Do you ever “sleep nervous,” awakening in the middle of the night with important things you forgot to do, or need to be sure and remember to do the next day? Do you ever come to the end of the week feeling like you’ve worked hard, but haven’t really accomplished much? If you do, here’s a technique I use, that might be helpful to you.

Every Sunday night I sit down with a legal pad and spend a few minutes thinking about what I must accomplish in the next week for it to be successful. Once I’ve identified the week’s achievements, I figure out which one’s are the most important for Monday and write them under the MONDAY heading. Those are the things I do on Monday. The whole process takes less than 30 minutes.

On Tuesday I’ll take the next most important things and put them under the TUESDAY heading.

I think you see where this is headed.

I always work from the same pads. Some items flow from day to day, or week to week. But that’s OK. Something that got bumped last week because of an unavoidable delay, can get picked back up in the week to come. So these lists become a diary of accomplishments—-completed and remaining to be completed. They help to focus my week, and my day. By writing them down on Sunday night I sleep well because my mind can “let them go” knowing the items are “captured” and I’ll deal with them in the daylight.

Recently I’ve taken to emailing my key team members each morning with the day of the week and the word “priorities” in the subject line. On Monday they’ll get “Monday’s Priorities” and a quick note of what I am working on, what I am concerned about, what I need help with, etc. It helps them to stay on task with me, and helps all of us to be “pulling together in the same direction.”

These tools aren’t magic. They are just tools that increase my effectiveness. I used them daily. If they help you, great!

What kinds of tools do you use to be more effective? Would you be willing to share those with me?

“Picky. Picky. Picky. It’s such a little thing.” So goes the lament of many who’ve the displeasure of working on my team lately.

We’ve built a business that is driven by systems and dependent on systems. Running the systems is our heartbeat and our lifeblood. Without our systems—properly executed—-we twist in the wind and suffer the whims of the economy, the client, the resident, the investors, the bankers, the inspectors, the market, ad nauseam……

Yesterday, the franchisor in one of our companies, HomeVestors  (You might be familiar with our big yellow billboards that say WeBuyUglyHouses.com) gathered all their franchisees on the telephone for a conference call to announce the award winners for the first half of the fiscal year. The two most significant awards go to the franchise that bought the most houses and sold the most houses—-makes sense, since that’s our main business, don’t ya think?

On this call were franchisees from Dallas, Houston, Tucson, Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Kansas City, St. Louis, Boston, and dozens of other cities across America. When the winners were announced the #1 HomeBuying team in America was……….(drum roll please)………..Springfield Property Management, Springfield, Missouri (insert thunderous applause here).

In the next category, the #1 Home selling team in America was………………..(drum roll please)…………..Springfield Property Management, Springfield, Missouri (what? I can’t hear you over the roar of applause………).

Congratulations to Brian Loughrige (the #1 Buyer on the #1 Home Buying team of the #1 Home Buying company in America) and everybody back home in Springfield who are delivering awesome results! I honor, award, and applaud you. Thank you for your great work. (By the way, Brian has bought five houses in the last four days…….I probably shouldn’t mention that. I don’t want to jinx him.)

Where was I? Oh yes. I remember. Systems. Systems make our team successful. We have a system for everything. A system for how we buy a house, a system for how we finance it, a system for closing the transaction, a system for qualifying residents, a system for renting, a system for selling houses, a system for how we pay our bills, a system for changing the toilet paper (gotcha…..still reading aren’t you?)…….the point is: it’s all about running the system. That’s what makes our company work.

When anyone violates a system it’s called an “exception.” And the problem with exceptions is they require “management.” Someone has to look at the situation, gather the data, ask questions, gather more data, consider the facts, seek the opinion of others, make a decision, figure out how to implement the decision and “do it” outside the system (because we effectively stopped the assembly line and now we’re not making widgets anymore, we are custom building W-I-D-G-E-T-S)………it’s just a mess. So the rule to avoid the mess is: we operate everything within the system. We never  deviate from the system.

Yeah. Right.

In the past week we’ve had a veritable plethora (I just feel good using big words like that) of system violations. None of them were huge. In fact, if you looked at any system violation in isolation you’d say “That’s no big deal” and you’d be right. But when you take a little exception here, and a little exception there, and multiple it across 14 employees, 50 subcontractors, 160 properties, nearly 500 residents, 250 rental inquiries a month, 80 buy inquiries a month, 10 bank accounts, hundreds of loans for tens of millions of dollars, plus any number of extras in the cast it quickly  becomes a monster that the leadership of our company cannot possibly manage. The ONLY WAY OF DEFEATING THE MONSTER is to never let him out of the cage. Everything runs accord to a system. Period. (We’re even developing a system for helping people who can’t seem to work within the system to be released from their obligation to our system in order to find their bliss elsewhere. We’re THAT COMMITTED to our systems.)

I am baffled that people don’t understand simple systems…..round peg in round hole / square peg in square hole……..and aren’t willing to simply run the simple system, but…..that appears to be the state of team development EVEN ON THE #1 TEAM IN AMERICA. Alas, I’ve found a metaphor that might be helpful.

Across the sky there are highways. You can’t see them, but airplanes headed from point A to point B do so according to prescribed directions, speeds, and altitudes all of which are coordinated by the Federal Aviation Administration and Air Traffic Control. These comprise a system.

Imagine two planes are coming in for a landing. ATC gives instruction to airplane A to “Make your heading one-eight-zero. Maintain 2000.” Meaning head due South at an altitude of 2000 feet. Meanwhile Airplane B is told to “Make your heading one-eight-zero. Climb to 2500.” Meaning head due South but climb to an altitude of 2500 feet.

At some point these two airplanes are going to pass within 500 feet of one another. That’s fine. It’s a system designed to provide plenty of margin for safety as these planes move into their landing pattern. All will be well so long as everybody follows the system. But what if  pilot A says “Awe, it’s no big deal. Two thousand, twenty-two-hundred. It’s virtually the same thing.” He violates the system just a little and flies at 2200. Meanwhile the pilot of plane B says “Twenty-five-hundred? Twenty-three-hundred. They are virtually the same.” And she violates the system just a little and flies at 2300 feet. Suddenly the safety margin distance between planes has been reduced by 80% and the risk factor has increased many fold. There is now virtually no margin for error between the two planes. The slightest gust of wind and there are going to be funerals.

That’s what happens when people don’t take systems seriously.

In our company there haven’t been any wrecks because of system violations. But I’ll assure you that in the past few days the Senior Air Traffic Controllers in our company have been working overtime, screaming on the microphone “Pull up! Go Around! Divert!” in order to avoid danger to our passengers. Our hair is grayer. We’re balder. Our blood pressure is higher. Our nerves are frazzled. All because we’ve been fixing problems—-little things in and of themselves—-created by people who think “Ah. It’s no big deal.”

It’s a big deal friend. The systems are there to protect the integrity of our work product, to insure that our margin per unit (+30% recently) remains high—creating bonus opportunity for our team, to provide sanity for all of us, and to insure that we all operate safely, avoid crashes, and all have a job tomorrow. The odds that we will continue to succeed and achieve increase dramatically when we just do the simple thing: Run The System!

If you are outside our team reading this: I hope it helps you to have insight about how life operates within a successful company. If you are on the team in Springfield: Thanks again for your good work. I love you. I appreciate you. I am grateful for you. I regularly pray for you individually and ask God to bless you. I’m pretty sure that part of that blessing comes from your being diligent in the little things. Please run the system.

In our American rush to success we entrepreneurs err critically in trying to grow our businesses when in fact we shouldn’t grow our business at all; we should grow our people and let them grow the business.

This is difficult for many of us to comprehend because our entrepreneurial careers were often started as a one-man show where if you didn’t grow the business today you were not going to eat tomorrow. I get that. But as soon as you begin building a team it is important to shift a portion of your mental and time resources toward planting the seeds of multi-generational growth in your followers, rather than continuing to just plant your own personal crop for harvest.

I’m not saying you should send them to a conference or workshop. That can be fine, or not. I’m saying you need to begin teaching them how to replace you. You do want to be replaced, don’t you? You do want to spend less time doing things you don’t want to do and more time doing the things you want to do, don’t you? Then, you’ve got to replace yourself with someone who can do all those other things that you aren’t so good at or don’t enjoy.

Twenty five years into my career, I’m just now grasping this concept at a level where it is meaningful and makes a difference for me. (I’m a slow learner.) It’s always been a nice idea that sounded good in books and from business guru’s, but I didn’t have a clue what it really meant that I should do. Now I do, so I want to share that hoping you can accelerate your achievement and increase your difference-making sooner.

When I speak of growing people who are on your team, I’m talking first about being sure they understand their job responsibilities. This involves the implementation of SYSTEMS. A system is simply “the process by which do something in the same way every time.” Because we entrepreneurs are creative by nature we tend not to follow systems. We’re easily bored and so we may do the same task a dozen different ways to keep ourselves entertained. However, when handing responsibility to team members we mustn’t burden them with an obligation to be creative—which often leads to inconsistency in results. Instead we must say “This is exactly how I want this done every time. Follow this procedure and you will not fail.”

W. Edwards Deming taught that failure was almost always a result of a break down in a system, rather than a people problem. If you have a system and perform the same activity in the same way every time, you’ll be able to predictably produce consistent results. It is that resulting consistency from team members that is required for you to replace yourself.

Teaching people to run your system is the key to getting consistent predictable results. You do have a system, don’t you? Of course you do. You just may not have realized it and written it down. So begin thinking “systemically” and you’ll likely capture little systems and ways that you always do things in a certain way that you never realized. That is an AH HA moment and you are now a guru!

Teaching people to run a system may be the first step in their career with you, but in order to grow them you must also begin to teach them how to think. “Who am I to teach them how to think” you may ask? It’s simple, you are the teacher. You are the better thinker, aren’t you? If you aren’t then you’ve already found someone better than you to whom you might want to consider handing over the reins and getting out of the way. That’s the goal: for your thinking to become obsolete because you have replaced yourself with people who are better than you. Meanwhile, you know things they don’t, and they’ll never grow in their capability until you teach them what you know and HOW YOU THINK.

Often when we run up against an unusual situation or challenge I’ll say to a member of my team “Here’s how I want you to think about this.” If they are “dull-eyed” or too busy talking to listen, learn, and develop thinking skill it then tells me that they are ultimately not promotable.

It is a lot easier to bark out orders than it is to teach thinking. But if you are ever going to be able to step aside, let others lead, and develop unstoppable momentum you’ve got to help them develop critical thinking skill. Doing so first involves helping them see how you think, what process your brain goes through, and then how and why you achieve a conclusion. Then, it’s time to put their own brains to work by asking questions about their thinking and decision making—typically hard questions—and critiquing their answers and thought processes. If you’ve got a team member who can stand up to and shine under that scrutiny, then you may just have a winner!

How do you teach them to think?

I’ll tell you one of the methods we use. Our company has six core values. These aren’t just platitudes developed by executives in some group-hug-in-the-woods retreat experience. These are the core, killer, non-negotiables; inviolable principles around which we make all of our decisions. (if you’d like a copy of our core values, email me.)

Each month our training meeting (you do have regularly scheduled training meeting where you teach your team, don’t you?) is built around a particular core value. For example, in January and July we train on Core Value #1: It’s About the People Who Depend on Me. In February and August we’ll train on Core Value #2.

“Don’t you run out of training material if you keep talking about those same things over and over?” No. Not so far. It kind of reminds me of the preacher who preached the same sermon Sunday after Sunday. When his parishioners complained he said to them “When you prove to me that you ‘get it’ and start doing what I am teaching you in that sermon, then I’ll move on to the next one.” A good philosophy!

Fortunately, my team gets it. By going back to the same topics over and over and interacting over them together yet again, we mine more deeply each time for the nuggets and kernels of truth that change the way we think corporately and individually. It’s those thought shifts that grow people, and its growing people that will grow our business.

Tomorrow I’ll be teaching my team on Core Value #4 Initiative: Be Solutions-Oriented. I’m going to start by asking the question “Why do we humans tend to complain rather than to help?” I’m going into training not with answers, but mostly with questions. My team will come up with answers (solutions) and we’ll all be better-off for it.

Being an entrepreneur in these challenging times isn’t for sissies. It’s a lot easier to just take a pay check from somebody else who is taking all the risk. But entrepreneurs were born to do this. We’d pay for the privilege. Part of the opportunity is to develop people.

If we’ll develop them, grow them, and teach them to think better they’ll build our businesses for us and in the process they’ll build themselves. Their families, their communities, and their lives will be much richer for it. In the end, they’ll gather around our coffin and say “I am better, because I knew him.” That’s about the best we could ask for.