The Accidental Entrepreneur

by Allis, Janine;

  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. We take hiring people very seriously at Boost, and sometimes an applicant may have to go through five interviews before we make a decision.

  Keep in mind that 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 and store 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, although 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, 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, a group of people 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 offences? 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. The kind of people who are not victims but take responsibility for what they do. As you may have gathered from reading chapter 2, I break this down into two types of people: VERB (Victim, Entitled, Rescue and Blame) and SOAR (Solutions, Ownership, Accountability and Responsibility). So I am looking for people who can SOAR.

  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.

  Generals and foot soldiers

  It might come as a surprise to hear this but your team needs ordinary people as well as extraordinary ones. Don't get me wrong — I'm not suggesting you develop a hiring policy of seeking mediocrity. Of course you should look for the best, most passionate people you can find. But not everyone on your team needs to be a gun who will one day rise to the top and be a great leader. A strong team is composed of a mix of people with a range of different skills, and that includes the superstars and the worker bees. Surprisingly, I learned this lesson from football.

  Teamwork

  I was fortunate to be the first female board member of the Hawthorn Football Club. I loved the years I worked with the club, and found the business of football fascinating. A key ‘ah ha' moment for me was when we were discussing getting the right team to win a grand final, and how getting the right team balance leads to goals being scored. It was exactly the same formula as creating a winning team at Boost (and obviously a successful formula, as Hawthorn's three successive grand final wins can attest).

  The ‘recipe' for a winning football team was as follows: you need three to four superstars to start, and then you add your up-and-coming superstars. Next, sprinkle heavily with the solid team members (the ones who get their job done with no fanfare), while cautiously blending in the last group — those who need to move forward or move out.

  The bottom line is this: a great team is a solid mix of different personalities, all working together to even out each other's weaknesses. A great team is healthily competitive, yet comfortable enough to truly celebrate each team member's individual wins. The right team can achieve the unachievable.

  A good team mix could look like this:

  The leader: efficient, focused, ambitious, confident, honest, strong-willed and someone who can inspire. Leaders may, however, demonstrate little patience, a tendency towards bullying and a desire for personal success over team success.

  The thinker: analytical, concerned with detail, unassuming, precise, well organised, rational and a good listener. On the downside, thinkers may be perceived by others as aloof and negative — a killer vibe at the best of times!

  The ‘doer' or worker bee: hard-working, patient and keen to get the job done without much fuss. Worker bees can, however, be easily manipulated.

  The emotional creative: social, energetic and competitive, but prone to the odd tantrum, especially under pressure, and may lack the necessary follow-through. In other words, creatives can be high maintenance if their astrological planets are not aligned!

  A good team mix includes all elements from the preceding mix, and manages to reduce the risk of any of the negative attributes associated with each element emerging.

  When hiring new people at Boost, we know that the right person needs to fit into a team and the team needs to have a strong balance of various skills, so we hire to maintain this balance. However, we're also flexible enough to adjust the role to meet the candidate's skills.

  Taking all of that into account, how do you pick the best team? It's important that you also recognise all the dominant traits in your team and balance these out — doing so will help to ease any frustration. You may have too many analytical types among your key personnel, for example, which means no-one will ever make a decision. On the other hand, if there are too many drivers and leader types, you're on a road that will be heavily paved with conflict.

  If you're just starting out in your business (perhaps you haven't even got as far as creating a team yet), keep in mind that your first employee can really make or break the business. This time is when you are learning and focusing on growing the business, and confidence in your concept is what makes you grow. If our first employee had been a disaster, the growth of Boost Juice may have been very different, because timing in business is everything — at that stage of growing Boost Juice, we needed to quickly become the first option in the minds of the consumer. Luckily, we found Sharryn for our first employee.

  Sharryn was the Australian speed-waterskiing
champion — she had muscles on the muscles on her arms and, even though she could not be taller than 5 foot 2, she could scare a man twice her size. Sharryn had never worked in retail before but she had the drive and the passion we were looking for in our new concept. She understood what we wanted to achieve and was passionate about achieving it.

  Sharryn found herself running not one store but a number of stores very quickly. She moved from store manager to area manager and then to project manager, running the design and development team in opening new stores around Australia in just two years. She had no experience in this area either, but took on each challenge with enthusiasm. Sharryn salary-sacrificed her early wages to obtain a share of the business, which paid off handsomely many years later.

  Pro tips

  Here's how to perfect your team:

  If you're having difficulties with a team member, ascertain not only the team member's personality traits but also your own. This will help you learn the best way to deal with your colleague and the best way to manage your response to them.

  The nicest people (or those most easy to manage) are not necessarily the ones who will produce the best results. Every organisation needs balance, and having a bit of ‘mongrel' in a group is essential.

  Ramping up

  Fine-tune your team with the following:

  Develop a core team for your business that consists of four or five people who work well together and whom you trust. Under good leadership (yours) this group will become a cohesive unit, creating a synergy that will make your company or department unbeatable. Pay these four or five key players more than market rates, and make sure every single one of them is extraordinary.

  If you're not confident enough to conduct personality tests, consider hiring an expert to evaluate your staff.

  People

  A staff member once said the following to me: ‘Imagine being paid to work here — it almost feels wrong'. These words are among the best I've ever heard. Your people are your company's greatest asset — reward them and reap the rewards for your business. There's no doubt that if you get the right group of people together, anything can be achieved. I believe that staff members need to share in the rewards. If you take the time to acknowledge a person's contribution, you will be repaid by their loyalty and hard work a thousand times over.

  Public acknowledgement can be extremely motivating. Awards are held for store partners at our annual conference and we also present monthly awards at an informal afternoon tea, to reward and recognise exceptional achievements by employees. The awards have been developed to inspire individuals and teams to aim high. They are open to everyone in the company, regardless of position. As well as offering rewards for high performance, it's equally important to show genuine understanding and kindness when a colleague or employee is at a low ebb. Compassion will also be repaid by trust and loyalty.

  At times, members of generation Y (and now millennials) get some really bad press and are blamed for all sorts of negative things. Although this perception is changing, if you do a search for ‘managing gen Y' online, you find millions of results on how to deal with this apparently ‘difficult generation'. We passionately do not agree with this perception, because we see some amazing, talented and focused generation Ys and millennials in our organisation.

  Indeed, in 2010 we felt so strongly about this that we did an advertisement attempting to change the perception of generation Y. It was a risk for the business, but it paid off; the result was amazing. And when an ad agency did a spoof on our ad, my husband and boys thought it was hilarious. (Have a quick look here for that spoof: www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlvYjIkk4e0. It's hard to find something funny when others are taking the piss out of you. However, I admit the spoof was clever.)

  Hiring people smarter than yourself

  One thing Jeff believes he is very, very good at is picking people — as he says, ‘I picked Janine as a wife, didn't I?'

  For Jeff, the most important thing to focus on when picking people for your business is to hire people smarter than you. According to Jeff, ‘Once you absolutely and totally commit yourself to the idea that you are there to hire people smarter than you, and who will eventually take your role, the rest is easy'. In every company, only a small number of people can control whether the company is steered in the direction of success or failure — those people must be amazing.

  Jeff says, ‘My best-ever example of the “people” rule occurred during my time at Austereo. I had just started my radio executive career at Sea FM (on the Gold Coast in Queensland) as program director. I hired Guy Dobson, a bloke who is slightly left of centre, super-intelligent and has a real presence to him. We were both in our late twenties at the time. We had a function on a boat and, over a beer, I asked him what he wanted to do in his professional radio life. He said he was going to be the best radio programmer in Australia. I laughed and said that was my goal too.

  ‘Then I told him I was a year or two further down the track than him so if he helped me get there first, he could then take over the mantle. Done deal — from that day on, we looked after each other. He was outstanding, but his performance only made me look good too. We kept rising through the ranks until I got to 40 and stepped down from the head programming role in Australia to take a year off and then work with Janine. Guy was promoted into my role as group program director and then continued from there to take the role of CEO of Austereo. Total faith and total trust got us there.

  ‘The truth is, I always end up having to figure out my next career step well before I'm ready to go because the people I surround myself with are so good that they put me out of a job. Your job as a leader is nothing more than clearing the path and helping your people have a clear run at hitting their marks'.

  Pro tips

  Here's how to get the most out of your people:

  Consider instigating a formal recognition and/or award program, in line with your company values, that will give your employees meaningful rewards for exceptional achievement. Acknowledgement is an excellent motivational tool.

  Recognise the fact that people respond to compassion as quickly as they do to encouragement.

  Relationships

  Learning to manage the various relationships you have should be a fundamental part of your ongoing strategy.

  On a day-to-day basis, like most managers, I spend more time with my core staff members than I do with my family. Close bonds have grown between us over time; it's acknowledged that I would do anything for them, and vice versa. Together we have created and achieved amazing things, with plenty of hardship, stress and celebration along the way. In this kind of situation, you do develop a bond that's stronger than a mere employer-employee relationship. Not slipping over into complete friendship mode is a fine line, but one that I believe we now tread easily.

  Being aware of this line is important, however, particularly for certain roles within your business. For example, Scott is the CEO of the company and, as such, he has plenty on his plate. He has hard calls to make every day. He said to me recently, ‘I really don't have any friends in the company — as in mates I would socialise with'. And I thought, Cool. That means you're doing your job right.

  The higher up the corporate ladder you go, the fewer ‘mates' you will have in the office. Life and work is not a popularity contest — great people often have to make tough calls, and these calls are made tougher if a friend is involved. Sure, early in your working life, having workmates who are also friends can be super-important, and going out and being able to live and breathe the day-to-day dramas of work is all part of it. However, climb higher and get older and, trust me, you need to keep them separate — doing so is rejuvenating for both aspects of your life.

  These days, I have very little free time to spend with friends, so I make sure that those people I do see are the ones who make me laugh, allow me to feel good about by myself, have my back and are honest. In business, you can be spoiled by the wealth of mental stimulation you receive from the people you meet. But in life
, it is not what someone has or hasn't achieved that makes them interesting; it is who they are as a person. Friendships are vital to everyone. Nothing revitalises me more, or makes that bad day not so bad, than a good old belly laugh with trusted friends. Choose your friends wisely.

  Pro tips

  Here are some important elements for business and personal relationships:

  Business relationships are about give and take. If you give a lot of information to those who impress you, most will return the favour.

  When you're passionate about your work, it's easy to neglect friends and family. Don't! There are only so many people in the world with whom you can have a close relationship — keep in touch. Good friends are the best tonic for bad times.

  The world is full of people who believe that the glass is half empty, that they are owed a living, that they are hard done by and that nothing is their fault. You do not need these high-maintenance people in your business, or your life. You owe it to the others around you to get rid of those negative influences.

  The best friendships are equal friendships. Look at your relationships: are they two-way streets? Do you feel good about yourself when you are with your friends? Make sure those around you bring out the best in you, and vice versa.

  Ramping up

  Build even stronger relationships with these tips:

  Take the time to be curious about other people's lives and their wellbeing. Genuine interest will have a large impact on that person. Token measures will get token results.