PRINCIPLE 6

Work Hard
(You’ll Be Amazed at
How Many People Don’t)

I had a scheduled meeting at a client’s office for 9:00 A.M., and as I pulled into their parking lot at 8:52 I was surprised at the number of people who were sitting in their cars. Some were reading the newspaper or talking on their cell phones. Others were just sitting there staring into space.

I walked slowly to the front door, looking back at the parking lot every few seconds since I hadn’t a clue what was going on.

At 8:58, it looked as if all those people in the parking lot received a signal only they could hear. They all stopped what they were doing, got out of their cars, and headed into the building. They were employees of the firm and they were going to be at their desks at 9:00 A.M.—when the workday started—and not one minute before.

My meeting ended just after lunch, so I wasn’t there at 5:00 P.M.; but I will guess they were all back in their cars by 5:02, and not going to work one minute more than they had to.

Unfortunately, I can’t say that I was surprised.

You would think that hard work would be taken as a given. It’s not. In fact, I think you can tie it directly to the 80/20 rule we talked about in Principle 1. The top 20% of employees do 80% of your work; 20% of your team produces 80% of the profit and 80% of the new ideas.

Now, I am not denigrating the 80%. I never expect people to put in the hours I do, but I do expect them to give the same effort during the time they work. If they don’t, I’ll suggest—in no uncertain terms—that they would be happier being employed elsewhere.

Why would you tolerate the 80%? Well, you wouldn’t in the early days of a startup when you have just a handful of employees, and they all need to be dedicated to the concept you’re trying to create. You should only have 20-percenters in the room.

But as the company grows, those 20-percenters need people to do the “support” work, the tasks that can be scheduled between 9 and 5, or whenever office hours are. People in IT, the accounts-payable department, lawyers, and the like. Besides, I understand that for some people, work is not at the center of their lives. They’re passionate about painting, saving stray animals, or getting their rock band off the ground. Traditional work is just a way for them to fund the things they really care about. As long as people give me maximum effort at work, I respect that their true passions lie elsewhere.

There are two points to make about this. If you’re one of these 80% people, you need to know your chances of advancement in any firm are limited. (That just makes sense. Why would anyone promote you when the person next to you is more committed to what the company is doing and putting in more hours?)

You need to constantly be getting better.

Jack Welch, the former CEO of GE, said, “You should always upgrade your workforce every year by firing the bottom 10% and replacing them with better people.” I completely agree.

Now, you’re not going to do this in a vacuum; you’re going to work with that bottom 10% to see if they can get (dramatically) better. But if they can’t, or if you can find someone who can perform the work substantially better, you need to let go of the person who is not as good.

There are three reasons why.

First, if you don’t, you’re sending the message to the rest of your staff that less-than-stellar performances are okay.

Second, they’re probably going to be happier working somewhere else where their performance will be in line with everyone else’s.

And third, if you don’t upgrade, you’re going to fall behind your competition, who will.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS WORK–LIFE BALANCE

I know this will make some people cranky, but I believe it completely. Being the best at something requires hard work, a lot of time, and slavish devotion. If you’re going to be putting in all that effort, everything else in your life is going be affected. There’s simply no way around this fact, and that means there is no such thing as work–life balance.

When I say this, some people—invariably people who are passionately devoted to one thing such as building a company, becoming a world-class musician, or having the world’s prettiest garden—agree with me.

As for the others, their responses tend to fall into three categories:

1. You’re wrong.

2. Having my life be that far out of balance is not for me.

3. I will find a way around the problem.

Let’s take them one at a time.

To people who tell me I’m wrong, I always respond: “You may be right. So, to show me the error of my ways, could you please give me the names of three people you know—or three people you have read or heard about—who are extremely high achievers and who didn’t spend a disproportionate amount of their time working on what they’re good at.”

To this day, nobody has been able to come up with three names.

As for “it’s not for me,” that’s more than fine. I understand (in theory, anyway) that people want balance in their life. If they can find it, and if it makes them happy, then I’m all for it—for them. They just need to recognize that it’ll dramatically decrease their chances of becoming a high achiever in any one area. That is not a criticism, simply a matter of fact.

Finally, can you find a way around the problem? Well, you can certainly try. For example, let’s say you have what I think are the mutually exclusive goals of being the world’s best success in commerce—whatever you do for a living—and also being a world-class parent.

You know it is going to be hard, but you are committed, and so you decide you are only going to work from home. (This will give you the maximum amount of time you can spend with your kids.) You get up every day at four or five so you can get a bunch of work done before you have to get your children up for school. You pay complete attention as you make them breakfast and get them organized for their day. Once they’re out the door, you work as hard as you can, knowing that your workday will end once the school day does. (There are sports practices to get to, extracurricular activities to attend, all that homework to get through.)

Then, maybe after you have made them dinner and tucked them into bed, you work a bit more, grab a few hours’ sleep, and repeat the entire process again.

If you follow this course, have you achieved balance? Well, you have done it as well as it can be done, but you’re still putting a limit on the upside of your career. You won’t be able to manage people, and work-related travel will be difficult—or impossible. Because of these limitations—and others that are implicit in childrearing and the choices you’ve made—you’re probably still going to be surpassed by people who can devote more time to their career.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with your choice if this is the life you want; just understand the limitations. (By the way, Jack Welch fully agrees with my analysis and goes one step further by calling it a “Work/Life Choice.”)

There are limitations, no matter what option you choose. I was a good provider and I like to think I was a wonderful father, especially on family vacations, and I don’t regret anything. However, I would be lying to you if I said I didn’t feel a twinge of discomfort when my son, Jon Green, said to my grandchildren, “You’re lucky that Grandpa is attending most of your games; he never went to all of mine.”

IT’S NOT A MATTER OF PUTTING IN THE HOURS

To paraphrase former UCLA basketball coach John Wooden, who I mentioned before, you never want to confuse activity with accomplishment. The simplest example is: just because you show up at work every day doesn’t mean you’re getting anything done. In fact, thinking about the numbers of hours you work just confuses the issue. Time is not a factor; quality is. What does it take to get the job done right? Wooden believed that you had to follow a defined, planned-out routine that maximized efficiency until it became second nature to you. I do, too.

Invariably that means a lot of preparation.

This is a lesson I try to get across to my students. Let me give you an example.

It happens early in the semester. I’ll call on a student to discuss the case study that has been assigned, and they’ll invariably say “I’m sorry, I didn’t have time to prepare for it.”

I’ll say “I’m sorry you’re not prepared. You can leave now.”

The student is always shocked, and they usually say “But I still can get something out of the class if I stay and listen.”

I tell them “I agree, but you’d have gotten so much more out of it if you were prepared; and equally important, coming to class unprepared is not how we do things. Please leave and return when you are prepared, and not before.”

My approach may seem harsh—but I don’t think so. To return to sports for a minute, it’s exactly the way coaches prepare their teams. Their position is if you haven’t been at practice, you won’t play in the game. And all the great ones have every minute of practice fully scripted. They know exactly what they want to accomplish.

Here’s a great example. I’m involved in the horse-racing business. One of my partners in a few horses I owned was Bobby Hurley. Bobby is now the head basketball coach of Arizona State University. Bobby was a first-team All-American at Duke in 1993, went to the Final Four three times, and led the Blue Devils in back-to-back national championships in 1991 and 1992, earning Final Four Most Outstanding Player honors in 1992.

Bobby told me the behind-the-scenes story of Duke’s win in overtime during the NCAA “elite eight” tourney game in 1992.

Duke was losing by one point with less than a minute to play. Coach Mike Krzyzewski (“Coach K”) called a time-out. He told the team it was going to win. He then outlined the next play. As time was expiring, Grant Hill threw a full-court pass to Christian Laettner, who turned around to make a jump shot that won the game.

Impossible as it seems, but Bobby told me they had practiced that situation many times so the players knew what to expect.

Coach K has a six-point plan for success. Here’s how I interpret it: you don’t wish for success; you prepare for it. Specifically, you:

1. Give attention to details and the big picture will take care of itself.

2. Adapt to changing conditions.

3. Play to win.

4. Have belief in your team members.

5. Are a good winner and a good loser.

6. Know it’s okay to fail. It doesn’t mean you’re a failure, as long as you continue to strive for success and learn from your defeats.

ARE YOU MAKING THE MOST OF YOUR TIME?

Let me make one last point about the best use of your time.

Meetings are often just another example of confusing activity with accomplishment. Some managers have a monthly staff meeting, the weekly department meeting, and the daily “check-in” with immediate reports. These meetings sure fill up your calendar, but not much creativity—or anything else productive—comes out of them.

Why do so many managers have so many meetings?

First, for many managers, calling a meeting with a lot of attendees is a way they show off their power: “People literally have to come when I call.” Second, there are some people—managers and employees alike—who can’t get anything done without this kind of structure. Third, someone once told them that the key to leadership is to have a lot of meetings, so they have a lot of meetings.

My take on this is, if the manager has to have a lot of meetings, something is terribly wrong. On the other hand, if the executive, who has authority to make decisions, holds a meeting with a definite agenda that everyone is aware of, they can be very effective.

PRIORITIZING

You’re a hard-charging “type A” personality, so you have less of a problem than most concentrating on the right things. You’ll naturally prioritize what needs to be done, concentrating on the most important things first.

But, can you help your people—especially the 80%—learn how to prioritize? Absolutely!

If you’re doing something that isn’t adding value, don’t do it.

You begin by asking simple questions such as “What are you working on, and why are you doing it?” Invariably, you’ll find they are doing things that aren’t adding value and/or could be done faster, cheaper, or better by someone else (either inside or outside your company).

You’ll also discover that people will work on what they like doing to the detriment of all else. For example, salesmen will continue calling on the accounts that always give them an order and not go out and try to find new ones. They’ll continually go after the proverbial low-hanging fruit.

To change that, point out that the only way the company is going to grow is by getting new accounts or selling more products or services to existing accounts. You may want to incentivize people to act the way you want. You might offer a bonus for every new account opened. (By the way, this same approach works for cutting costs.)

Avon Products has one of the most successful ways to incentivize salespeople. Every year, they invite their top salespeople and families to a sales conference. Awards are given out, with the highest performers receiving vacation trips for themselves and their families. Invariably, the salespeople who do not win trips one year are “incentivized” by their family to win a trip in the future.

I HAVE NO TIME FOR TIME MANAGEMENT

As we get into this subject of working hard, someone always asks me if there is a time-management system I use. I don’t. I think the idea of using one is fraught with danger. Using such a system assumes that everything is predictable and that you’re going to know how your day is going to go from the moment you walk into the office until you turn off the lights at night. But the world of an entrepreneur is never predictable.

This doesn’t mean you respond immediately to every new thing that comes across your desk, or drop everything every time the phone rings. You always need to stay focused on the most important things you need to accomplish. You need to find a way to make that happen by delegating, automating functions, getting rid of parts of your job that sap your energy, and the like. You can’t let the urgent overwhelm the important. Otherwise, you will just lurch from crisis to crisis.

However, I completely understand why people do. In a funny way, it’s simply easier. Someone is yelling about a minor crisis they think needs to be resolved immediately and you deal with it. Once you have, you think you have accomplished something, but you really haven’t. You’re simply back to where you started before you knew the problem existed.

CASE STUDY: LEON HESS

PROOF THIS WORKS

I am not about to canonize the man who created the oil giant Amerada Hess. However, he is the embodiment of what we are talking about.

Do you know what H-E-S-S stands for? Holidays and Every Saturday and Sunday. That “joke” came extremely close to describing the hours executives worked when he was CEO. Hess believed that he needed to outwork the competition, and if he had to put in those kinds of hours to do it, you did too.

The approach paid off. He followed the classic underdog playbook. Since he had limited resources when he started (all he had was a truck to deliver other people’s fuel), he had to do things differently.

Gas stations, at the time, were dirty, smelly places. Well then, Hess stations (and their bathrooms) would be immaculate. The employees would be dressed in white.

Other stations had repair bays, which meant the customer did not always get prompt gas service. No repair bays at Hess meant attendants could always be at the pumps.

Other gas stations didn’t provide service. Hess employees always offered to check your oil and air pressure.

If you always had the feeling that other stations were ripping you off with what they charged for gas, you wouldn’t at Hess. The prices were always a couple of cents a gallon cheaper, partly because they did not accept credit cards.

All this makes sense, you say, but why the long hours at corporate headquarters? Well, to stay ahead of the competition, you needed to know what they were doing and that meant putting in a lot of time studying them. Then once you spotted an opportunity, you wanted to move quickly to capitalize on it. Working nights and weekends allowed Hess to be in constant contact with his team and allowed the company to make decisions faster.

There were rewards for putting in these kinds of hours:

1. Meals—breakfasts, lunches, and dinners—were free to employees.

2. Employees would get football tickets to the New York Jets (Hess owned the team).

3. If you or a family member became ill, you had access to the world’s best doctors.

4. People who stayed with the company for a long time became extremely rich, thanks to stock options that became more valuable as the company grew.

The Hess approach worked for Mr. Hess, and the model has been used successfully for other entrepreneurs.

AS A BOSS, DO YOU HAVE TO BE AN SOB?

One last point: sometimes people worry that they’re going to be perceived as being a son of a bitch if they demand the best out of everyone.

Is it a fair criticism? Maybe.

You certainly never want to be abusive or mean-spirited, but you do need to get the job done, and that can require some people doing more work—and more difficult work—than they want.

That, in turn, invariably will lead to some people calling you an SOB, which is really interesting. Once the job is done successfully and people have achieved more than they ever thought possible, they tend to look back at all those SOBs fondly and are grateful that they demanded their best.

How many football players who played under coach Vince Lombardi cursed him and the methods he used and the hours he made them put in? They constantly referred to him as an SOB—behind his back, of course.

After Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers won multiple World Championships and many of the players like Jerry Kramer, Forrest Gregg, Paul Hornung, and Bart Starr became Hall of Famers, they praised Lombardi for his coaching methods and for getting the best out of them.

FOUR TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS CHAPTER

1. There is no substitute for hard work. None.

2. If you are going to be successful . . . that hard work is going to dominate your life. True “work–life balance” is a myth.

3. But hard work without a game plan . . . is just hard work. You need to know what you’re trying to accomplish and develop the most efficient way of getting it. Otherwise, you could be wasting your time—or, worse, going in the wrong direction.

4. You do need to be relentlessly focused on what is absolutely vital to accomplish. You can’t let the urgent overwhelm the important.