Part III

Expanding skills and overcoming obstacles

This part of the book was interesting to write because it covers areas where my learning curve was large and lengthy. These areas are also where other individuals and businesses tend to struggle. Because the point of this book is to share with you my lessons learned, I emphasised these particular skills, hopefully helping you avoid some of the pitfalls I found myself in.

In the final chapter in this part, I’ve also provided some insight into some common obstacles to success — and how to avoid them.

Chapter 8

Blending a great team

In case I haven’t reiterated it enough throughout this book, let me make it clear again here: the right people are integral to the success of any business. This chapter covers hiring and firing staff.

Hiring the right ones

How do you find the right staff? What do they look like? If I’ve discovered anything along my journey, I have learned that the most important thing employees can have is the right cultural fit. They have to fit in with your team. They must understand what it is that you’re trying to do.

Secondly, they must have the right core fit. This is their attitudes: work ethic, ambition, self-motivation, passion, honesty and whether they’re team players. Everything else is just mechanics — everything else you can teach them.

If you don’t get the right cultural fit for the business, it just won’t work. Unfortunately, in an interview situation, people will often tell you whatever they think you want to hear. It can be incredibly difficult to break down barriers to really get to the essence of the person.

So, how do you sort the wheat from the chaff? We generally know within the first 60 seconds of an interview whether a person is going to fit in at Boost.

Firstly, it’s important to ask the right questions. The culture at Boost is energetic, honest, passionate, sometimes funky, fun and always high performance. You can’t fake those traits, so we don’t need to ask an enormous number of questions to ascertain whether people will fit in — they either have it or they don’t.

We have a rigorous selection process for employment at Boost’s head office and the ‘cultural fit’ interview is the last part of the process. Within this interview, we have specific questions that we ask candidates to answer and we look for specific traits within these answers. The following are the questions we ask; underneath are some of the traits we are looking for within their answers.

Q: What do you know about Boost?

We want to employ staff who frequent our stores and are familiar with the concept. It’s important to employ people who are attracted to our philosophies. You can’t work at your optimum level if you’re working for a company that doesn’t fit with your own beliefs, or a business that produces something you’re not passionate about.

Q: What is your ideal working environment?

The Boost workplace is fast-paced, dynamic and vibrant. Staff need to be comfortable working in offices featuring more colours than Play School and being around people who are, for the most part, bouncing off the walls with enthusiasm. If you work best in a library-style setting, where there’s no buzz and no fun, you’re not going to be comfortable or productive working at Boost.

Q: Why do you want to work for Boost?

We look for enthusiasm for Boost as a company, for someone ready to fully endorse the product range. Obviously, this relates back to the first question — you’d find it difficult to answer if you know nothing about us.

Q: Our slogan is ‘Love Life’, and we live by the values of honesty, integrity and passion. How do these philosophies apply to you and your current lifestyle?

It’s difficult to lie about your way of life. While you might be able to fake enthusiasm enough to answer the previous questions, it’s much harder to answer this one without revealing a little of your true nature. This is another way in which we determine whether the values at Boost align with the candidate’s values.

While several of the preceding questions might seem to be asking the same thing, it’s important that we throw all of them in during an interview. It’s a very old trick to ask the same question in different ways, and it’s up to the potential employee to answer these questions consistently.

We look for people who fit the Boost culture, but it’s also fair to say that the majority of employees in our head office are ambitious and self-motivated. This isn’t a coincidence. At Boost, we’re achieving twice as much as other franchisors in half the time; to keep up in this fast-paced environment, our employees regard their role as more than just a job. It may come as no surprise that many of our staff members are triathletes or are passionate about a particular sport; high achievers are drawn to Boost.

To keep attracting high achievers, we make sure that each candidate’s core fit matches ours. We look for passion, ambition, self-motivation and drive. You can tell how much potential employees have of each of these traits by asking them about their ‘achievements’ in past roles, or in their personal life.

Listen for the particular traits you value within your potential employees’ answers. An obvious starting point is to say, ‘Tell me about one of your greatest achievements’. You then just have to listen for the traits you value. If they match your ‘core fit’ — bingo! A follow-up question is, ‘What do you wish to accomplish in the available position?’ If the traits that are in your core fit exist within that candidate, it’s generally easy to hear. However, honesty, integrity and high standards are harder to determine in an interview. For these you often have to go on instinct or past employers, or from the candidate’s CV.

Firing the wrong ’uns

Even with our well thought out approach to corporate hiring, we do sometimes get it wrong at Boost. Some people will tell you what you want to hear to get the job. It can be difficult to get past that before it’s too late. Alternatively, people’s particular idiosyncrasies may only come to the fore once they’re working in a team on a daily basis, or they simply may not ‘get’ what we want. I’ve learned that in these instances it is best to act quickly — not tomorrow, not next week, now! And act with a rigorous, not ruthless, philosophy. I received great advice once from a respected businessman, who said, ‘Hire slowly; fire quickly!’

I’ve never been great at firing people, though I have gotten better with time. It’s not an enjoyable process. Essentially, you’re sitting down with people and telling them, for whatever reason, that you don’t want them working for you anymore. This inevitably affects their ego and incites that terrible fear of wondering where their next job is. In short, it’s a horrible thing to do. That being said, it’s also a good thing to do. You’ll find that in the long run it’s probably the best thing for them as well. If you don’t act quickly to remove the wrong people, you stand to lose the right ones. As a company with high standards, we have to uphold those standards, or other staff members start to wonder. Why put up with mediocrity?

In 2004, as you read in part I, we had to make changes in the business. At the end of the year, we asked the heads of each department to assess their teams and decide who they wanted to take into 2005 with them. Unfortunately, there were a group of people who didn’t make the cut. Were they bad people? Far from it. They were just not right for Boost at that stage in its growth. As a leader, you must have courage; even when you hate doing what you know is the right thing for the business.

What are fireable offenses? Obviously, dishonesty is a big one. Accountability is another. I do not want to hear about why your stuff-up is not your fault; if you try to make excuses, I will immediately lose an enormous amount of respect for you. I like people who agree that they’ve made a mistake and then tell me how they’re going to fix it. Even better, I like people who bring a mistake to my attention, even if they know I’d never find out about it, and give me the solution.

There are other reasons people end up losing my respect. I heard a clever acronym years ago, describing a particular mentality, and it has since become a part of my professional vocabulary. This acronym is VERB, or Victim, Entitled, Rescued, Blame.

At Boost, we don’t like a VERB mentality. We don’t want people who see themselves as victims — we don’t want to hear ‘poor me’; we want to hear ‘can do’. In addition, there is no such thing as entitlement at Boost. I believe that people should be rewarded appropriately for what they do. I hate hearing someone say, ‘That’s not my job’ or ‘I don’t get paid for that’. We also want people who find solutions — rather than feel they need to be rescued. We want people to come to us with answers, not problems. Lastly, and this is a pet hate for me, we don’t tolerate people who blame others. It’s true we all do it at different times in our lives — and we wouldn’t be human if we didn’t — but don’t be a serial offender.

The choice you can make is to instead use the SOAR approach, or Solutions, Ownership, Accountability and Responsibility. This approach is the opposite of VERB. If you use SOAR in everything you do, you will suddenly find things going your way.

You can find the solution to your problem, just stay with it. Take ownership of everything in your life and business, and soon you will see the power it gives you. Accountability is there to remind you to fix no-one else and, finally, take responsibility for everything you do — if everything is your responsibility, you can fix it. I challenge you to SOAR — and find staff who SOAR with you — and see the difference.

Of course, an actual firing never really comes as a complete surprise. It’s not like one minute you’re telling staff members they’re doing a great job and the next they’re out the door. That doesn’t happen. At Boost we follow the law to the utmost extent, ensuring that everyone gets a fair go. However, people have different levels of what they believe is acceptable.

You can’t afford to have people who sit around twiddling their thumbs; you can’t have one department drowning in work and another department leaving on the dot at 5 pm. Of course, as I’ve mentioned previously, staying late is not a badge of honour. But you do need people to deliver on what’s required to get their job done. I don’t enjoy letting people go, but it is a necessary part of my business. A situation will get worse if you don’t do anything about it.