Tight management summary. Are you a good employer? This book is turpentine for your employees' asses! After reading this book, you

Tough management. Make people work for results Dan Kennedy

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Title: Hard management. Make people work for results

About the book “Hard Management. Make people work for results" Dan Kennedy

Today the situation is such that many people want to start their own business in order to receive an income that will allow them to live a normal life. In addition, modern people have become more self-confident, they know what they want to achieve in this life, everyone has a dream and a clear idea of how to achieve it. This is why many people create their own companies, but may not know how to manage it.

Managing a company is quite a complex and labor-intensive task. You don’t just need to fill out a bunch of papers, find a room, and then pay all the necessary bills. It is important to be able to manage those who work for you, because this is what your income will depend on.

The book “Hard Management. Make people work for results.” Dana Kennedy, as many have noted, is very tough. The author has extensive life experience and he is not used to giving concessions to others, which is what he advises readers of his work to do. Of course, you need to be humane and understanding, but not with everyone.

The book is intended rather for such a target audience as directors, HR managers, managers - those people whose responsibilities include personnel management.

Any manager will tell you how difficult it is to find a truly worthy employee. Not everyone wants to work and not everyone behaves honestly and conscientiously. If a person drags you down, fails to cope with his responsibilities and does not even strive for this, sets him up, is late, he must be fired immediately, without pity or regret.

Dan Kennedy shares his experience and gives clear advice that will help you take your company to the top of success. Perhaps the advice is somewhat radical, and some may even think it is too harsh, but at the same time they really work.

If you don’t have a team, no one can find a common language, there is no specific work schedule, that is, everyone comes whenever he pleases, besides, there are even individuals who set you up at meetings, cannot fulfill their duties fully, really? will such a company grow? Hardly. The leader must have a strong character and not be afraid to point out to employees their mistakes, and say goodbye to the most irresponsible ones. Thanks to this, you will be able to assemble a really good team, and you will be able to have a trusting relationship with each employee. Indulgences can only be made to special employees who will never cheat and who will do their job in any case. But all this comes with experience and the necessary knowledge, which Dan Kennedy shares.

The book “Hard Management. Make people work for results” contains only useful information, without unnecessary fluff and unnecessary sentimentality. This publication will help you take a different look at your work and dreams, which many simply can destroy. You will learn what leads to success, how to conduct an interview, and what parameters to use to select employees.

The book “Hard Management. Make people work for results” should definitely be a must have for every manager and those in leadership positions. Perhaps, to some extent, it will help people who are looking for work. Dan Kennedy talks about which employees they don't like. By not allowing yourself to be like this, you will be able to find a good job in the company you dreamed of, and you will definitely be valued and respected. Therefore, this publication will be useful to a very wide range of readers.

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Dan Kennedy's book “Hard Management. Make people work for results."

Dan Kennedy is an entrepreneur, “a highly sought-after and outrageously well-paid direct marketing consultant and copywriter, author and presenter of group trainings for entrepreneurs.” Author of more than 10 business books.

It is easy to read and will definitely be useful to business owners and managers.

Main ideas of the book:

1. Employees are mercenaries. They are not your friends, they are with you for money:

The strategy of “being the boss everyone likes” is flawed. Such a leader will not be able to work effectively.
An effective manager is one who sets work rules aimed at maximizing profits and strictly controls their implementation.
Leadership is an inflated value. A company with well-established processes that can operate without a leader is valuable.

2. When hiring employees:

The employee must be profitable and pay for himself many times over. Count everything. Usually forgotten when calculating the cost of an error, the cost of your time and the cost of absence and replacement of an employee.
Hire Slowly, Fire Fast
Reward the best, get rid of the worst.
Organize your work and control everything:
You must have a work program = a described method of solving problems.
Best the enemy of the good. What is valuable is a “good enough” result today; an ideal result the day after tomorrow is often of no use to anyone
The workplace should be just a place to work. Organize the process and supervise employees at work. Covert surveillance, test purchases, inspections
Broken windows = destroyed business. You can read about the “broken windows theory” on Wikipedia. For a business, “broken windows” (a dirty counter, a rude employee, peeling paint...) are unacceptable.
Never, not for a single minute, tolerate anything or anyone who gives you a bad reputation.
90% of all people are capable of stealing. Monitor and recalculate.
Everything needs to be measured. What cannot be measured cannot be managed.
Avoid “simulating fruitful activity”:
- Decide what you intend to DO (not “do”)
- Set aside time for the task
- Plan your day in advance down to the minute,
- Eliminate all interference and do not be distracted by anything
Don't let them steal your time. “Problem Report” for employees.
The best meeting that never happened

3. Build sales. Marketing is the master, the rest are servants.

4. Manage by metrics, by numbers

taken from selfmngmt.ru

If you didn’t fall asleep reading the notes, then it’s interesting to read it in magazine format. Taken from Forbes

The serial entrepreneur, coach and author of scandalous business books mercilessly criticizes newfangled management trends and calls on managers to return to old-fashioned management methods. His advice is a cold shower against the backdrop of increasingly popular leftist ideas

I saw a story on the Discovery Channel about a guy who went into the woods to live with bears. He believed that bears have intelligence and soul. He projected human qualities onto them, just as people project them onto domestic cats and dogs. Managers make the same mistake when they project desirable characteristics onto their employees.

Illustrations provided by Alpina Publisher

One day, for no apparent reason, the bears took and ate that guy. The people filming the documentary were horrified, moaning and wringing their hands. Why, oh why did the bears do this to him? Because they are bears. And wild bears treat stupid, idiotic and unintelligent people as food. Another thing is unclear: why did the bears wait so long?

Few business owners and top managers are ready to admit that employer and employee are inevitably at odds. You antagonize your employees because their interests and yours conflict and you constantly prevent them from pursuing their goals. To defend your interests, you need to get the interests of workers out of the way, replacing them with your own or destroying them. In short, you are like a nail in their ass for them.

I don’t consider employees bad because they have 13, 30, or 300 worries in their heads that are more important, interesting and entertaining for them than the one that worries me. I'm not going to blame people for having their own priorities. Demanding the opposite from them is simply stupid.

Is the business you run owned by your employees? No, it has an owner, and it makes no sense to expect an owner’s approach from the staff, no matter how much some management gurus rave about such an idea. She's irrational. It's like making the zebras at Disney Park wonder how many tickets have been sold today. All a zebra needs is to have plenty of food and not be eaten by predators. No matter how many team building trainings you conduct, your people's number one priority list will still be finding food, number two - safety from other people's teeth, number three - finding a warm place to lie down, and only far below, in At the end of the list is ticket sales.

Employees are not your friends. You can, and to a certain extent should, be friendly to them and encourage reciprocity in them. Of course, you should remember their and their children's birthdays, know when their anniversaries are, and truly care about their health and well-being. However, remember that the cake they present to you for your birthday is only partly a sign of friendly feelings, but mainly an obligation and deflection. These people are just working for you.

For several years I owned a share in a small chain of beauty salons. The largest of the salons, the one where a batch of new employees arrived weekly for a two-week internship, was located in the same building as our head office, across the hall from my office. And when my doors were open in the morning, I heard our unceremonious manager named Shelby yelling: “Give me a number and get out!”

On the wall in Shelby's office hung a large sheet of paper with a numbered list of excuses for being late to work. “#14: My dog swallowed my car keys. No. 37: I have my period. #41: I took the wrong bus...” Shelby claimed that the list was a huge time saver.

It amused me then. Shelby seemed like a joke to me, the situation itself seemed like an anecdote, and this whole business seemed like fun. But this anecdote was also the essence of something not funny at all: the acceptance of unacceptable behavior.

My friend and colleague Zig Ziglar likes to remember the parable of how you can boil a live frog. Since the frog is a great jumper, if you throw it into a pot of boiling water, it will instantly jump out. But if you put it in a pot of water at room temperature, it will stay there: frogs love water. And if you slowly add fire, the frog will sit quietly, not noticing that the water is getting hotter until it becomes uncooked, without resorting to the God-given ability to jump to save itself.

Likewise, many managers are simmered by their own employees. The behavior of subordinates gets worse over time. Little by little, one black sheep infects others. Initially isolated delays become more frequent and then become the rule. At first, a sloppy appearance is an accident, then it is not uncommon, then it becomes commonplace. Failure to complete work is rare, sometimes, usually. And now your business has been imperceptibly brewed.

If you turn a blind eye to the infrequent instances of unacceptable behavior, then sooner or later you will have to accept unacceptable behavior as the only possible behavior.

Willy Loman is the main character in Arthur Miller's play Death of a Salesman. A traveling salesman dies because he desperately wants to please everyone, and everything else, including sales, is secondary to him. It is so common among unsuccessful sales representatives that it has been given the name “Willy Loman syndrome.”

Not only salespeople can become infected with this disease. Willy Loman would have been even worse suited as a manager than as a salesman. A leader who curries favor with his subordinates puts himself in an extremely disadvantageous and very dangerous position and will definitely not work effectively.

There is no evidence that a leader who is liked by subordinates produces greater productivity or brings more profit to the company. Vice versa. So in sports, unimportant players often rally around an unsuccessful coach they like, trying to prevent him from being fired.

The love of employees not only does not add success to the boss, but can take it away. So it’s normal and even correct to cross the “staff please” item off the agenda. There are more important questions.

Most business owners or top managers are not tough. They give people a chance to improve, then another and another, they tolerate incompetence and insubordination, they dodge as best they can so as not to fire them - even the worst employees imaginable. Owners often try too hard to be a “good boss” who is loved by employees, rather than an effective boss who sets rules for maximizing profits and strictly enforces them. I've seen tough ex-Marines who were pretty ruthless in other aspects of their business go soft when it came to managing the people they paid. Many suddenly begin to be afraid of something: “If I demand that she do this, she will leave her job” or lose their will: “My people simply won’t do this.”

Although, in general, I am a consultant and trainer mainly in marketing, every now and then I have to help such drag queen owners grow a couple of eggs. I think most owners should move in the ruthless direction.

Of course, I do not advocate intentionally creating inconvenience for employees. But for some reason, employees have gotten it into their heads that making them happy is your responsibility. They forget that you only pay for the work and the profit generated. And other businesses make people happy: from Disneyland to brothels in Nevada. And they all charge for their services.

The fundamental management question is: What kind of employees do you need? Whether I ask it personally to a client or to a group of listeners, the response I usually receive is a list of vague positive characteristics. “We need productive workers. Those who are passionate about the cause. Faithful. Ambitious. Intelligent. To be able to get along with people. To look at things correctly..."

It’s like answering a question about goals: “I want to be happy.” Being happy is not a goal, but only an idea. There is only one rational answer to the fundamental question: “I need PROFITABLE employees.”

Contrary to many silly theories, the only reasonable reason to hire workers is to make a profit: by hiring people, you can earn more than you could on your own. The only purpose of hiring: the employee must bring you income many times more than the amount that he himself will cost you. Alas, many entrepreneurs hire employees for some completely irrational reasons! Selfishness, low self-esteem and the need for others' approval, socialization and friends. For some guys, having more staff than your neighbor is an indicator of success. And some people lack confidence in their own decisions and need a lot of people around. Such a businessman pays to have people agree with his decisions. Some entrepreneurs simply cannot work alone - they need to fill the office with people. So I recommend getting a dog instead.

The only type of worker that needs to be hired is a profitable worker. In today's economy, you need to give the lion's share of your payroll to the valuable and talented people in key positions in your company and reward truly excellent work. To do this, you will have to become a Scrooge for those who are engaged in menial labor and those who do not shine with outstanding results. Give them the minimum established by law in order to be able to pay well above the market average, provide motivation and compensation higher than anywhere else in the market to valuable employees who bring you tangible profits.

“I believe in the beneficence of dictatorship, provided that the dictator is me.”

Richard Branson

Essentially, a worker is a rented resource. Rent must be paid monthly. Like a tractor or a machine. If you rent a hay baler for $300 a month, and it keeps breaking down, produces different sized bales, is slow, and only produces $400 worth of hay for the month, what should you do? Bring it back. If a machine costs you $300, then it should produce $3,000 worth of products. After all, you are in business for one reason only: to earn as much as possible. That’s why your hay press should be good – oh so good! - pay off. If not, look for another one. Otherwise, you will have to completely leave the hay business, return all the presses and look for a new occupation. Whatever the outcome of the press, it is more convenient to rent rather than buy.

Like this: every press, read - every employee, should pay for itself many times over.

How much does it cost? Few employers know how to correctly calculate the cost of an employee. There are usually a few very important numbers that get overlooked. This is a mistake that every auditor, MBA, and other certified economist I have ever seen makes. It is repeated in every management book I have ever read.

Here's how they calculate it: wages + taxes + bonuses + overhead.

Let's say you pay Mary $12 an hour. Taxes, social insurance, the price of a computer or other tools add another 30%. We already receive $15.6. Add in healthcare, a pension plan, a Christmas bonus, etc. - that's another dollar an hour. Then there are some important expenses that are not always taken into account. Employees use up soap and toilet paper, take away office supplies, use heating and air conditioning, and take up space in the office. If you pay $2,000 a month in rent, utilities and supplies and you have four employees, that works out to $500 each. Divide by 160 hours of work and get $3.12 per hour. And now Mary costs you $19.72 per hour. But we are just beginning to count.

And now the REAL price. The first big number that is forgotten is the cost of error. Take the dying American automakers. There are a lot of problems there, and one of them is a tightly knit, highly paid, grossly overpriced crowd of workers who are unable or unwilling to do the job right. As a result, companies have to resort to massive vehicle recalls. Hundreds of thousands of cars need to be rebuilt. And these extra expenses are not compensated from the salaries of incompetent employees. The company wipes itself and pays. I translate: employees screw up, and all possible losses are borne entirely by the employer. And they will screw up, no doubt about it. Once I had to put in order the affairs of a single plant, the main conveyor of which resembled God's workshop of snowflakes: among the finished products, no two would be alike.

Workers can release and send rejects to the market; send goods to other destinations; packaged incorrectly - so that it becomes unusable during transportation; spoil and waste raw materials and supplies; irritate and scare away customers; do not pick up the phone even on the eighth ring (despite the instructions telling you to be on time before the third!), allowing the potential client to give up and give up; etc. ad infinitum.

And most importantly: employees not only can, but will definitely do it. And all these actions have a fixed price, and it should be included in the employee’s cost in advance, because you will not be able to collect from him after the fact. This price, of course, depends on the business, the employee and the employer.

I don’t know the universal formula for calculating it. Now, for the sake of example, let’s modestly assume that Mary is a pretty decent worker and screws up, squanders, and simply steals only $400 a week. Divide by 40 hours - and now we’ve added $10 per hour to the cost of the employee. Which means only $29.72.

The next big number, which the guys in armbands don’t see point-blank, is the price of YOUR time. Employees inevitably absorb it. In large companies they know how to keep an eye on this and calculate costs, because professional nannies work there for a small salary (HR department or personnel service) and there are several tiers of managers who look after each other. In small and medium businesses, however, these tiers are very compressed, if at all - no one is going to pay $50,000 or so a year for HR work. This means that your employees will take up your time. As a hired staff, you have three responsibilities: to motivate, to manage and to control. You need to hire and fire, train, train, clean up. Prevent a stabbing (I had this happen with two programmers), listen to stories of family breakdowns, and do much more. Again, we have no formula for calculating time spent. But let's put an average of two hours per week per person.

How much is your time worth when you spend it in the most profitable way? For simplicity's sake, let's say you're comfortably making $100,000 a year, divide by about 2,000 hours of work and get $50 an hour. If your employee takes two hours a week from you, then divide 100 by 40 hours, add the $2.5 received to her cost - and now her total cost is $32.22 per hour.

“The secret of the Japanese is that they do not report on their work, but work”

Peter Drucker

The last big figure is the cost of employee absence and replacement. It always amuses me how in Washington, D.C., during winter weather, it is recommended that only those who are absolutely necessary should start their car and go to work. Shouldn’t only those who are absolutely needed come to work every day? Why keep unnecessary employees? This observation says a lot about the stupidity that tightly shrouds the city of Washington, but it also says a lot about the realities of business. Any small entrepreneur will tell you that if a business can run quietly for three weeks while Mary is on family leave, then Mary is not needed at all. Those who are needed are replaced during the period of absence. And to do this, you have to cleverly redistribute the responsibilities of other employees or sacrifice your precious time to do Mary’s work, which will now cost you twice or three times as much as usual. Will Mary disappear this year? Of course, for at least 20 days, including vacations, days off and sick leave. In addition, as
Every few years she will quit or you will fire her, and then you will have to bear the costs of advertising, hiring and training the person to replace her. Well, let's do the math: 20 days of your time multiplied by the cost of your time ($50 per hour), we get $400 per day and $8,000 per year. Scattering it back, we have an additional $4 per hour to the previously accrued $32.22, and as a result, the price your employee will cost you will reach $36.22 per hour.

You had no idea you were actually paying Mary that much, did you? That's what we're talking about. I bet you would demand more from Mary and manage her differently if you knew. Now you know.

And finally, ROI, i.e. return on investment. So Mary will cost you about $5,795 per month, or $69,000 per year. What kind of return on this investment would you be happy with? If comparable to bank interest on deposits, then the task is not difficult. Mary only needs to cover her living expenses and earn a measly $2,700 net profit. But then, isn’t it easier for the owner to sell the business and put all the money in a bank deposit? You won’t need to see either Mary or any of the other employees... You probably tolerate your employees and even sometimes drop into the office not for such a meager margin.

But then for what? Two to one, three to one, four to one? If four to one, then Mary should produce $276,000 in profit. Does she give that much?

We come to the second most important management decision: how to calculate and evaluate the profit from Mary? Most entrepreneurs can say that Mary is needed, they can explain what she does, but almost no one knows how much money she brings in. Learn to count.

Well, for the most attentive, there is a nice bonus about strict management.

Dan Kennedy

Tough management. Make people work for results

Project Manager I. Trushina

Corrector E. Chudinova

Computer layout A. Abramov

Art Director S. Timonov

Illustrator O. Nazarov

Cover design DesignDepot

All rights reserved. No part of the electronic version of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including posting on the Internet or corporate networks, for private or public use without the written permission of the copyright owner.

After reading this book, you:

You will understand how to get maximum profit from your business and how to start paying for work, and not for working hours;

Find out which number a business should fear like fire;

You will be able to find the magic point and achieve harmony in your relationships with clients.

Preface

Something new - let's talk directly

I have to start with a confession: I only have one employee, and she sits in an office thousands of miles away that I never visit, which we are both quite happy with. But this happy circumstance in no way discredits my book. Don’t worry, I’m not an empty-headed professor, an idiot who has picked up the axioms of personal growth, I’m not a retired team-building coach, or a theorist at all. I very seasoned veteran. I had as many as 48 employees, then over the years there were 12, then there were 5, then 3 and finally 1. I managed people in manufacturing, retail, direct sales and publishing. My parents, my brothers, my wife, my ex-wife, but mostly strangers worked for me. Masters of business and ordinary hard workers on minimum wage. You will understand when you read this book that I am real, that I have been where you are, that I am speaking from painful experience and not speaking from an ivory tower.

My clients have hundreds of thousands of employees. I advise retail chains of up to 1,500 stores, companies with huge armies of sales representatives, but mostly companies with a staff of 10 to 100 people, of various specialties: clerks, sales people, service workers, contract managers. And I wrote this book, burying myself head over heels in the problems of clients, owners of 34 different businesses with annual income of approximately a million to 30 million dollars. In addition, I deal with a good million small and medium-sized business owners every year through my network of consultants and trainers. And all owners have a common source of headaches, disappointments, suffering, dissatisfaction and grief - hired employees. Much of this can be attributed to unreasonable expectations and a lack of understanding of the real nature of labor relations. Some of the fault is none other than the owner himself, who forgot about the Three Principles of employee management - Leadership, Direction, Control. Other troubles are simply inevitable for everyone who is forced to hire.

I always tell clients: the smaller the staff, the better; it’s ideal to have no employees at all, if possible. I feel much happier without them, and you will too. Moreover, most enterprises hire much more than necessary. But if you still need people, then they will bring you new Care. You will have to constantly ensure that your workers do not steal from you, to force them to comply with your demands, to give what they deserve to those who fulfill them, and to get rid of those who do not comply. My book is written about these concerns. For many, it will be like a bucket of cold water in the face, like an electric shock breaking through the numbness, like a loud ringing of an alarm clock. It is no coincidence that they call me the Professor of Harsh Reality. For some of you, this book will be a belated signal to finally start running your business as your own. It will help many to make more profit, which is the main goal of the business.

Name: Tough management. Make people work for results

Book release date: 2008

Pages average time to read: 296 pages/15 hours

Dan Kennedy. Businessman, multimillionaire, advisor to hundreds of private companies and speaker. Performs in front of 250,000 people annually.
Website: www.dankennedy.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GKICInsidersCircle/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/gkic

The main idea: The smaller the staff, the better. It is ideal to have no employees at all, if possible. Most businesses hire far more than necessary.
But if you still need people, they will bring you new care. You will have to constantly ensure that your employees do not steal from you. Make them fulfill your demands, reward those who fulfill them, and get rid of those who don't.

Theses and ideas:
Employers and employees are on different sides of the “barricades”, and they have different interests. An employee has thousands of thoughts in his head: from children’s problems to relationships between colleagues. The owner has one problem: “How much will we earn today?” When the employee thinks, “It’s finally Friday!”, the employer remarks, “I have to work one more day this week.” And yes, make no mistake, employees hate you because of your income level and status.

When you understand that an employee is not a friend or a family member, you will be able to run your business in a completely different way.

Maintain discipline regularly. If one employee begins to be late for work or perform their duties poorly, then over time others will begin to do the same.

The most important goal for which a business is created is profit. It is the amount of income that matters, not the number of employees. Some hire people to show off how many subordinates they have, some increase the prestige of the company in this way. But your task is to reduce the cost of hiring labor to a minimum.

There is an opinion among hired employees that they work for business owners. But statistics show that owners actually work 60-70 hours a week. And hired workers are only 40. Therefore, if you want to get more, work better and harder.

You can't provide for your family by sweeping floors or cleaning toilets. This kind of work will not allow you to show your capabilities. This is just a step to the next job, and then to another and another. Constantly improve, study, read.

Sign up for courses to gain new knowledge and skills. Change your employer to one that offers opportunities for growth. Or you can open your own small business. But don't sit in a low-paying job expecting someone to give you a raise.

If a business can safely operate while an employee is on vacation or sick leave, then maybe it shouldn’t hire him at all?

The worst number in business is "one". There should always be a safety net. For example, if a copywriter's computer breaks down, he must have another one to complete the work on time. Also, you should not become complacent as long as you have one supplier, business or customer acquisition channel.

The manager must remember the rule “hire slowly, fire quickly.” Most employers do the opposite.

We are constantly looking for the best employees, dealers, and clients. It will pay off handsomely.

Leadership is overrated. A more reliable company is one with a well-functioning system rather than one with bright leaders. There is a law in business: you won't get far if you only need exceptional people.

Employees who use the Internet during work hours for their own issues are thieves. After all, they steal time and reduce the employer’s profits. Therefore, only those employees who need it for work should have access to the Internet.

Dan Kennedy states, “You will vehemently deny it, but your company is currently where employees steal.” According to him, sellers in supermarkets steal many times more than buyers do. To combat theft, take inventory more often and fire the thief.

You should not allow small problems in business: cobwebs in the corners of the store, employees being late for work, dirt in the office. However, don't become a perfectionist as this can hinder your productivity. Set optimal quality standards and stick to them.

Train your employees if you want them to bring in more money. For example, a dentist, in addition to removing tartar or teeth whitening, can recommend general dentists and surgeons. And waiters can recommend that visitors join a customer club or fill out a form to collect contacts.

Those who perform better and bring in more income should receive higher salaries.

Best quotes from the book:

Everyone sits in meetings and discussions, quality roundtables and vision deepening seminars instead of working. Managers are diligently trying to introduce all sorts of nonsense like creating a pleasant atmosphere, group discussions, etc. instead of leading.