Preparation habits of successful leaders, the sales team you deserve, best interview question and using RACI project charts

10th April 2022 Newsletter

“Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.” Bill Gates

Hope you’re Thriving!

I’ve enjoyed a very productive week, with early starts and evening meetings almost every day. I met two separate people who wanted me to help them build billion-dollar companies. I had another team where we decided to ‘burn the boats’ and go all-in on our strategy, then another where we built the behaviours for a team (a subset of values), and a few others I can’t mention.

However, one of the most touching stories was from a CEO who told me about a new hire in London. This person had only recently joined her company and, unknown to her, was thinking about leaving. But I’d been working with the CEO on the onboarding tools from my new book, and she told the new hire’s manager about it and how to use it. The new hire’s manager spent an hour going through the tool with the new hire, and in that hour, he went from almost resigning to excited to work in the company.

The sales team you deserve

This week, Mike Carroll released his long-awaited book The Sales Team You Deserve, which outlines the proven methodologies he has used with hundreds of CEOs and thousands of salespeople to transform sales teams. I’ve known Mike for many years and helped provide feedback while writing the book, providing, at times, brutally honest feedback. But I’ve since seen the finished product, and it’s spot-on.

Mike begins by outlining why CEOs can’t solve sales issues, setting the right sales goals, and then creating the right environment for sales success. Next, he moves to building stronger sales leaders and teams, hiring the right salespeople, and finally, what a successful sales team looks like.

If you’re looking to build a high performing sales team, check out Mike’s new book.
The Sales Team You Deserve: Why CEOs Tolerate Mediocrity and What YOU Can Do About It

The best interview question

Perhaps you’ve heard of leaders who talk about weird and wonderful interview questions. I remember the worst I ever heard was from a sales manager in a leadership team I worked with. He asked candidates, “when was the last time you got into a bar fight?” If they hadn’t been in a fight in a bar in the past few years, he didn’t hire them. I still cringe today.

A better version you might have heard of is to get the receptionist to report how the candidate treats them, or perhaps take the candidate out to dinner and see how they treat the restaurant staff.

Well, this week, I came across a great new interview question. Note, this might not even be legal where you live – check with your legal people first!

Here it is…

“What’s your Uber rating?”

See, your Uber rating is the aggregated score of people serving you as Uber drivers over many years. It’s a score out of 5, and you can find it by opening the Uber app on your phone and clicking the head icon in the top right corner. It is a quantitative response to the question, how do I treat people who report to me?
If a candidate had a score of 2 or 3 out of 5, what would that tell you about them?

RACI

This week, I’ve had a few teams needing to implement RACI for the first time. They’ve got leaders who are unsure who owns what, and projects are being delivered without people’s knowledge or input. The framework to solve this is RACI. RACI stands for “Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed.”

If you would like to communicate on a project explicitly, a RACI chart can help with that. A RACI chart organises your project so that everyone knows what’s happening. With RACI, map out who is Responsible, is Accountable, must be Consulted with, and shall stay Informed.

Let’s break it down further. Here is what your project delegation looks like with the acronym

RACI:

• Responsible: Person who is completing the task.
• Accountable: Person who is making decisions and taking actions on the task(s).
• Consulted: Person who will be communicated with regarding the decision-making process and specific tasks.
• Informed: Person who will be updated on decisions and actions during the project.

We did a podcast about RACI on The Growth Whisperers, which you can listen to here:

On my website RACI: Accountability vs Responsibility

On Apple podcasts: ‎The Growth Whisperers podcast: RACI: Accountability vs Responsibility on Apple Podcasts

Here’s a sample RACI explanation from this site How to Use a RACI Chart to Simplify Responsibilities

EO Ukraine support

The Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) is supplying $25 wellness kits to Ukrainian refugees through the EO chapter in Poland. 100% of the funds are going directly to the people in need.

Here’s the link to purchase 1, 10, or 1000 kits. Quick, easy, important.

Thank you.

Donate to Ukraine

This week on The Growth Whisperers podcast

The habits successful leaders use to prepare each week

The most successful leaders we come across do the same things to prepare each week. It was a startling revelation we had, noticing that success was born in the preparation of each and every week.

This week we discuss six key points we’ve observed about leaders who are successful, as they prepare for each week.

Episode 104 – The Growth Whisperers

Listen to The Growth Whisperers
Apple podcasts
Spotify
Or watch it on YouTube

If you would like to receive our weekly newsletter as an email, simply complete the “subscribe to my newsletter” form at the top of this page.

Keep Thriving!
Brad Giles