Transcript

Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
You’re listening to the Sigrun Show, Episode number 404. In this episode, I talk to Kris Plachy about how to design a team that helps your business reach seven or eight figures.
Welcome to the Sigrun Show. I’m your host Sigrun, creator of SOMBA, the MBA program for online entrepreneurs. With each episode, I’ll share with you inspiring case studies and interviews to help you achieve your dreams and turn your cash into profits. Thank you for spending with me today.
Building an online business take time. I share with you proven strategies to help you get there faster. You’ll also learn how to master your mindset, up-level your marketing and succeed with masterminds. Today, I speak with Kris Plachy, thought leader and entrepreneurial management. Kris has designed the how-to of team leadership through her Lead Your Team Roadmap, and is known for building teams that not only win, but stick together. She has 25 years of experience leading, coaching and managing leaders. In this episode, we talk about how to design a team that helps your building reach seven or eight figures.
Before we dive in, I would like to tell you about an information call on November 11, where I will be talking about how to work with me in 2021. Whether it’s your goal to achieve six figures, or go for the seven figures, be sure to join me for this call on November 11. You will find out exactly how you can work with me, plus you will get access to special offers. Go to the show notes at sigrun.com/404, where you can find the link to sign up for the information call, plus all the links to Kris Plachy.
I am so excited to be here with Kris Plachy and talk about how to design a team that can help you take your business to seven and eight figures. Kris, I’m so excited and I’m truly excited because I’ve recently been listening to you on another podcast and I’m saying, “She comes at the perfect time to my show because I need your help.”
Kris Plachy:
Perfect, I’m so glad to be here, yay.
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
So, I am still curious how you have become an expert in terms of helping women, like myself, build up their teams and grow their teams and make sure they can go through this transition of solo entrepreneur to a proper company. Was this your plan from the very beginning or did you kind of land in this place?
Kris Plachy:
I wish I could say it was but I will say that if we had met 20 years ago we probably could have guessed it, right? My development and my growth in leadership and management expertise was very organic, right? I led and managed my own teams, I worked in a startup organization, so I wasn’t an entrepreneur per se, but it was very intrapreneurial, we didn’t have any rules, we made it all up as we went and we had exponential growth. I really cut my teeth on leadership and figuring out how to get results through others just because I had to. But while I was doing that, I was running alongside, I developed an interest in coaching, honestly in 1993. I’d never heard of it, nobody knew what it was, there was this guy who did a class at the local college like, be a professional coach, that sounds cool. So I did that one evening and I got hooked. And so all through the rest of my life, I just kept studying, coaching, and of course it became a much more… Now today, it’s a much more understood and it’s a profession that so many people do.
So I was kind of running alongside with both. So the natural sort of way that I took this is I became a certified coach and I learned so many cool tools just as a woman who wanted to coach people, but I was managing people. So I’m like, “Oh these go together,” so I started to develop my own practices with the managers who reported to me, and that got attention because it was working. I ended up running a whole performance coaching team inside this enterprise where we coached and developed about 4 000 leaders. And then along that way, I was invited to be the content developer and facilitator for our annual women’s leadership program that was run by our COO. And so that’s when I really started to get the bug around helping women who were leaders. And I started doing retreats in Hawaii, women’s leadership retreats and then once I started my business about eight years ago, I coached a ton of people but then I kept finding that entrepreneurs would just find me.
And because I was teaching very traditional management development, but as you know right, I mean I know you were a CEO, as you mentioned, prior to having your business, but most entrepreneurs have no management training at all. And it’s just not fair, because I see so many people really struggle and maybe even give up because this part is hard, it is hard, and so I just fell in love with female entrepreneurs. I worked with a ton of corporate clients, they were all lovely, but the decision making, it took forever to get things done. Working with a woman who runs her own business, like tomorrow, you implement and that is my wheelhouse. I love action, I love people who take action, and so I’m just all in. I love working with women who run their own companies and helping you make better, bigger, more enjoyable experiences for you and everybody else.
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
So in essence, it’s like you’re in some way self taught in terms of training leaders how to manage people.
Kris Plachy:
Yeah, I have a Master’s in organizational management. I did do a lot of that.
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
Ah, yeah, you miss that part. So not self-taught but you have your own methods now, after training so many people for so many years, what is different about the way you approach training than somebody else?
Kris Plachy:
I can only tell you what people have told me. And I think that the thing I hear more consistently than anything is that I make things that feel and seem very complicated, simple. I don’t think that managing people is hard. I mean, there’s the human part that makes it hard. The reason that’s worse for some people than others is that we just don’t have the the system, we don’t have a management system so we’re just relying on our own judgment and our own opinion, we don’t really know what we’re doing, right? So I take what feels very complex and I help my clients synthesize that into simplicity. And I’m also a coach so I’ve been a teacher, a facilitator. I’ve been an executive and I am a coach.
And so leading and managing people is a very, I believe, intuitive, and I just wrote an article for LinkedIn that I think will go out today, I think it’s a very feminine quality. I want women to take leadership back, I want them to own the word, and really possess a style of leading that I believe is more aligned to who we are as women.I think there’s a lot of lessons in the world, but it’s a very male dominated field, leadership training and development, and I think we can do better. That’s my belief, I think women are better leaders. Right now, on the world stage we have some evidence for that.
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
Yeah, we have a female Prime Minister who’s doing a great job during his current situation so definitely, yeah, very good women in charge. Bt there is something holding women back when it comes also to leadership that managing people, hiring and, let’s not talk about firing, seems to be somehow harder, can it be, for women. Are we too nice?
Kris Plachy:
Yeah, well I want to say that are we too nice or do women tend to lack the courage to not people please, to make people unhappy, there is some counter intuitiveness to being a nurturing kind person and then firing somebody from their livelihood, right? It is sort of this juxtaposition that we have to adjust to. So yes, women get caught up in the emotions sometimes of the relationship and they forget about the relationship they have with their business and the commitment they made to the business. And so what I like to do is always remind my clients, you built this business for a reason, you did not build this business for that person to have a job, that’s not why this business exists. Now, we can let people go with love and grace, I say it all the time. And in fact, I don’t think you let someone go until you can feel love and grace. That this should be in a process you follow that feels, by the time we get to the end of it, it feels like we did this the best we could.
But you are the custodian for the success of your business, who is supporting other people and supporting whoever your customer or clients are. And so, we’ve got to make sure that we’re really clear that we don’t hire employees to employ them, we hire employees to deliver results. And that’s, at the end of the day, what I always remind my clients, to me that’s very clear. know the decision could be hard and the conversation could be harder and I teach my clients how to have difficult conversations, because most of us have never learned how to do that. But you can do it. And nobody ever tells me, “Oh I wish I hadn’t fired that person.” Nobody says it. What they say instead was, “I can’t believe how much has changed since they left.” And I actually did a podcast on this, you’re only one person away from magic in your company usually.
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
Yeah, I love that. So I am currently going through a big transition so the timing interviewing you could not be better, and luckily you have agreed to go there. I am designing my eight figure business. I want to be there in 2023 because then it’s the 10th year of my business. I have this clear picture in my head that this is doable, my business is currently at like three million this year, I think. So 10 million in 2023 seems very doable because it’s more about scaling up then. All the systems will be in place but now it’s about scaling up. So I am also then designing the team that needs to get me there. But the best person to ask is of course you. How does someone go through this transition? What are the steps? I think I’m a perfect example and I think many of my clients, also those who are maybe approaching the million, maybe they are still at 500,000 but they feel like now is the time to design the business I want to have so that I actually get there.
Kris Plachy:
Well, there’s a lot of, I would say sort of proverbially buckets to look into, right, there’s a lot of various, but there’s a few that are critical. And the first thing is, something that I alluded to sort of before we got started, which is what you’re doing, which is you’ve defined the game that you want to play, you’ve defined the landscape that you’re going to create in the world, right? Do you have a clear vision? My vision is to prove the power of one thriving woman? Everybody knows it who works for me, I know it, it’s written everywhere, it is the defining anchor for all of the people that I bring into my company so they share that vision.
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
My mission is to accelerate gender equality through female entrepreneurship. And everyone in my company, all my clients know it, my community knows it, people who are not yet my clients know it too.
Kris Plachy:
I have goosebumps. I love it. I love an amazing vision because now it’s like, “Oh, that’s so fun,” right, that’s so fun. And that’s how we first start with the design process because we have to find people who are equally excited about that, right? We can’t just hire people who want, not in a smaller heart centered business, and that’s what most women’s businesses are, right? And you know that, you’ve been preaching to the choir. So that matters in the design. If you have people on the team that just want a job, that’s not gonna work, right? So that’s number one. Then we look at, okay, so if this is the game I’m going to play and this is the objective, what are the players I need? Not the people, not individuals that you already know, you have to look at this like you would like an org chart. So if this is what the objective is then what structure is going to make that happen? And then I can go find players. And the roles have to be defined, absent of other people. So it’s not that I’m building a role for you, which is very common in smaller businesses, right? Like, but I love them so we’ll make it work, we’ll figure it out. Sometimes that works, I don’t want to say that doesn’t always work, but a lot of times.
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
No, it doesn’t work.
Kris Plachy:
And what happens too is, and I’m sure you’ve experienced this, right, as your business has evolved, you’ve evolved, your business needs have change, and so sometimes the people that you’ve started with, may not necessarily be compatible with what the business needs anymore. So we have to do a hard look like that. But I like to help my clients look at this very objectively and not by who’s on the team right now. And then we can go through the process of defining the skills we need, the experiences we want, and writing those job descriptions, which you mentioned that you’re doing, right, which is tediously horrible.
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
Yeah, I know, I’m not excited about it but I know it’s needed and I think I need to do myself.
Kris Plachy:
You need one too. Do you have a job description?
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
I just do everything.
Kris Plachy:
No. That’s a no and that needs to go on your list. So yeah, we need you to have a job description because everybody needs to know what you do, including you, and what you don’t.
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
Yeah, now we are going about it this way, as I just explained to you before we hit record, and it was so funny I started this process before we even met, that I’m asking everyone to track their time so that we actually have clear, down to the little nitty-gritty detail, what everyone does because even if you have a job description that could include so much, so everyone is writing it down, I’m writing it down myself. What do I do if I’m suddenly become a project manager of some project and actually I shouldn’t be. It’s on the list that I’m currently doing that. So my hope is to figure out what everyone is doing through this, everyone’s tracking their time and writing on what they’re doing. But I know that you also mentioned values. What role do they play? Do they come into the job description? Or where does that part fit if you are attracting the right players?
Kris Plachy:
Yeah, so values are critical. So when we look at players, we want to look at their skill set, right? Can they produce? Because every role, right, we want production, we want some sort of result. But then it’s also how they do it that matters too, right? And values are the now the compass for that, and I like to ask my clients to think about what are the top three values that you believe determine the best suited employees for your business? So we use values to hire and fire. And the easiest way to do this is to pick your very bestest person on your team, either now or somebody you don’t have now but you used to have. Why are they the bestest ever, right? What is it about them? And look at what the shared values are that you have with that person. You can do this also the opposite, who has been the worst employee you’ve ever had and why? And look at where the conflicts are, because sometimes we don’t know our values until we rub up against them, right, until they’re kind of in contrast to someone. So having your values clearly expressed and defined helps you in hiring but also helps in firing.
Now, where does that fit? I help my clients create a team book, the first page is your vision, then we do your values, then we do a manifesto. And your values are really about setting the table for people, you’re gonna like it here if this is important to you also. And I believe you should have your values as a part of performance reviews and I think you should do quarterly kind of touches, like assessments. I also think we should be doing a lot more feedback and coaching sessions than people do. That’s part of why people’s work gets so far away from us, is we’re not really connecting. We’re talking but we’re not really doing that coaching feedback loop, which is critical. And as an extension of my values, right, obviously that’s important to me. So your values are essential and I do teach my clients this five-step management process and that’s the second step is really clarifying what matters to you, it’s essential when you’re designing a team.
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
So I think a lot of people have values but they’re kind of like, oh integrity, responsibility, blah, blah, blah. But you should be thinking it from the point of view of, this will determine who I want to hire. And if those values are broken that would also be a reason to get rid of someone. So it’s it’s not really the values you just think about are your general values.
Kris Plachy:
No, it’s really like core values in your work. I think that they are true about you, right, so one of my core values is authenticity and I think you would find that in every part of my life, but it also is very true in the people I work with. There has to be, and I pick up on it very quickly if somebody’s disingenuous, it’s not gonna fly in my space. So thought leadership is something else for me and what thought leadership is to me is that you take the time to think, you solve problems, you spearhead them, you’re not a dumper of problems right, I’ve had those people in my life before. So yeah, I agree there’s that list of values, which frankly, I used to use when I worked in corporate and that’s part of why I feel like people have a bad taste in their mouth when it comes to values. To me, it’s a much more, I think a very inspiring exercise to really investigate this because your values, they’re influencing your decisions anyway. So you might as well get really clear about what they are and tell the truth, right?
I have a client whose top value is grow or die, right? You can tell right away what it would be like to work in her business. Other people’s value, wealth. Okay, good to know, right, I want you to tell me, right, if you want me to drive money into this business and that’s the top value, I need to know that. That’s all part of the exercise of…
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
I have responsiveness. Because I cannot work with people that are not responsive. And I have felt the frustration that someone might be great on my team but the response was not there, I wasn’t feeling that back and forth. And I’m like, “You can’t be on my team.”
Kris Plachy:
Yeah, and just clarity is so critical for you to be able then to say that to someone, right? And you can hold people accountable once you’ve communicated it. So if you say that responsiveness is a priority value in this business and I haven’t heard from you in 24 hours…
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
That’s a problem.
Kris Plachy:
Or you didn’t respond, that’s a problem and if it continues that’s a deal breaker. And you got to be able to tell people stuff like that.
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
We talked about the job descriptions, but what if someone has never run a seven or eight figure business before, which is probably the case with 99% of those people who are finally getting there, who are the players on the team? How would they know? Do they look at somebody else’s business? Do they hire someone like yourself? How do they know who needs to be on the team for that bigger game they want to play?
Kris Plachy:
So the answer to your question, I think, is a little bit of everything you said. What I find with most of my clients is, and this is I’m sure true for you right, what would you say is your functional or technical area of expertise? What are you best at?
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
Oh, I’m a fantastic coach.
Kris Plachy:
So your expertise is coaching, right? So it’s usually the case that all female entrepreneurs, they started with a shingle, right? We started as a coach, hire me, it’s like a freelance gig, right? Then it grows. So I have other clients who are artists or they are… I have a seafood, she’s a seafood shop, she’s a fishmonger, she knows how to slice fish like nobody, right? That’s their area of expertise marketing, et cetera. And so you know that part of your business intimately. But we know that there are key elements that grow a business and I usually like to recommend when a client needs accelerator work, they work with someone like you. They work in a mastermind that will come in and teach them the elements that drive revenue growth. And that also helps clients understand the support they need. But each business that I help the founder who… each business that has a founder that I help, I said that sentence wrong, they each have a nuance, right? So I have one client who has a membership and they teach art. Well, she needs more producers of content than maybe somebody else who has a coaching membership, needs more coaches to scale.
I help them think that through and sometimes they’ll ask me, “Is there somebody who does this?” They have a thing in their head like, “Yeah, I’m sure there is. We just have to find them, right?” And so I think it’s a very personal discovery process. I do think it helps to look around and see what people do. Sometimes, I tell my clients just go look at Indeed and look at job postings in marketing and see what kind of things people put in the world, you might get inspired. But moreso, it’s you start to feel the tug of, “Oh my gosh, if I have to make another landing page,” or if I have to write… whatever it is, isn’t there somebody who does this that I don’t have to do this anymore? And that’s how we can then connect that to that scalability like. “Oh but if I did have somebody do that, what could I be doing instead?”
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
The last hire I did, which was in some ways a big hire, was getting a copywriter on the team because I used to write all emails. And we would go into a launch and that’s like 30 emails and, even though we were using a lot of emails from previous launches, it felt exhausting. The last launch we did was the first one where I didn’t have to write a single email, and suddenly I was floating on a cloud and feeling like, “Oh this is so cool.”
Kris Plachy:
Like magic.
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
It’s like magic. And you said, it’s just one hire away and things had had completely shifted how they felt like for me. But not just me, I actually noticed that the rest of the team felt lighter too because not everyone is waiting on me to write that email that goes out tomorrow. So yeah, I do think there are still some structures, like in business, you have marketing and sales, operations and…
Kris Plachy:
Finance.
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
Finance. And maybe that falls… yeah, finance is separate actually from operations. So I think when you have not run a business with those functions, you kind of like, “Do I need all these people? And can people wear multiple hats? And what does the eight figure business, which I’m aiming for, really need? And I think you may or may not know, you just have to maybe assume that ultimately you will have a marketing director and ultimately you will have a sales director?
Kris Plachy:
Yeah, it’s a great question. I coach women who have 35 million businesses and have 10 employees, and I coach women who have 10 million dollar businesses have 60 employees. The nature of the business is what defines the support that the business needs. Does every business typically have certain elements? Yes. Does every business need a sales director? No. Especially if you do all your sales online through launches, you probably need a launch manager, you don’t necessarily need somebody to oversee sales unless, right? But your point is a really good one in that, it’s funny that I threw finance in there because that’s the one nobody thinks about. And it’s one of my favorite questions, just as an aside, to ask new clients is let’s talk about how you manage your money. And most women, once they hit to about a million, they have a bookkeeper, they have somebody who does the books, right? They don’t have a finance partner, they don’t have somebody who’s helping them forecast, budget, plan.
I look two three months ahead with my CFO, we have a dashboard and we can see what we’re projecting out. So many entrepreneurs don’t do that, they’re like how much did I make last month, right? Or today, right? And that’s if they know how much money they made, so many people, women especially, don’t talk about money. So they need to talk about money. So yes, we need to talk about… And that’s part of what I fared out with my clients is, where are their blind spots? You, I’m sure, are aware of this in the space that you’re in, right, there’s so much attention on marketing and sales and revenue and there’s so little attention on managing, planning, forecasting, that people tend to think, “Who do I need to hire to do my Facebook ads, to do my launches, to do my social media, and they aren’t thinking about who do I hire to help me put this whole thing together to help me manage my money, that kind of work. So it’s a great point.
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
Yeah, that’s very true. And I guess because I used to work on turnarounds and very much in the numbers myself, this hasn’t felt like an issue. But I absolutely agree, when it comes to a certain point, that I know I want a CFO because I can do the budget and that’s fun, I’ll do it and I’m enjoying the numbers crunching. But if I really am honest about my time, it’s maybe not my best used time, I could be doing something else.
Kris Plachy:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I do think every one of my clients likes to keep a part of their business right, whether it’s content, “Well, I love the content,” or “I love the marketing,” and we do negotiations around whether that’s a good investment or not. And for some clients it’s like, No, I do the books, I love the books.” For me, I love that I have this other person who’s very objective and we meet once a month and she pokes the bear a little bit and says, “What are we doing here? What’s happening with this money? So it’s good for me.
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
Yeah. Okay, so we have the mission and values and we’ve decided the players and now we are writing the job descriptions for these future roles.
Kris Plachy:
Yep.
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
Like in my case, or let’s say anyone else who’s making more like a three-year plan versus one year, you don’t just go and hire into all these positions. What is the next step to do? Who would you then hire first?
Kris Plachy:
Yeah, it’s a great question. That’s actually something I ask my clients is, “What is the next biggest need you have in your business?” So if we have this goal of eight figures, right, what role is going to be the most valuable role to get you there. And that can be, sometimes we have to fare it through that a little bit, we have to really kind of play with, “Okay well, if we add this person, this role’s going to cost more but is it a better investment now?” And so that again is sort of a judgment based on where you are. But I’m so glad that you said, “Don’t hire them all.” You don’t need to hire them all and there has to be in staffing and planning for human resources that’s good to have a three-year plan, there also has to be flexibility in that plan because, as you know right, you could do one launch and be like, “Whoa okay, we need them all tomorrow,” right, like that happened really quickly or things go slower than you think.
So I think that revenue generating roles are always the ones that I’d like to try and put on the front end of things, what’s going to help stimulate lead flow, whatever that is for you, in your business, foot traffic, whatever it is. And then we can look at the support roles, but you can’t go too long without support roles, you have to stabilize the business with enough support or you just are taking in revenue and making a mess with it on the back end.
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
I recently interviewed the woman on my podcast who had grown to eight figures in only three years and her biggest lesson was that she waited too long to hire a senior in a senior leadership role. Like basically, she was holding off with the investment and I could feel that this is maybe something that women tend to do more than men, I don’t know, that’s my guess. Okay yeah, I have this money, I have this budget, now I’m just gonna hire this person versus, well, in three years, I want to be there, should I maybe hire that person now? I guess you cannot give a general answer, oh yeah, this is the answer but…
Kris Plachy:
No, it’s funny, I wrote this down from a conversation I had yesterday because a lot of people talk about that integrator role, it’s from the book traction and I believe in the integrator role, I think it’s great, I just think we have to be really prepared if we’re to hire that person because it is… it’s a C-level position and we need C-level thinking and we need CEO level thinking to manage and lead that person right. So you referenced women not doing that I’m so glad you said it because there are a few reasons I think a lot of women are reluctant. First of all, it’s just an expense, and women, in my experience, tend to not see that kind of investment in the business, they see it more like, “Well I don’t need it.” No, it’s for the business right, so it’s like a relationship with money and investing.
The second thing is sometimes it’s a confidence thing. I’ve coached a lot of women who’ve started their own businesses and then they do hire C-suite and they’re all really competent and the founder feels insecure, right? Because they don’t know as much and that’s okay, I mean that’s actually the goal is to eventually have people in your business who are orchestrating on your behalf. But there’s some intimidation there sometimes to hire kind of, you know in your mind, above your pay grade, right? But I think there’s a huge… I have an integrator that she started with me eight months ago, nine months ago, and I know she is my COO. We’re not at that point yet in the business but… So she came in and she’s doing some coaching but she’s building all the systems, we just hired a new assistant, she’s training them, she’s doing all the onboarding, so we’re building her role with that… I know what our vision is for her role. I think if you can do that, that’s a really good way to get started because you build that relationship plus they’re really intimately connected to your business.
What I see is a lot of people have that integrator but it’s by happenstance, it’s like the first person that they started with and they trust them and they depend on them but they didn’t hire them with that intention of them being at a C-suite level and they can’t get there, they’re not C-level people, and that’s not to be disparaging, it’s the truth. So I agree, I love the way you’re thinking, and I would say yes, that would probably be one of the first things I would ask you if you and I were meeting is, “Do you have a COO yet? Do you have an ops leader? Somebody who’s going to help you integrate all of this vision into the rest of the systems of your business. So do you?
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
No, not really, no. And that’s my top priority actually. But it’s scary.
Kris Plachy:
Yes, it’s a tough hire. I’ve helped a lot of people try and find this person. Once you find them, it’s everything. But you, as the founder have, you have a lot of work to do to be ready for them because there’s so much letting go that has to happen and again as women we’re like, it’s mine.
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
Yeah. And I think that’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve probably known for at least two years, if not three years, that I needed that person. And I’ve been procrastinating exactly for the reasons you talked about before. Can I really hire that person? And I was also afraid to hire someone that I would outgrow too quickly. So in some ways, I’m glad I waited but also it feels very overdue and I think probably that’s what happens to a lot of women as well like, “Okay, I want this person yesterday.”
Kris Plachy:
Yes. And then you have to be careful that you are still very thoughtful, right, because we can fall in love with people metaphorically and be like, “Oh, they’re going to make all the difference,” and then we’re a little desperate and it’s a very strategic role and it is the money roll, it’s key and I’ve watched it… I have a client I worked with all last year, she’s a cosmetic dentist, beautiful work in the world, and she had a COO, but she worked with her as a consultant for two or three years before she hired her and then she hired her and those two have done incredible work together but that took a while. And I would say it takes a good year for that relationship to really find its footings, you’ve got to be patient.
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
Okay, so we got the players, we’ve talked about needing a COO at some point. But something I heard you mention on another podcast was, get clear on your expectations. I think that’s often not clear, even if you have a job description, do you have a separate category like expectations? Or how do you make it clear?
Kris Plachy:
Yeah, so we have our vision, our values and then actually expectation sits right under the values. So when we think about performance and getting results from people at work, there’s really two ways that happens. There’s their production, right, what they do all day. And then there’s their behavior, how they do what they do, right, which is what I reference with the values. Expectations is my way of communicating what’s in my brain to you clearly. Now, we can have overarching expectations that really align with the values, right? So they’re an extension of being responsive, right? So an expectation that you might take that even further with is, all communication needs to be responded to you by the end of every business day or whatever, making it up.
Now, what so many of my clients will say is, “Well, you would just think that someone who’s worked for 25 years knows.”
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
Yeah, they should just know. They should just read your mind.
Kris Plachy:
They should just know better. You would think that someone I’m paying 100,000 to would know, insert here, right? Whatever we think is common sense. It’s not common. So anytime you are not getting the result that you want, the first person you look at is you.
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
That’s a tough one.
Kris Plachy:
I know. But it really is, at least let’s start there, right? Okay was I really clear or did I just say make it pretty? Just generalizing it. But we tend to do that, because we know what it looks like in our brain but we don’t do a good job, we have to remember what happens is I say words, you hear words, you define those words in your brain not as I define them in mine. And it is the biggest frustration for female entrepreneurs is, how do I get people to read my mind? How do I get people to deliver what I want? And it really does mean you have to slow down and be more thoughtful about how you give direction and how you follow up with the results.
You give feedback, little tweaks here, all right, because then that kicks in the stuff we’ve already talked about, “Well, I don’t want to make them feel bad. I don’t want to hurt their feelings, right?” Well, they didn’t do it really… A woman just wrote an article from me a week ago and I’m not using it. And I told her, I said, “We tried, it’s not what I want.” So I just had to tell her, I couldn’t even… It was so, not bad, but not aligned and I tried giving her feedback, I tried editing it and we couldn’t come together. I’m like, “Okay you’re just not my person here and that’s okay, I tried.” And you just have to be able to tell people that.
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
I learned this kind of the hard way, it was so funny because I’ve been running companies for 10 years and then I started my own business and one of my longterm employees, when she started, her first job was to create a sales page and it was in optimized press, old tool, and I was doing this before so I knew the tool very well, I did not like what she did. I just went in there and changed it to the way that I liked. I got a message from her, “I wish you would have told me what you liked and what you didn’t like so I would learn.” And I felt so guilty, “Wow, I’m a horrible person, I cannot give feedback.” Now, of course we work together now many years but I started to really give her feedback and learn to give her feedback, like you said, you have to kind of learn it instead of fixing everything yourself.
In the past years, we’re like, “Okay we need a sales page for this.” I do not see it before my clients see it.
Kris Plachy:
Wow, yeah.
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
And I’m always happy, so it is possible, I just want to give people listening, you can do it even if it’s horrible in the beginning. But it has to be correct in other ways. So if it’s absolutely hopeless on the feedback, yeah, maybe not.
Kris Plachy:
No, that’s such a great example because so many times we don’t give people a chance to do a better job, right, because we don’t give them the feedback. And I will say, this is a little hack that we use in my business that I think is pretty helpful. If I want to give feedback on a sales page or any kind of visual, even a document, I do a loom, which is a screen record and I talk and I point out like, “Okay, so this here could be… How about a different shade of pink here or what if we,” right, and I walk through what my brain sees when I look at it. That’s easier for me than trying to write it or then communicate it later and then I just send them the loom. And that’s worked out to be a really great way to help them read my mind.
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
Is there anything you feel you need to add in terms of designing a team for seven and eight figure business that we haven’t covered?
Kris Plachy:
Yeah, I think the only thing I would add to our conversation about the roles and the job descriptions is to think through what the measures will be. So every good CEO has good measures. So how will you know each of these roles are performing? And there doesn’t have to be a lot of measures but you need a few for every role that helps them, and you, know that they’re on target, so don’t overlook that part. And every role, doesn’t matter what the role is, can have key performance indicators or measures, every single role. A lot of people struggle because some roles are harder to measure than others, but every role can.
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
Yeah, I find that fascinating because sometimes you feel there’s a role and I’m like, “You can’t really measure that?” Let’s say a video editor, how fast they deliver or high quality or how many feedback loops we need to have? Is that kind of a measurement you could have?
Kris Plachy:
Yeah, if you have a branding guide, how closely they manage the branding guide. I think that you can always think about the typical, right, time, money, percentages, deadlines, do they hit deadlines and is that trackable and measurable? Again, you don’t need a lot, you just need to have elements in there that create foundations for accountability. Because in the absence of that, it’s just your opinion. And that’s tough when you want to hold people accountable who aren’t doing a good job. It’s easier when you want to acknowledge people are doing a great job but most people, if you talk to employees, that will tell you what’s one of the biggest frustrations they have, is they don’t know how to be successful. They don’t know if they’re on the right track.
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
So you’re basically not setting them up for success by not giving them a measure.
Kris Plachy:
Exactly.
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
You’re setting them up for failure or your opinion on them.
Kris Plachy:
Exactly, yeah. And confusion is not a business leadership strategy.
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
No it’s not. Kris, normally our episodes is only 30 minutes. This one was a little bit longer because I’m in the middle of this process and this is so fascinating and my curiosity takes me to the next question and the next question. So Kris, thank you so much, it’s been a true pleasure to connect with you today and learn about how to design a team for seven and eight figures. What is the best way to find you online?
Kris Plachy:
Well thank you, first of all, I’ve had a lovely time talking with you and I’m so glad to meet you because I’ve heard so much about you and listen to your podcast as well, so this was just a treat for me so thank you for that. Let’s see, ways to reach me. You can go to my website krisplachy.com. I am gonna be starting a program for women that’s focused on learning how to lead and manage your team. I do one now, but we’re gonna launch a new one in the fall, which we’re calling, How To CEO, so it’s howtoceolive.com, it’s a wait list, if anybody wants to find out about that as it comes available.
And then I’m on Instagram, krisplachycoach, which is where you’ll probably get a little more of just the softer, less formal side and then I’m also on LinkedIn.
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
And you have a podcast.
Kris Plachy:
I do. Yeah, it’s called Lead Your Team, and we talk about all these things. Everything you’ve heard me say, you will have heard me say, and more, on the podcast. In fact, I have quite a few people who do the podcast right, and they’ll send me notes. “I fired her, I did it.” Like they’re all proud of themselves.
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
I’ve done everything by listening to your podcast, fabulous.
Kris Plachy:
It’s very practical, very practical.
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
Fabulous. Thank you so much Kris and I hope we connect soon again.
Kris Plachy:
Yes, I’ll look forward to it, thank you.
Sigrun Gudjonsdottir:
Want to know how you can with me in 2021? Join the information call on November 11 to find out more and get access to special offers. Go to the show notes at sigrun.com/404, where you can find the link to sign up for the information call plus all the links to Kris Plachy. Thank you for listening to the Sigrun Show, did you enjoy this episode? Let me know what you listened by tagging me in Instastory Instagram post using my handle sigruncom and the hashtag sigrunshow. See you in the next episode.