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August 2014 Experts Speak Out
Commentary By Wayne Morgan Austin Institute of Real Estate
How do you get the right people to do the right thing at the right time?
W
e all have things we excel at. We do these things effortlessly and with excellence. It just comes naturally, it feels good when we do them and we enjoy them. Then there is the flip side; the things that we are not good at. We dislike them, we struggle with them and typically we have to focus, strain and work hard to obtain a mediocre outcome. To me, this is how I feel when it comes to building a business versus running a business. I love building them. I love designing the systems, creating marketing campaigns and developing new products. But after they are built, I am done. I don’t like running them. Day-to-day operations is just not my thing. I don’t know if I dislike it because I am not good at it or if I’m not good at it because I dislike it. All I know is that every time I give someone a pep talk, they quit! To protect the company from myself I decided not to talk to staff anymore. When I told my wife about my new, great idea, she
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said, “How are you going to walk through the building and not speak to anyone? That would be strange.” I thought this over and agreed. “So what should I say to them?” “Well,” she said, “If it’s early in the day, say ‘Good Morning’, if it’s later in the day, say ‘Good job,’ but if you really want to make us all happy, say ‘Goodbye!’” We all have things we are excellent at, things we are very good at, things we are fair at and things we are poor at. I discovered that I abhor details and the day-to-day minutiae of operations and the constant, niggling little details that are important, but seem to not only suck the energy out of me but also burn so much of my day where I could be doing much more productive things (read: FUN!). I went on to make a list of all the things I enjoy doing: these were the things I was very good at. Then I made a list of all the things I love doing; these were things I was excellent at! Surprise! I decided to spend my time on
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these things and nothing else. Then I made a list of things that I disliked doing and found these were things that I was either fair at or poor at. Then I advertised for an assistant. “Wanted: Researcher/Critical thinker with eye for detail, precise, analytical, exacting, thorough and thoughtful.” When I interviewed her, I showed her my list of things I disliked doing. Only I called it “Job Description.” Her eyes got big and a huge smile broke out across her face. “This sounds good, can I ask you about the details of the job?” Wow. Perfect! Two and a half years later she is still here, managing details and minutiae and leaving me to grow the business, which we are now expanding into seventeen states outside Texas. What I learned: we all have strengths and weaknesses. I abhor what I’m weak at, which is details and minutiae. There is no sense in me taking a “Learn to manage the details in your life” seminar. That will just upset me
even more. I learned that there is someone out there who loves what I abhor and abhors what I love. If I do what I abhor, I’m unhappy. If she does not get to do what she loves, she’s unhappy. So I decided to make us both happy. She attends to all the details and minutiae. She’s thrilled. I no longer have to do it or worry about it. I’m equally thrilled. We have a very high degree of respect and admire each other for each other’s strengths and abilities and we work very well together. So I hire people who are excellent or very good and things that I am fair or poor at and I stopped doing them. I focus my energies on just a few tasks that I am excellent at or very good at. They do the same. Rather than try to be something we’re not, we just play to our strengths. That’s how you get the right people to do the right thing at the right time. RL
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