So you reverse engineer the future. What else do you need to do within that phase?
So every quarter, you’re looking at the next group of projects that you need to be putting in place, making sure that you’ve got alignment with all of your business areas, that everyone has the skill set and money to be able to do it, and then you help support your team on getting that stuff done.
So after you reverse engineer it, it comes into a set of meeting rhythms.
A set of daily, weekly and monthly meetings that are high functioning, hard hitting, they all have different reasons for having the meeting. So one is like a checking on metrics, another is a checking on strategy, it’s hard to get into it all in 15 minutes, but it’s really a series of well run, executing meetings that keep the team pulsing and focused and moving forward.
Do you have any tips on what you do in those meetings?
Yes, they are all completely different. We would have a meeting once a month just on the financials where every single employee was reviewing the income statement together as a team.
We had complete open book financials. So we would show everyone every single expense in the company. And we found opportunities to save money and make money and we shared some of the profits with all of the employees.
We had another meeting weekly that we learnt from Rockefeller. I mean you look at JD Rockefeller who was a billionaire 90 years ago and he had a meeting every single week just on strategy.
So all we did once a week for three hours was talk about things at least three to six months out of the calendar. So we weren’t always hyper-focused on the day-to-day. We always had a strategic view of the business as well and we did that every single week.
And we had a daily seven minute meeting for all the employees at 10:55 in the morning until 11:02 where we shared good news and we looked at the key numbers in the business every day. We did our sales forecast for the month and the year at that meeting every day.
And then we had one of the 10 business units would update everyone else in the company on what they were working on over the next two week period and what they got done in the previous two week period. We did that every day.
If you were to pick one of those meetings, what was the best one you had? What was the one you wouldn’t do without?
Daily huddle, absolutely daily huddle – 10:55, seven minute stand up meeting, and we learnt that from Verne Harnish and from Dell and Goldman Sachs. Do you know Verne?
He’s fantastic. We’ve done it for eight years.
So what’s next after that? You’re doing your reverse engineering, you’re doing strategic plan always looking out, and you’re keeping in contact with the day to day. What else?
So you’ve got your meeting rhythms and then it’s looking out and trying to leverage technology to grow all of those systems and make everything faster and leaner and scale.
So it’s not about obsessing the complex things in technology but it’s using technology in a very simple way. Even in my home office I have three monitors. I have a wireless headset. Everyone is on laptops, everyone has iPhones.
What should you not be without in the technology office?
Wireless, iPhone, wireless desk headsets. I mean I’m walking around right now on a wireless headset because your energy transfers more when you’re standing up and talking. I mean everyone on laptops; I mean what’s the point of writing your notes and then going back to your desk and typing them up?
What else? What about internal systems?
Definitely don’t build your own software anymore. I mean software is all free. There are so many applications right now in cloud computing that are free that you and your company can use. Even if you need to have things like Microsoft Office. Just have one or two versions of it and have everyone else use Google Documents. There’s so much you can do internally using free software or software that’s already been built.
What else?
Get everyone the best darn chair you can get them, and get rid of their crappy ones. Give everyone a Herman Miller Aeron chair and the crappiest $50 desk, because nobody cares about their desk but they all want to sit in a really comfy chair. It sounds so silly. People spend $2000 on a desk and $200 on a chair. So they spent $2200. You spend $900 on a Herman Miller chair and $50 on a desk and you’ve cut your expenses in half.
Smart Company is the leading online publication in Australia for free news, information and resources catering to Australia’s entrepreneurs, small and medium business owners and business managers.
