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Best management hack that took me years to learn.

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Welcome to the game where we talk about how to get more customers, how to make more

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customers, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons we have learned

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along the way.

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I hope you enjoy and subscribe.

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In this video, I'm going to give you the single best management hack that took me years

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to learn that I hope that it does not take you years to learn.

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So by the way, my name is Oxlimosi.

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I own acquisition.com.

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We do about $85 million a year.

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I make this video for entrepreneurs, people in the game who are out there slaying every

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single day who have their teams are executing on their behalf.

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And so I want to give you one of the most tactical piece of advice that I can give you for

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managing those people so you can have the outcomes that you want.

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All right.

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So I'll give you a quick recap on one of my little triangles, so a little mental model

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for yourself in terms of how to have the card conversations about people without performing

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the way you want them to.

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There's only three reasons that they're doing that.

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Number one is that they are not motivated to do what you want them to do, which is they

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do not know why.

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The software that is telling them the vision of what you want in your company.

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The second one is that they do not know how to do what you want them to do, which means

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they lack training and process that you have not taught them.

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So that is the solution to that one.

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And the third is that they do not know what you want them to do, which is a breakdown

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in communication, which is either you have miscommunicated or you have poorly communicated

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or you have not communicated via the medium or channel that they best understand to get

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them to understand what it is that you want them to do.

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All right.

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So what you want them to do, they don't know how to do it or they know both of those

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things and they're just not motivated to do it because they don't know why, all right.

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Or they have weird character traits and you can let them go, whatever.

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So that is the triangle of the reasons that people do not do the things that you want

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them to do.

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Right.

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But here's an interesting one.

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And this is the one that if you can shift all of your management tactics from what most

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people do, which is managed towards outcomes to this special little widgetie, which a

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car, then you will be successful.

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All right.

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So here's the thing.

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And I'll give you an example of it before I reveal it to you.

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All right.

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So if you have any kind of service-based business or rather any kind of recurring-based

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business, people, which all businesses are recurring to one degree or another.

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But if you'd like to have a more recurring-based business, then one of the things that you're

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going to track is churn, which is the percentage of customers that leave month over month

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of month.

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Right.

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Right.

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Okay.

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So one of the problems with tracking churn or trying to manage towards decreasing churn

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is let's say you have your meeting and you say, guys, we need to decrease churn, right.

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And they say, we sure do.

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And we say, okay, guys, we're going to set the goal of reducing churn by 20% this month.

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All right.

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Or by the end of the court.

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And they say, sounds good, Alex.

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That's a great idea because if we reduce our churn, we're going to make our customers

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worth more and will not have to acquire as many.

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Or if we acquire the same amount, we'll be a bigger business than we were last year just

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if we do the same thing.

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And I think, wow, guys, that is a great idea.

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What is the problem with this thinking?

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Anyone guess?

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We set out the goal to decrease our churn by 20%.

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Fair goal.

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It's smart, right.

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It's specific.

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It's measurable.

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It's realistic.

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It's actionable.

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It's timely.

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We say, by next quarter, right.

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It's got all those things, right?

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Wrong.

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The problem is that it is a lagging indicator.

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All right.

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I'll tell you a quick story about this and hopefully it'll drive it home.

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So I had, and this was fucking crazy, is it like I still do this stuff and my own business

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and I still mess this up.

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So I'm leaving this to you because I can tell you when we accomplish our goals, it's

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because we are focused on leading indicators rather than ladding indicators.

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I'll tell you a quick story about this.

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So for two quarters, the goal was to increase the number of outbound sales that we had

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in one of our companies.

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So there's cold call team.

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They're trying to increase the number of outbound sales.

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So we have inbound and outbound, right.

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So the outbound team says their goal, they say we want to do this and we say, and I said,

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no guys, we need to make this a leading indicator.

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So what are we going to do to do this?

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And so the manager said we need to hire five more outbound reps.

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And I was like, that is a wonderful leading indicator because if we hire five more outbound

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reps, then we're going to make more dials, which is going to make more calls, which is

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going to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right.

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Right.

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Guess what happened?

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It didn't happen, right.

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But why?

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Because that is a leading indicator, right?

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I mean, if we want to get more outbound sales and we say in order to do that, we're going

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to need more calls in order to get more calls, we're going to need more BDRs, right?

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And so we need to hire five more BDRs, done, right?

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Anyone guess?

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Most of the nation real quick, if you are a business owner that has a big, old business

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and wants to get to a much bigger business, going to $50, $100,000 plus, we would love

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to talk to you.

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And if you like that, we would like to hear more about it.

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Go to acquisition.com and you can plan anywhere on the page and talk to one of our team

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and see if we can help you get there.

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When you pick the leading indicator,

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it can't just be the thing that happens before.

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It has to be the thing that happens first.

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I'm going to say it again, when you're picking your leading indicator, when you're managing

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your team, when you're trying to accomplish goals, and this works with your managing

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just yourself or your managing an entire organization, you can pick the worst thing to do

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is pick the outcome, because nothing you're going to do is going to go towards the

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outcome, either your hitter, your donut has nothing to do with any, any, any, every day living,

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right?

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So then you go one step earlier and you say, I'm going to do a leading indicator.

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So I'm going to make, we must make a hundred calls a day in order to hit this goal.

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Sure.

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But what was the true leading indicator?

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This is what the actual leading indicator was, was the number of outbound requests and

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the number of ads we were going to run to attract the BDRs.

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And how many interviews needed to be had in order to create the job positions that would

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then make the calls.

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And for two quarters, we set the goal of doubling that team and it did not happen.

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We set the same fucking goal.

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Both quarters drove me nuts.

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And only on the third quarter, because I, I whiffed twice as CEO here, right?

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Whiffed twice, I'd not really see you, but owner, right?

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I whiffed two times.

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And the third time, when I heard the same freaking goal again, I was like, we're not making

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this mistake again, all right?

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So lagging versus leading, lagging is what most people do is when they put the objective

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metric and that silly, because no one can accomplish a metric, they can accomplish tasks,

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they can accomplish actions.

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And then the question is, which actions are the primary action that lead to the remainder

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of the actions?

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So it's like saying, I want the sixth domino of the 20 dominoes to be the thing that

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we need to focus on, when in reality, it must be the first, which is what is the thing

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that must first occur in order for the remainder of these things to then happen, right?

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And so this might be one of the most important things that happens in a company is figuring

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out and determining what is the true first action, primary action that is required to accomplish

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what we would ultimately like, which is increase in X, right?

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If we want to decrease churn, it's not necessarily, let's have more conversations.

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It might be, we have to run more ads to get more coaches to have those conversations,

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right?

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And so the thing is, is we have to continue to pull the thread until you identify what

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the actual weak link is in the chain of dominoes.

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And here's the crazy outcome to this story, all right?

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This is the nuts part.

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So for two quarters, we had the same goal and nothing happened.

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Zero, zilch, team was the same size, and we were still hiring people, right?

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We had normal amount of employee churn, but the amount of churn versus the amount of

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people that are getting interviewed evened out when the team stayed the same exact size.

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But you know what actually happened next?

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When we actually identified what the primary action was with the true leading indicator

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of success for this metric was?

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We had the entire team sat and trained up in 21 days.

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It was a quarter long goal and took us three weeks, weak, weak ish to make the hires,

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two weeks to train them up.

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How nuts is that?

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But it was because we were focused on the wrong thing.

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We were focused on lagging indicators or not the primary indicator.

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We were leading, but not the first thing that must occur that then creates the subsequent

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actions.

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And so right now, if you've had a goal, and this is the reason I'm making this video,

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if you have had a goal and you've written it quarter over quarter month over month,

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you've written the same number and you have not accomplished it, and you are not making

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progress towards it.

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Then it is likely because the goal that you are setting is one outcome based in two,

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the actions that you believe are required to accomplish that goal are not the primary

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action, but simply preceding actions that are still not the source of the creation of

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the outcome.

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And as soon as you can identify that, and that is the job of the owner, that is the job

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of the CEO, is to have the discernment to say, no, no, no, that's not the thing.

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This is the thing.

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And this is what we're going to focus on.

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And if we do that, then all of the rest of these dominoes are going to get knocked

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over.

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And so that, my friends, mousy nation, there's a lot of people that are broke.

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I don't want you to be one of them.

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That's why I make this channel, keeping awesome lots of love, and I'll see you guys in

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the next video.

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Bye.