • The Law of Value

  • The Law of Compensation

  • The Law of Influence

  • The Law of Receptivity

  • The Law of Authenticity

MG: For someone who really wants to succeed, is one of these laws more important than the others? How can they start to apply it to their own life?

BB: Thank you for your kind words, Mike. In answer to your question, while Law #1 is the foundational law, none of them are any more important or less important than the others. Without applying all five one can never reach their full success potential. After all, no matter who you are or what business you are in (assuming it’s a free-market environment where no one is forced to do business with you) you must always give more in “use value” than you take in payment, or cash-value (Law #1). Otherwise the customer will not buy from you. Of course, this doesn’t mean you don’t make a profit. Typically, go-givers make an excellent profit and tend to sell at the higher end of the price spectrum. The reason is that they are selling on high-value rather than low price. And, a person will only buy when they feel they are receiving more in use value than what they are paying. Of course, since price and value are two different things (price is finite while value is the relative worth or desirability of something to the end user), the seller can give significantly more in value than what they take in payment and make a very substantial profit.

After that, you must also impact the lives of many people with the exceptional value you provide (Law #2). You must place the interests of your customers first (Law #3). Again, they are buying from for their reasons, not your reasons. You must be authentic (Law #4) or people will not trust you. And, you must also be willing to receive abundantly (Law #5). So, all the laws work together wholistically.

Regarding how one can start to apply these laws into their own lives and businesses, you simply begin by beginning. Taking action is the key. You don’t have to do it perfectly but you do need to begin. And, of course, the how-to aspect of each of these laws can be learned and perfected with both study and action.

MG: You’ve talked about the importance of building a network of “Personal Walking Ambassadors”, what is a “Personal Walking Ambassador”? How can you build a network of them?

BB: A Personal Walking Ambassador is a person who not only “knows, likes and trusts you”…they are a person who believes in you and wants to see you succeed. They will go to bat for you. They have your back. And, it isn’t one way. They know you feel the same way about them and are there for them, as well. Develop this kind of network and you become that center of influence; that go-to person with a fantastic reputation. You’ll also be the recipient of a very large and profitable referral-based business.

You build a network of them individual relationship by individual relationship; by always looking for ways to bring value to those whose lives you touch. As one of the mentors in the story, Sam, told the protégé, Joe… “by making your win about the other person’s win.”

MG: In my own work and in my book, Performance Breakthrough, I focus on the importance of passionate teams to overall business success. You presented a number of lessons for leaders in your book It’s Not About You: A Little Story About What Matters Most in Business. What do you think is the most important lesson to be learned for a leader who wants his team to excel?

BB: You’re doing such important work by having that as a focus. I think that it always goes back to the leader understanding that it isn’t about themselves but rather about those people whose lives they are trying to impact. And, there’s nothing Pollyanna about that. If you note the greatest leaders and top influencers, this is simply how they conduct their businesses. It’s how they lead.

With that in mind, it’s important to understand what moves your team members as individuals. A team is made up of individuals. An effective team is made up of individuals who understand that by putting the good of the team before themselves toward their common goal they are actually creating a win for themselves, as well.

I always loved what Dale Carnegie said in his classic, How to Win Friends and Influence People – “Ultimately, people do things for their reasons, not our reasons.” So, the effective leader asks themselves questions such as, “How does what I’m asking this person to do align with their goals; their needs, their wants, their desires?” And, to the degree you ask yourselves these questions and are willing to ask them and listen to their answers and make the connections between that and what you want the team to accomplish, your chances of leading a successful team increase dramatically.

MG: I agree with you that the creation of real value has to come first for both business and individual success. Why do you think that so many people have a hard time with this idea?

BB: If they have a hard time with the idea itself it’s because they haven’t been exposed to that as a way of successful doing business and living life. What I find, more often than not, is that even when people do intuitively understand that the value must come first (or even if it’s something they have learned) they have difficulty applying it.

One big reason for this is that, as human beings, we see the world from our own unique viewpoint, what I call our Belief System. Based on a combination of upbringing, environment, schooling, news media, popular entertainment, etc. it’s simply how we see the world. Interestingly, our personal belief system is pretty much set in stone by the time we are little more than toddlers and everything after that simply adds to the basic foundational premise.

So we grow up and live our lives driven by our personal belief systems that we’re not even consciously aware are driving us (our unconscious operating system). And, as human beings, we tend to believe that everyone else sees the world pretty much the same way.

The result? What we see as being of value is what we assume our prospective customer understands to be of value, as well. And, that is not necessarily the case.

The key is to understand that “Value is always in the eyes of the beholder.” It’s what they find to be of value, not what we find to be valuable. So, we must be able to match the benefits of our product or service with THEIR needs, wants, and desires.

As we like to say, “Money is simply an echo of value. It’s the thunder to value’s lightning.” So, the value must come first, and the money you receive is simply a very natural result of the value you’ve provided. And, your focus must be on discovering what they find to be of value.

And, this holds true for all aspects of our lives, not just business.

To learn more about Bob, visit. Burg.com.

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Interview with Geoff Smart: CEO, Bestselling Author and Social Entrepreneur

Posted on by Mike Goldman

Geoff Smart is the Chairman & Founder of ghSMART and one of the most recognized experts on hiring and performance. He’s also the bestselling author of Leadocracy: Hiring More Great Leaders (Like You) Into Government and Who: The A Method for Hiring. In my interview with Geoff, we explore his thoughts on hiring and talent.

Mike Goldman: In your book, Who: The A Method for Hiring, you make the case that effective hiring is a prerequisite for any successful business. Through your consulting work, you’ve seen all kinds of hiring practices. Where do most companies get it wrong? And, what advice would you give to a new leader who hasn’t been involved in hiring before?

Geoff Smart: Thanks Mike. The topic of hiring talented teams, is currently the #1 topic in business.  This is according to global surveys of what’s on the minds of CEOs by the Conference board, by Harvard Business School, and if you believe some of the business greats like Jim Collins, Richard Branson, and Google’s Eric Schmidt.

Our Who book is the #1 top seller on this topic of hiring talented teams.  We at ghSMART get asked to advise and speak with all sorts of leaders in all sorts of organizations—from Fortune 500 companies, to the biggest private equity firms, to Superintendents of school systems, to military leaders, to several heads of state.  We joke and say that our books and our consulting are only useful in organizations that have people in them! So what I’m about to tell you, I hope, is valuable to any of your readers.

Companies get hiring wrong because they skip steps.

There are 4 required steps in good hiring, if you want to achieve a 90% hiring success rate.  (This is better than the 50% hiring success rate that managers typically achieve).

  1. SCORECARD:  Leaders make hiring mistakes when they don’t give enough thought to the outcomes they want someone to achieve.  Leaders say things like “we need a marketing person” but what they fail to do is articulate the specific results that this person is expected to achieve.  This concept is not new.  My mentor, the great Peter Drucker, coined the term “management by objectives”—MBOs.  Our notion of scorecard is consistent with his observation that the best leaders are pretty darned clear on what they want to accomplish.  Skipping this step is not smart.  When the outcomes are not specified well, leaders blow it on the next 3 steps too.

  1. SOURCE:  If you have failed to do step #1, you are going to fail to source the right candidates.  So you’ll have a bunch of random candidates of various skill-levels and flavors and varieties without a sense of priority.

  1. SELECT:  Managers make hiring mistakes when they use bad interview approaches.  One type of bad interview approach is to ask candidate hypothetical questions.  For example, Mike, if I asked you, “How would you resolve a problem with a teammate?”  You might tell me a nice answer about how you would sit down with the person, listen to their side, collaboratively work out a set of possible solutions, select one together, then implement it.  Well, that’s nice.  But unfortunately, a half-century of research in the field of Industrial Psychology (the field in which I earned my Ph.D.) suggests that the way people answer hypothetical questions has very little predictive validity in helping you see how they will actually behave on the job.  So don’t ask people to speculate how they “would” do things.  That’s dumb.  A smarter approach is to conduct a series of interviews that are aimed at collecting real facts and data about what candidates actually have done.  Then do some reference interviews to verify the data.  Now you can predict with greater accuracy how somebody is likely to perform in a job, and make a great hiring decision.

  1. SELL:  Oh yeah, there is one more step.  Managers sometimes fail to sell a candidate on taking a job.  Here the manager puts so much work into finding great candidates, but then falls short of really closing the deal.  We have found that candidates say “yes” to jobs based on fit, freedom, family (being OK with their taking the job), fortune, and fun.  We call these the 5 Fs of selling.  You can use them as a checklist to make sure your ideal candidate says yes.

MG: Many leaders believe that it’s possible to have too many A-Players on their team. For example, they say “I can’t have all A-Players because they’d all want to get promoted and my business can’t support that”. What’s your reaction to this? Is there such a thing as too many A-Players?

GS: No, there is no such thing as too many A Players.  Let’s define what A Player means.  The way we define A Player is a person who performs in the top 10% relative to their peer group.  True, talented people generally want to get promoted.  But you can hire plenty of A Players who are happy to just do their job.  My CFO is an A Player; he has been in his job for 11 years.  My cleaning person is an A Player; she has been in that role for 5 years.  It’s all about fit to role and A Players are the ones who perform best.  As a manager, you are always “paying” for A talent, the big question is whether you are getting it.

MG: You and I are both believers in quickly removing underperformers (C-Players) from teams. While most leaders would agree with this view, actually removing underperforming employees is something most leaders have a hard time doing. Why do you think this is?

GS: It’s funny.  The less experienced the leader, the “harder” it is for them to remove a C Player.  Oh no, what if I hurt the other person’s feelings?  Oh no, if I have a person who is a bad fit for this job, I should probably try to coach them.  Oh no, I’m really conflict-avoidant, I shy away from having tough conversations with people.  These are the signs of a really inexperienced leader.

In contrast, the best, most experienced leaders I know are very quick to move somebody who is a bad fit for a role, into a role in which they are a better fit.  Like immediately.  Like, as in, right away.  They know that leaving the wrong person in a job is bad for the company, bad for the person, and bad for the team.  So the best leaders look at a person who is a poor fit and say, “What are you good at?  Let’s see if we can change your role so you can focus on what you are good at and what you love to do.”  And if the person is just not good at anything, or is unwilling to do a job they are good at, then the best leaders will give that person some time to look for another job outside of the company, then leave.  But with the best leaders, compared to the worst or most inexperienced leaders, there is not this habit of leaving poor-fit employees in place and wringing your hands and hoping their performance will suddenly improve.

MG: For most companies, reference checking a fairly low value tool. I love your TORC idea to dramatically improve the values companies get from reference checking. Can you briefly describe how it works?

GS: Sure.  I think typical reference checking is not super valuable.  Typical reference checking is to take the list of references that the candidate gives you, call them, and you don’t hear much useful info.

Here are 3 best practices to doing good reference interviews:

  1. You choose the people you want to talk with, based on hearing the names of bosses, peers, and subordinates during your interview with the candidate.  Ask the candidate, “I’d like to talk with some of these people you worked with.  What do you think Dina Moore will say were your biggest strengths and weaker areas in that job, when I talk with her?”  To give credit where it is due, the term TORC (Threat of Reference Check) was coined by my father, Brad Smart.  I love that term, because it is indeed the accountability that you are going to verify the candidate’s statements with references that compels them to tell more of the truth, whole truth, and nothing but the truth.  Just asking a candidate “what are your weaknesses” generally gets you the typical fake weaknesses like working too hard, perfection, and caring too much.

  1. Ask the candidate to set up the reference call, so you know the reference is willing to speak.

  1. After hearing generic strengths and risks, ask the reference giver some specific questions about the magnitude of a person’s strengths in an area on the scorecard.  For example, don’t just ask, “What are their strengths?”  Say, “Janet mentioned that you might say she was good at landing new customers.  How would you rate her performance in generating sales from new customers, relative to her peer group?”

MG: Most companies I work with believe finding the right people is their biggest challenge? What advice do you have about the most productive sourcing strategies for finding potential A-Players?

GS: This is the #1 question we get asked when we give keynote speeches.  “How to source great candidates?”  Mike, I have the very best solution to offer you.  It sounds extremely simple.  And it may be common knowledge, but I’m here to tell you it’s uncommon practice.  There are two ways to source great candidates.  This is from our personal experience of using these methods over the 20 years of growing our firm ghSMART, as well as from interviewing thousands of leaders and learning how they source their best talent.

  1. INTERNAL REFERRAL BONUS: Do your readers offer to pay a referral bonus to employees who refer other employees?  They should!  Typically, in a room full of business leaders, only 25% offer referral bonuses.  I ask those people to tell the other 75% of the leaders whether it’s a great policy or not.  They all emphatically insist that internal referrals are the best source of great candidates, and to pay for these referrals is how to generate a flow.

  1. EXTERNAL REFERRALS: I call this one the “List of 10.”  Say you want to hire a painter for your house.  You write out a scorecard—what you want them to do, what you want to pay, etc.  Then you make a list of 10 people you know whom you can call on to ask for referrals.  Ask them, “I want to hire a painter to paint my house; I want to spend X.  Do you know any great candidates?”  You will get plenty of great candidates.  Use the interview guides in the Who book, whittle down the candidate pool, and hire an a Player.

MG: In your new book, Power Score: Your Formula for Leadership Success, you say successful leadership starts with asking 3 key questions. Can you tell us briefly what those 3 questions are and why they’re important?

GS: Mike, this is huge news.  We studied 3,052 leaders and their teams, to search for the “Holy Grail” of leadership success.  We found it.

Leaders who were good at 3 things were TWENTY TIMES more likely to be successful than leaders who were not so good at these three things.

The 3 most important things for leadership success, and the questions that go along with them are:

  1. PRIORITIES:  Do we have the right priorities?  Only 24% of leaders are good at prioritizing.  Most just let too many priorities diffuse their team’s focus.

  1. WHO:  Do we have the right people, who are on the team?  Only 14% of leaders are good at hiring and developing talented teams.

  1. RELATIONSHIPS:  Do we have the right relationships to achieve our results?  47% of leaders are good at relationships.

If your team rates from 1-10 your priorities, who, and relationships, and you multiply the three numbers together, we call that your power score.  The average power score is around 400.  Teams that have a 729 power score or better are “running at full power.”  Teams that are running below 400 had better change something about their priorities, who, and relationships, if they are serious about achieving results!

To learn more about Dr. Smart, visit GeoffSmart.com.