Insider Fix emails have been providing thousands of my readers with three problem-solving fixes for a couple of months now and allowing them to harvest the benefits of my 1 + 1 + 1 = 10x formula. I hope by sending you this newsletter I can help shift your focus from reactive to proactive and ultimately help you grow both personally and professionally. Enjoy.
Right Butts in the Right Seats
This week, we elevated two of our employees to partnership (Congratulations Gene and Max!).
They have both been with us for ten years, since before I even started this business, when they worked for me in my department at our prior company. Two other employees have been with us for nearly as long (you’re next Mike and Julianne). Everyone else, though, is newer, and throughout that time, we’ve had a lot of employees come and go. Each departure is difficult but necessary, for one reason or another. Each time, as with most issues, I try to do an exit interview and a “lessons learned” session.
Over the years, those sessions have added up and have led to a “hire slower” policy. We’ve systemized and tightened up our hiring process tremendously, relying on more interviews, Culture Index Assessments, and more creative interview questions. We now have a 22-point hiring checklist, and a list of 45 potential questions that our interviewers can choose from, curated over the years by borrowing from some of the greats, like Amazon and Google. All of these processes and questions are loaded into Sweet Process, which is our repository for all of the processes inside our organization.
There have been a ton of bumps and bruises from wrong hires over the years. A ton of lost time and energy and investment and opportunity. We’re still learning.
Here are some great resources we’ve relied on:
• SweetProcess
• EOS “Right Butts Right Seats” Concepts like the People Analyzer and the Accountability Chart
• Google’s interview questions on Inc.: Here’s How Google Knows in Less Than 5 Minutes if Someone Is a Great Leader
How to Hire a Lawyer
Hiring an attorney is a weird process. Referrals are great but limited. Just because a lawyer did well for one of your friends doesn’t mean she’ll do well for you, and for your particular situation. Most business lawyers will only charge by the hour, which I think is nuts. Law firm clients usually call when they’re stressed out and vulnerable and just want some problem to go away, so they’ll hire counsel with minimal diligence and on whichever terms are proposed.
Here’s my advice on both hiring an attorney and on keeping costs low:
• Get multiple references. (If they tell you they can’t divulge their other clients, ask them to request one or two of their other clients for permission to have you call them).
• Go by experience, even though longer usually means more expensive.
• Shop around and get multiple quotes. You’ll do that with your roofer; why wouldn’t you do that with your attorney?
• Check their disciplinary history with the Supreme Court. Here’s the Ohio Supreme Court’s attorney directory, which will include that information.
• Do not just go by the badges and professional-looking accolades on their website. Many of those are easily bought or obtained.
• Ask your litigation attorney how many cases they’ve tried, including both as first chair (i.e. leader) and second or third chair. Your case may end up in trial.
• Ask your deal lawyer their average deal size to see how yours stacks up against their usual transaction.
• Get an understanding up-front of their responsiveness. If they can’t commit to responding to your e-mails and phone calls within one business day, I’d walk away. Responsiveness is not their thing and it will drive you crazy.
• Stay away from lawyers who talk your ear off. They’ll do that throughout the engagement too (and bill you for that).
• Ask for flat fee and other non-hourly fee arrangements as an alternative to “billable hours”.
• Get a budget. Get a budget. Get a budget.
• In general, gauge your comfort level with the attorney on a scale of 1-10 in terms of experience, flexibility, personability, attitude and the other factors described here.
Here’s an article I wrote for the Association of Corporate Counsel a few years ago called “How to Save a Ton of Money in Legal Fees”.
The Data Privacy Dilemma
Even paranoid people are right some of the time. I watched The Great Hack on Netflix and I’ve never thought about my online data the same way again. (Great documentary, by the way. I highly recommend it.) In that spirit, here’s a great article on “How to encrypt your entire life in less than an hour.”
