Jim Schleckser is the CEO of The CEO Project, a firm that specializes in mentoring fast-growth CEOs to help them take their companies to new heights.
With a successful technology business valued at $1.6 billion under his belt, Jim brings invaluable experience to the table. He has worked in 41 countries, regularly shares his insights on entrepreneurial growth issues through his column on Inc.com, and has spent over 10,000 hours speaking with and interviewing CEOs.
Jim is also a published author, with two best-selling books, “Great CEOs are Lazy” and “Professional Drinking,” to his credit.
Outside of his professional pursuits, Jim is an engineer, an avid soccer player, and a certified sommelier. He recently achieved the remarkable feat of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.
This episode promises to challenge your perspective on business and offer a fresh, game-changing approach toward growth and efficacy, drawing on Jim’s wealth of experience and expertise.
Why you have to check out today’s episode
- Discover the key traits that separate exceptional CEOs from the worst and the three critical areas to find kinks in your business system and how to fix it
- Find out how to improve your business from hiring the right talent and delegating effectively, to fostering a positive company culture.
- Learn how highly-effective CEOs approach their business both from the ins and outs
“The caliber of the people you have around yourself that you attract is critical as a CEO.”– Jim Schleckser
Topics Covered:
00:00 About the two books that Jim has written
01:13 What distinguishes exceptional CEOs from the worst
03:49 Jim discloses the three critical areas to find the kinks in your system
06:47 All about hiring: what does Jim prioritize in hiring talents and team members
07:49 How to attract high-caliber people to your team
08:25 What does Jim have to say about working with “Brilliant jerks”
10:12 Jim shares the intellectual framework on which businesses should operate
11:50 The secret sauce of Breakthrough thinking
13:48 Two ways to Fixing the kink in your system
16:57 Jim’s insight on the classic constraint faced by CEOs who can’t let go of their functional
roles
19:19 Expert advice for CEOs seeking to thrive in the international business field
23:22 The key strategy to identifying and hiring top performers
25:39 Everything you need to know about delegation and how to get comfortable with it.
Key Takeaways
“Think about that CEO working 80 hours a week. I can almost automatically tell you they have a poor-quality team around them.”
“The caliber of the people you have around yourself that you attract is critical as a CEO”
“Companies don’t grow, people do. So if the business is growing and the people are not, the business is not going to grow”
“Learning as a competency is one of the prime importance both for the CEO and their team because they have to demonstrate this; they have to model being a learner.”
“You can’t take your own lens and stick to it. You have to be willing to say, okay, if that’s the way the ball game is played here, we’re going to play differently.”
“As a leader, you have an obligation to the team to move out low performers. Everybody’s looking at you to do that.”
“We define our business by our organization’s culture—not only by what we do but also what we are not willing to tolerate.”
“It’s when there are 32 shades of gray and you’ve gotta pick the best shade of gray for your particular organization, that’s when we and your CEO peer group come into play.”
People/Resources Mentioned
- Great CEOs are Lazy: https://www.amazon.com/Great-CEOs-Are-Lazy-Schleckser/dp/0988309912
- Professional Drinking: A Spirited Guide to Wine, Cocktails and Confident Business Entertaining: https://www.amazon.com/Professional-Drinking-Cocktails-Confident-Entertaining-ebook/dp/B08J1K89RZ/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
- The CEO Project: CEO Peer Groups for high-performing CEOs: https://theceoproject.com/
Connect with Jim Schleckser
- Website: https://theceoproject.com/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IncCEOproject
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/243491/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/incceoproject?lang=en
- Email: jimschleckser@IncCEOProject.com
Full Interview Transcript
(Note: This transcript was created with an AI transcription service. Please forgive any transcription or grammatical errors. We probably sounded better in real life.)
Jim Schleckser
At the senior level, the CEO has to be involved in the talent acquisition process; it’s too important to delegate to HR. I think people come because of the leader. They see your vision, they meet you, you’re an attractive force for quality people, they want to spend time, they want to be with you and be on your team.
Welcome to the Excellent International Leadership podcast. Your host today works with the world’s leading experts on international leadership, helping them find purpose and implement their vision. She’s a master certified coach and facilitates a mastermind for CEOs of international companies. She is the author of three books and works with Nestle, Novartis, and even the United Nations. She is especially good at helping executives fast track to the C-suite. Welcome Dr. Katrina Burrus.
Katrina Burrus
Jim Schleckser wrote a book called Great CEOs are Lazy. That’s a dichotomy! Usually, you think work more equals accomplish more. So, let’s find out how to work less and make more.
Great Ceos Are Lazy: What Distinguishes Exceptional Ceos From the Worst, Based on Jim’s Experiences on Interviewing CEO Clients
Katrina Burrus
Welcome to the Excellent International Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Katrina Burrus, and today, we have Jim Schleckser. Okay, tell me the American way now.
Jim Schleckser
Schleckser.
Katrina Burrus
Schleckser.
Jim Schleckser
Your way is perfect. Thank you. Nice to be here, Katrina.
Katrina Burrus
Jim has written two books—and I’m going to mention both—but we’re going to talk about one. He wrote a book that is very good if you want to know about wines and all, called Professional Drinking. Now, you might think Professional Drinking is about alcoholics, but no; it’s knowledge about the different wines and how to evaluate them. And then we’re going to talk about Great CEOs are Lazy. So Jim, welcome, and tell us, what is the premise of your book?
Jim Schleckser
Well, which one? We can talk about the wine book; that’s a lot of fun. We can talk about that, or you want to talk about the CEO book?
Katrina Burrus
No, the CEO book.
Jim Schleckser
The CEO book, okay. In The CEO Project, what we do is we work with really high performing CEOs, and as part of identifying potential clients, we interview potential clients. I’ve interviewed over time—subsequent to that book—I’ve continued, I’m probably at 2,500 or 3,000 CEOs that I’ve interviewed with a view towards ‘would they fit our particular model?’ But in that, I found that it was really easy to identify the good CEOs from the bad CEOs.
The good CEOs work 50-60 hours a week, they focus their time on a particular issue, and then they kind of move to another issue, and they minimize all of the other junk that we end up with on our table as a CEO. The bad CEOs were working 70-80 more hours a week, and they were doing what I call peanut butter-ing their time across their obligations. 10% for this, 10% for that, 10% for this, so they were sort of touching all the bases but they never had a let’s call it a concentration of force on one particular issue that would make a massive, transformative difference in the business.
So, the two questions were how many hours a week you work in? Is it 50 or is it 80? I didn’t tell them the right answer, but generally, 50-60 is the right answer. And where do you spend your time? If they go, “Right now, I’m all in on sales compensation and I’m fixing that because it’s all messed up. I should have that fixed in a month. And then I think I need to rotate my time to inventory management; I’ve got an issue there and I’m going to spend 30-40% of my time there.” And so, they are very conscious about where they spend their time, on things that matter.
And why I say lazy—it was kind of a funny title, frankly.
Katrina Burrus
Yes, it is.
Jim Schleckser
But if you think about it, they go, “Look, once I’ve spent all the time I can on the highest value item I can, more work isn’t particularly valuable. So I don’t need to spend 80 hours; I can spend 50 hours, I can spend all the time I need to on my most important item, I can handle my other obligations, and I’m going to go home and see my family or do whatever turns me on; go play golf.” So, you don’t have to work 80 hours a week.
Now, I will say, as CEOs, the real answer on when are we working is when we’re awake, and probably some of the time while we’re sleeping and dreaming, on top of that.
Katrina Burrus
Yes.
Jim Schleckser
We’re always thinking about it, right?
Katrina Burrus
Yeah.
Jim Schleckser
But this is more like kind of in the office focused on things.
Katrina Burrus
Right, but the goals, the time with the family is also whitespace to be more creative. And if you are on the verge of burning out, your ideas are not as good.
Jim Schleckser
Absolutely.
Eli Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints: Finding the Kink/Point of Constraint in Your Business Model
Katrina Burrus
But tell us, what are some of the challenges you found? The most frequent challenges that CEOs have.
Jim Schleckser
We think then, we’ve identified three or maybe four areas where the point of constraint is and the whole model is based on a systems theory from a guy named Eli Goldratt. He was an Israeli physicist and he later developed the Theory of Constraints. The idea is any system that you can name, there is a point of constraint in it that limits the capacity of the entire system to perform. A simple example is a garden hose. I’m trying to get water out into the garden hose, then get a kink in the hose; the kink is now controlling how much water comes out at the end of the hose. So, I can work anywhere on that hose but the only productive work that I can do is to find the kink and open it up.
The kink in a business, because it’s a system, too, it’s more complex in the garden hose, but there’s a kink in everybody’s business. Everybody who’s listening, there’s a kink that limits your ability to get the revenue or get the profit or to serve a certain number of clients or anything you can name. So, the job of the CEO really is to find the kink and open it up; that’s it.
Now, that sounds simple. But the kink tends to lie in one of three areas. It’s either the business model—so what we do for whom, the margin we make, the capital intensity of the business, how much recurring revenue we have. I can talk about what’s good or bad in that dynamic, but fundamentally, a great business model trumps everything else you could possibly do. One thing they spend time on is improving their business model. If there was one thing inside the business model to improve, it’s what percentage of recurring revenue you have.
If you’ve got zero and you get to 10, that’s better. If you can get it up to 80 or 90, that’s a phenomenal business. And when you look at valuations in the market, companies like Software as a Service (SaaS) businesses that have very high rates of recurring revenue get incredibly high valuations because they’re strong, predictable, profitable businesses.
We Want Learners: The Importance of a Team’s Caliber and Why Jim Prioritizes This When Hiring Talents/Team Members
Jim Schleckser
The next is talent. Think about that CEO working 80 hours a week; I can almost automatically tell you, they have a poor-quality team around them, because if they’ve got a good quality team around them, they wouldn’t be working 80 hours a week because they could delegate, their people can handle it. The caliber of the people you have around yourself, that you attract around yourself, is really critical as a CEO. And a lot of times, we run into CEOs, particularly in early-stage companies, “It’s my roommate from college” or “my neighbor that I hired”, “I really haven’t gone and found really great people to surround myself with,” “They maybe look different than I do, they think different, they got different backgrounds.” So, the caliber of that team is really important. And usually, when we work with somebody, we have to help them transform their team a little bit, because with the CEOs we worked with, phenomenal phrase—companies don’t grow, people do. So, if the people are growing, the business is growing; the people are not, the business is not going to grow.
Katrina Burrus
So, in the evaluation of who you’re going hire or who is on your team is not only their competence and that they’re good and that you can delegate, but how much and how strong their learning capacity is.
Jim Schleckser
I actually have said, I’ve read an article about this—if I had to pick one thing, I want a good athlete with strong learning capability. I’ll give you an example. My undergraduate degree was in chemical engineering. I did chemical engineering for a grand total of 18 months. So, the whole rest of my career, I did other stuff that I had to go learn—I learned electrical engineering and software programming. And if I couldn’t learn, I don’t know what would have happened to me.
And so, I think learning as a competency is one of the primary—both for the CEO because they have to demonstrate this, they have to model being a learner, but also when I hire my team, I want learners. Because look, the game is going to change. In three years, it’s going to be different than it was today. If you can’t learn, you’re losing; you got a giant problem.
And by the way, part of that’s attracting A performers, what we just talked about. But the other side of the job is you need to move out and see performers. Just like a sports team, who you put on the field is important, but if somebody is underperforming, your job is also to change that player out. And that’s not a very pleasant part of our job, and we want to do it humanely and appropriately, but you really—as a leader—have an obligation to the team to move out low performers, and everybody’s looking at you to do that. They say “Look, if you don’t move out a low performer and we know they are, you’re not doing your job as a CEO.”
A Cultural Decision: Deciding on Whether to Keep or to Fire the Brilliant Jerks in Your Organization
Katrina Burrus
Okay Jim, you know that I work with brilliant jerks.
Jim Schleckser
Yep!
Katrina Burrus
They are brilliant at their job but no one really wants to work with them. What do you say about that?
Jim Schleckser
Fire them.
Katrina Burrus
Okay?
Jim Schleckser
I’ll tell you why. Think about a four-box grid—makes the numbers and buys into the culture, if you will, and team player. Makes the number, team player, we want 100; got people like that. Doesn’t make the numbers, not a team player, get rid of all those people. People that want to be here, they buy the culture, they just can’t quite get the performance, we coach, develop, we work with those brilliant people. The really hard one is that one—they make the numbers, they’re brilliant, and they don’t buy in; they’re just horrible team members. For me, the decision to keep those people in the organization is a cultural decision. We define our business and our organization’s culture by what we do but also what we are not willing to tolerate. If we’re willing to tolerate toxic behavior, we’re going to sacrifice team behavior. And so, if you want team behavior, you’ve got to get rid of the toxic people, even if they’re brilliant. And Netflix, just to pick on them, they have an absolute ironclad rule that they fire brilliant jerks; don’t care how smart you are, you can’t work in a team.
Katrina Burrus
Because everything comes from the team, at least.
Jim Schleckser
Totally. Now, hopefully, you can remove the toxicity over time through your coaching behavior, but it’s not easy. If somebody has a learned set of behaviors over 30, 40, 50 years and now I’m trying to change what has worked for the last decades of their life, it’s a heavy lift; it’s not easy.
Using the Model of the Theory of Constraints to Help Clients Elevate to Higher Levels + the Secret Sauce on Breakthrough Thinking
Katrina Burrus
So, tell us a little bit more about your model.
Jim Schleckser
Yeah.
Katrina Burrus
What model do you use when you work with clients?
Jim Schleckser
We tend to sit on the strategic side. We are looking at: where is that point of constraint? And by the way, let’s just mention the third one quickly—it’s processes and systems. That allows the scaling of the business, not connected to the number of humans in the business. I can go deep on that, but we’re not going to at the moment.
So, we spent a fair amount of time diagnosing, helping them find that point of constraint, and then helping them structure, thinking, using a CEO peer group—a mastermind group, if you will—and our thinking to help break through that point of constraint and change the performance of their business. We teach this behavior and then we coach them as we walk alongside them on their journey as they continue to sort of elevate to higher and higher levels. It’s really the model of the theory of constraints, it’s our fundamental intellectual framework for everything we do when we talk about CEOs.
Now, having said that, all of my advisors are former CEOs, we’ve all run companies at scale. So a lot of times, we’ll run into issues and go, “Hang on, I had this issue and I screwed it up. Let me tell you what not to do and what to do.” We kind of move them forward in their thinking immediately. And I always say, “Look, the black and white issues, you could read a book and get that answer. When there’s 32 shades of gray and you’ve got to pick the best shade of gray for your particular organization, that’s when we and your CEO peer group really come into play.”
Katrina Burrus
It’s like masterminds, you’re saying.
Jim Schleckser
It is, back to Napoleon Hill Masterminds. We build these advisory boards, advisory groups around a CEO, like size, like complexity, and what we find is that the issues tend to repeat more on size and complexity than any other axis that you can identify. What’s interesting is a lot of CEOs say, “Jim, I’d love to do it, but I need a bunch of people that understand the semiconductor business because it’s so incredibly complex.” And my answer usually goes, “Look, you got 5000 people in your company that understand semiconductors. You don’t need more semiconductor people. You need more people that understand business.” And here’s the real secret sauce—breakthrough thinking comes from outside your industry. Once in a great while inside your industry, but nine times out of ten, if you look at real breakthrough stuff, it came from somewhere else. Ancient Greeks did this and they connected the dots and that means I can do this in my ecommerce site, right? So, when we build these mastermind groups, they’re from all different industries; finance and manufacturing and services and healthcare. When they look at the problem, they go, “Katrina, why do you do it that way? We had that problem in my industry, and we solved it like ten years ago by doing XYZ.” And you go, “Ha! Son of a gun. I could do exactly that.” And now, you’ve got a new idea that nobody in your business has, and it’s proven because some other industry already did it.
Katrina Burrus
That’s a very good point. There was an emergency hospital that looked at the pit for the Ferrari races, the Formula 1 races, to see how they could accelerate a certain intervention. Very good point to take it from another industry and see what you can apply to your industry.
Jim Schleckser
I love that thinking.
The Player and the Learner: The Hat to Wear When Finding and Fixing the Kink/Point of Constraint in Your Business System
Katrina Burrus
Okay, that’s the model to some extent. You say learning, you say scaling your business, right?
Jim Schleckser
Yes.
Katrina Burrus
Okay, tell us more.
Jim Schleckser
When we’re in the fixing or finding the point of constraint, there are two fundamental ways to do that, and we have hats that we use to describe these various things. But going back to business model, you’re wearing the architect’s hat; I’m architecting the business, designing the business. When I’m finding people, I’m wearing the coach’s hat. When I’m doing process work, I’m wearing the engineer’s hat; looking at non value added. And what they did there was process engineering. How do we take all the non value added work out? How do we take all the time out of this intervention to try to save somebody’s life? Great process engineering work. That’s all fix the kink stuff.
But the find the kink stuff is either learner or analyst. This is working with numbers, books, reports, going and taking a class, trying to increase your knowledge to bring it back to the business, or digging deep on the analytics around your business to find the problem. This is good for your more introverted CEOs. We tend to go to “Give me the spreadsheets, give me the analysis report, I’ll read it and kind of integrate it in my brain.” Maybe the slightly more extroverted go into what we call player mode. They’ll go let’s say a call center. They’ll go, “I’m going to go be a call center person for 4 hours. I’m going to go on the phones, I’m going to answer calls from customers.” You would be amazed at the clarity that that CEO will leave that half a day with. “Okay, I know what’s wrong. Our queue times are too long. We don’t have enough people. Our supervisors aren’t doing their job. We need a different…” They’re going to have 30 ideas about how to improve the call center by going into player mode and doing the job.
The great example I use is Jack Welch, who’s tasked former CEO of GE. He used to go on sales calls. And okay, that’s kind of cool, CEO going on sales calls, and I always used to love going on sales calls with the CEO card, and he loved to get the order. I mean, order is wonderful, but it’s sort of a 1×1 use of his time. So why did he do it? And the real answer is the meta work that he did while he was in the sales process. He said what he was thinking while he was selling was, “Do I have the right people on this account? Do I have the right system to support them? Could we change the offer in a way that a customer makes the decision better? Are there more services we could offer this customer that we’re not offering them right now?” All this business model talent systems thinking while he’s in the player mode, he wants the order, but really, he’s after elevating the entire sales process and he’s going into player mode to figure it out; that’s how he did it. So, both are effective—player and learner. Find the kink.
Katrina Burrus
And you’ve adapted it to the personality of the CEO, the introverts. I mean, I’ve met clients that I’ve worked with that work only with a dashboard and don’t make any decisions without it. Very well said.
Jim Schleckser
Yeah, and I’ve found entrepreneurs that can only go out and do.
Katrina Burrus
Yes.
Jim Schleckser
They don’t want to look at analytics, they don’t want to look at dashboards; they just want to go do, and they come to a pretty good answer.
Katrina Burrus
Which is great that you adapt your process to the style of the leader.
The Ceo’s Behavior: Jim’s Insight on the Classic Constraint Faced by Ceos Who Can’t Let Go of Their Functional Roles
Katrina Burrus
So, what other elements are important in your model?
Jim Schleckser
Well, the last point of constraint is really the CEO’s behavior and how they engage in the business. This relates to their ability to move to the model we described, and generally, from a smaller or larger is get out of a functional role. Usually, a CEO was great at something that kind of got them to this level. They’re exceptional or they wouldn’t be CEO most of the time. Great salesperson, great marketer, great accountant, great engineer; whatever they were, they elevated. And what we find is at medium-sized companies, many times, they’re doing CEO and whatever that functional role that they were great at; they just can’t let it go, and it’s an ego gratification thing. “I know how to create value as a salesperson” or “I know how to create value as an engineer.” It’s really because they don’t know how to add value as a CEO. They have to get comfortable from an ego gratification point of view of how they add value as a CEO, and it looks very different to how they did it their entire career. If they get stuck in the role, meaning doing the engineering, doing the sales, doing whatever, now they don’t have a CEO in the company. We have to help them lose the role—the functional role, and move up into the CEO role. That’s a classic constraint that we have in the business as well.
Katrina Burrus
I find that they tend to revert what they did very well, especially under extreme stress so it reassures them.
Jim Schleckser
It’s funny. I’ll hear sales leaders who became CEOs. We get stress in the business. They go, “It’s a sales problem.” Well, isn’t that interesting thing?
I think the other problem is that they can’t let go of the role. Heaven help the person that follows them, because they’re going to always compare how they would have done that job to the person in the job, which means they’re never going to be successful, because by definition, they’re exceptional. I mean, they’re a nine out of ten or ten out of ten on that job. This poor son of a gal that follows them is just destined for failure, and I see it. “I tried to hire this person; they didn’t work out. They didn’t work out. They didn’t work out.” After three bad hires, do you think it’s the people or maybe it’s something else?
Katrina Burrus
Right. Could you imagine the waste of time, though, by hiring again?
Expert Advice for Ceos Seeking to Thrive in the International Business Field
Katrina Burrus
But tell us a little bit more about the CEOs that do international business. What do you think is really important for them to succeed?
Jim Schleckser
The first is just a cultural sensitivity and appreciation. I did business all over the planet and I probably made 5000 social go pass at one point or another, but I did it from a place of trying to learn and genuinely trying to understand and appreciate all the cultures and the food everywhere I was. And I think if you go in with that curiosity, that learner mentality, people give you a lot of slack. Learn a few words in the culture, understand a few cultural icons, learn a little of the history of the place you’re doing business. People really appreciate when you are trying to genuinely engage with them and work with them. That’s sort of one; if you come in from the German way’s the only way to do it, or the American way is the only way to do it, or the Chinese way is the only way to do it, you’re destined for failure. You have to adapt to the local culture and how they’re going to do business and be flexible.
I’ll give you an example. I remember negotiating a salary with a Dutch employee. We go through everything. First thing unique for an American is the time we spent on what car he was going to drive was crazy. Well, it was a big deal, but he drove the right car for his level. And then at the end he goes, “Oh, by the way, of course there’s the 13th month pay.” “13th month pay? What are you talking about?” “When I go on vacation, I’ll need a little extra money, so we normally get 13th month pay.” Now, America does not do that.
Katrina Burrus
That’s right.
Jim Schleckser
And I could have said, “Forget it. We don’t do that.” Look, that’s the culture in the Netherlands, so guy got a 13th month pay; that’s the way it is. So, you can’t take your own lens and stick to it. You have to be willing to say, “Okay, if that’s the way the ball game is played here, we’re going to play it.”
Katrina Burrus
A close tie to the HR with the legal constraints for each country that is differs, right?
Jim Schleckser
It gets very complicated; it does. Having nexus in the country, the tax issues in the country, the employment law in the country. I tell people, particularly America, we’re blessed with a 350 million person market, relatively the same language everywhere you go. It’s pretty unique in the world, really; there’s a few other markets that look like that, and wealthy, which helps. Everywhere else you go, the complication level is higher. They go, “Well, it’ll be like twice as hard to go global,” and go, no, it’s geometric. Add two or three countries, you’re now 5-6-7-8 times harder. Just to your point. All the laws, all the complexity, all the travel currency, depending on where you are, it gets very complicated.
What I have found is you’ll never make as much money internationally as you do in your home market. Your home market will almost always be your most profitable market unless you find a little special market that you can play in.
Katrina Burrus
And how do you explain that? On America, you can understand; it’s a huge, almost homogeneous market and they all speak the same language. But is there any other issue that comes into play to make it that you are more profitable?
Jim Schleckser
It’s the complexity and the lack of understanding. You just have to apply more overhead, more cost to deal with all that complexity, and it just makes it harder to make money. In many markets, the acceptable margins are thinner than maybe your home market where you got every advantage you can imagine. You speak the language, you understand the culture, you can get the best deals, you have long term relationship; all those things are in your favor. When you go to another country where they don’t know you, maybe don’t love your culture or your country, things get harder. And so, you can make money, but I’ve never made as much as in my home country.
Katrina Burrus
Interesting.
The Key Strategy in Hiring Talents/Top Performers: Involve the CEO
Katrina Burrus
So, what would you suggest about hiring talent? Because today, it’s a big issue. So, when you hire outside of your company, when you don’t know the person, any advice you would give?
Jim Schleckser
At the senior level, the CEO has to be involved in the talent acquisition process; it’s too important to delegate to HR. I think people come because of the leader. They see your vision, they meet you, you’re an attractive force for quality people, they want to spend time, they want to be with you and be on your team. So, it’s really important for the CEOs to be involved.
I think the standards of performance are very similar. Are you willing to be measured historically? Here’s a quick story. What’s the best way to hire somebody who you know is going to perform? You hire somebody who has performed in the past; it’s pretty simple. So, I can look at your background and understand your performance, and I always ask, “Okay, great. You exceeded your sales quota or whatever. How did you accomplish that?” And the reason I go for how is I want to understand culturally how they accomplish it. Will they fit into my organization or not? Because I think there’s skill and will; there’s the technical competency, and then there’s do you fit and do you want to do the job I have?
I think the last one is that expatriates are not always the best answer. I think it’s okay to have what I tend to think of your senior person needs to be a translator for your local country. If that means you’re going an American country company going into China, picking on China, you’d love to have somebody who is Chinese national, educated, and maybe lived in the US for a while then went back to China, because they now understand Western culture and Chinese culture, and they can find the middle ground that you need to find to do business in that country. So, I don’t think you want all Chinese nationals who have never been to your country, and I don’t think you want all people from your country because they don’t have a clue about China, picking on China. So, I think translators, sort of boundary spanners, are really critical at the top when you go international.
Katrina Burrus
Yeah, I agree, because they understand the mindset of both.
Jim Schleckser
That’s the secret sauce. Yeah, I agree.
70%, Not 100%: Tips in Relation to the Different Types And/or Levels of Delegation That You Can Practice
Katrina Burrus
So, we’re coming to the end of our podcast, but I have one last question. Anything that you want to say about delegation?
Jim Schleckser
Yeah. The rule we use on delegation, and I talked about those CEOs working 80 hours a week. Clearly, they have a delegation problem as well, maybe because they don’t have the talent but it might be them, like they just can’t let go because “I’m the best salesperson in the company” or “I’m the best engineer.” So, we use a rule that we call the 70% rule, and the standard is if somebody is 70% as good as you, delegate it. Most people use the standard of 100%, and remember, these CEOs are exceptional so 100% is an impossible standard to meet, most likely, particularly if they have control issues. So we say, “Look, at 70%, you delegate.” And they go, “Wow, that sounds dangerous.” I go, well, hang on. There’s subtlety here. There are levels of delegation. You think delegation is, ‘Here, Katrina, take it over, it’s all yours.’ That’s not delegation; that’s one level of delegation. The bottom, I might say, ‘Hey, Katrina, can you go check this out? Look into it, tell me what you think we should do, let’s talk about it. I’ll decide, and then you go do.’ That’s still delegation, but I saved a ton of time because you did all the investigation and you’re doing all the doing. As we move up, it might be, ‘Katrina, go investigate it. Figure out what you want to do. Make a recommendation to me. If I don’t tell you not to do it, just go ahead and do it.’ At the very highest level, it’s ‘Katrina, take over it. Just take care. Don’t even tell me what you did.’ People think that’s what delegation is. No, we don’t get there until you’ve got the experience, I’ve got the trust, we know you can handle it, then we go to that level.
The other thing to think about is risk when I think about delegation. Let’s say you’re the captain of a boat in the ocean and a torpedo hits the boat above the waterline. You go, “That’s not good, but we’ve got time; we can fix it.” If the torpedo hits below the waterline, the water is now coming into the ship. You go giant problem; ship could go to the bottom. So, when I think about delegation, I go is it an above the waterline issue? Meaning if they screw it up, it’s going to hurt, but it won’t kill me? Or is it a below the waterline issue that if they screw it up, we’re going to the bottom of the ocean? I’m much more careful about delegating below the waterline issues. In other words, I might start at that very, very low level of delegation and stay there for a while. Something that’s above the waterline, I might delegate more aggressively and more rapidly.
So, 70%. Consider the risk. And delegation—there are levels of delegation. That model has really helped people say, “I’m way more comfortable delegating, though, that I don’t just hand it off and it goes away and I never hear what happens.” They’re much more comfortable with that idea, with that model in mind.
Katrina Burrus
Yes, and I like your metaphor. It’s very explicit of what the degree of risk taking when you delegate.
Well, it’s the end of our podcast. Thank you very much, Jim. I would like to show the book, Great CEOs are Lazy. Where can they get a hold of it?
Jim Schleckser
You can get it on Amazon, which is where people buy books. Just go on Amazon. It’s available on audio; you’ll hear my dulcet tones on the audiobook, on Kindle, and in Hardcover on Amazon.
Katrina Burrus
And don’t forget Professional Drinking because that is a lot of fun.
Jim Schleckser
That’s a fun book, yeah. Pick them both up.
Katrina Burrus
Thank you very much.
Jim Schleckser
Absolutely, Katrina.
