Episode 10: Effective Team Management, Delegation & Implementation Strategies
In this episode, Lance and Randy discuss the most effective ways to run an organization with a diverse staff, how to manage them effectively, how to delegate and implement everyone’s work and get it done right and on time for maximum results.
What you’ll learn in this episode:
- Lance explains the importance of mindset shift in leaping from the employee mentality to that of an entrepreneur. The questions he asked himself as an employee were different from those he asks himself leading a team as an entrepreneur. As an employee, the typical self-questioning was, “How am I gonna get all this done?” Everything fell on his shoulders. The entrepreneur self-question is, “Who am I gonna get to do this for me?” You stop asking “how” and start asking “who.”
- Perfectionism is a big enemy to entrepreneurs. Lance has found that in this role, 80% is good enough. He says, “Let’s get 80% out there and learn based on market feedback. Was that good enough for the market or do I need to tweak it?” Lance confirms Randy’s thought that the biggest challenge going from being a solopreneur to having people work for you is, “Nobody can do anything better than you.”
- Lance responds to Randy’s questions: “How do you go about communicating what you’re thinking to somebody?” and “How do you hold them accountable to see that it actually gets done?” As leader, your job is to have a clear vision and clear specs as to what you want to have. Lance outlines a single page bullet point plan with his objectives. He’ll state why he wants to do a task or project, his objectives and what the end result needs to look like.
- *As far as accountability, Lance used to impose hard deadlines, but now prefers to go through the plan with his employee and ask, “What do you think is a reasonable time frame to get this done?” When they give him a date, he makes sure it feels fair to them. Another key is trust. They can come to him with any problems, but he will not check up on them. He lets them take ownership of the deliverable.
- To help Lance keep track of multiple projects, he uses the Evernote app. When he issues a project, he sends an email to the responsible employee. He makes sure that the topic describes the title of the project. Inside the email, he may include a project plan and instructions. In the email subject line, he’ll put that date he’s going to talk to any of his three managers about it. He keeps a record of projects by email title. When he meets with them, he goes through all the lists on the projects and they report to him. He manages his business on 90 minutes a week with all three of them together. He also speaks to those managers twice a week for five to seven minutes on Monday and Thursday. He spends his other time creating his own “stuff.”
- Another key concept is being able to say no to certain ideas and create effective boundaries. It’s also important to value your time. If you estimate your time is worth $50 an hour, you don’t want to spend it licking stamps and putting them on envelopes.
- Lance believes in the adage, “Without vision, people will perish.” You’ve got to convince yourself it’s a project worth doing. Then you’ve got to make sure your team understands what success looks like. When you come up with an idea, ask yourself over and over, “Who’s gonna do this for me?” Then you have to let go. He says that’s the hardest thing he can teach aspiring entrepreneurs.
- When Lance is designing a new real estate investing product, he starts off by listing the top questions he will be asked over and over. Then he works through them and ranks them again. One question is, “Where’s the bulk of what I need to focus on?” Once he delivers that, if there are a lot of repeated questions he didn’t address up front, he comes up with “version two” of the questions. His initial goal is always 80% good. If his managers or employees want feedback, he will offer it, but it’s more efficient for him to critique something than build from scratch.
- If one of his employees misses the mark, he will assume that he wasn’t clear enough on what he was trying to tell them to do. Feedback helps him become a better communicator. If it happens repeatedly, he has to consider the idea that he and the employee are a mismatch.
- For Lance, the most important consideration in hiring someone is not their resume, background or accolades. He cares more about, “Does their personality match the job I have for them?” Because analytical people and expressives are very different, he actually makes prospective employees take personality tests before hiring them. (SalesTestOnline.com). In this era of COVID-19, he often conducts interviews via Zoom.
- Lance thinks one of the silver linings of the pandemic is that the whole world just got trained how to use Zoom and figure out how to get comfortable in a virtual environment. He also reveals that he’s had more success hiring people off Craigslist ads than Monster, LinkedIn and ZipRecruiter. He needs more than a resume, though. He wants an email explaining why they are the perfect candidate for the position.
Resources:
Grab a FREE Copy of Lance’s Best Selling Book, How to Make Big Money in Small Apartments here.
Get Access to Lance’s Best-selling Small Apartment Wholesaling Course here.
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