Lesson: Do Not compromise A-Player culture to increase your company's revenue, footprint, or size. This will always come back to bite us, as weaker growth brings a flood of problems which a tighter group of overachievers will never experience. Don't let our egos be bigger and more important to harm our profitable, special companies.
The following lesson is an excerpt from my Business Course Series titled, "Icarus: Zero to a Billion to Zero."
At the beginning, building our billion-dollar investment firm from scratch, I was a crazy maniac about not letting any C-Players under the tent. A Jack Welch books fan (former wildly successful CEO of Genral Electric), I only wanted to recruit A-Players, help the B's become A's, and fire the C's as quickly as possible if we'd made a hiring mistake.
I implemented a 7-interview system for every new hire, as many of you know, with the last interview with me in which I told everyone they were not strong enough to be on our team. But if they persisted, they could send me a written note about why I should let them in the club. It was hilarious to watch super-successful people, whom everyone else was showering with offers, be so offended but then stay up all night telling me why they want to work in our organization. Remember, successful people only want to be part of clubs they cannot get into! Of course, the non-A-Players would never respond.
Then I got lazy. Then I began to focus on quarterly and annual growth numbers. I acquired companies which didn't live up to our homegrown culture. I thought less growth profit margin % or less EBITDA % didn't matter because we were growing over 36% annually for nearly two decades.
But these new people, these new teams and companies acquired, caused problem after problem, and drove me crazy with their underachieving. Even more important, the overall strength and commitment of the team became diluted. A-Players don't like to be thrown in with underachievers and constantly question why they are killing themselves to hit the targets when others are not.
My CEO role then became more and more about handling problems, attempting to coach up divisions which did not hit our growth targets, and looking for other external opportunities versus focusing on our core hedgehog mission.
Please learn from my 1,000 mistakes. It's all about the people. It's all about working daily in an environment you feel deep down in your soul is special. You know my crazy story. Life is too short to work with people you don't love. Focus on A-Player Culture, be a demanding, driving leader, and the rest will take care of itself. People want to be inspired. That's all they're really looking for. Give them a great journey!
Have a great week!
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Just One More: Just One More: The Wisdom of Bob Vukovich: Martinovich, Mr Jeffrey A: 9781790554850: Amazon.com: Books
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