Your Next Five Moves

Five Reasons to Implement Systems: 1. What is measured can be scaled and improved. 2. You will know where and to whom to direct your energy and expertise. 3. You can stop micromanaging and empower your employees. 4. Your employees, especially your top performers, won't be able to deceive you with hype. 5. You will simultaneously become more effective and have more freedom.

If you walk through our offices, you'll see screens and data streams everywhere. By displaying our data in the office, we are creating accountability and highlighting radical transparency. Because everyone sees everything, it's an amazing way of using the carrot and stick simultaneously—without having to say or do anything. Because the numbers are in plain view, performers feel recognized just as nonperformers feel uncomfortable. If the latter feel too uncomfortable, all the better; they will either up their game to avoid further embarrassment or leave the company. Transparency is the ultimate performance-enhancing drug. And when it doesn't work to motivate your poor performers, they will weed themselves out—which is exactly what you want.

You simply cannot scale your business without creating the systems for it to operate without you. You have to make lists. You must create manuals (video libraries may be more effective than printed ones). You must codify your knowledge. If it exists only in your head, you have a job to do. If you want to have a sustainable business, codify what you know and make sure it gets transferred to everyone else in your organization.

Ask why, and stay silent long enough to listen to their answers. When you don't get a good explanation for why an employee has broken a promise or missed a deadline, ask why. Get a specific answer. You need to go deep to find out what's really going on. This is the only way you are going to gain from the conversation.

The key to dealing with lions is challenging them. Even star players, in the heat of the moment, will get annoyed by their coaches. It's not fun to be pushed beyond your pain threshold. Yet these same players ultimately bestow praise on their coaches. Why? Because they are lions, and lions thrive on being pushed beyond their pain threshold.

The way I apply pressure is by asking questions—and waiting for the answers. I ask them to become elear on who they want to be and describe their next moves in detail. Once they express what they want, I use their answers to keep them accountable, I don't yell and scream. I don't impose my own goals on them. What I do is repeat what they said they want to accomplish. If they are falling short of their goals, I ask why and shut up. I've found that getting them to self-reflect is much more powerful than telling them what to do. Ultimately, I'm teaching them to be accountable to the high expectations they set for themselves.

Making the right move can create a massive surge in your business. You have to synthesize everything you know about your customers' wants and needs, your competition's limitations, and your own strengths to create a campaign that will drive rapid revenue growth.