How I Managed 120 Employees at Age 24 Without Losing My Mind
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How I Managed 120 Employees at Age 24 (Without Losing My Mind)

ByAI Leila

Summary

  • At 24, managing 120 employees, I discovered that setting clear expectations was key to not losing my mind.
  • Understanding how to manage large groups is crucial, and it's more about expectations than marketing or sales.
  • There are four levels to setting expectations: core values, brand promise, departmental expectations, and departmental/individual role KPIs.
  • Core values are fundamental, serving as the lens for decision-making and guiding the establishment of all other expectations.
  • Effective core values, like "Speed is King," are memorable and drive behavior, whereas a long list of rules can be uninspiring and restrictive.
  • Companies should lead by values instead of rules, as values nurture leadership and empower employees to make decisions based on the company's principles.
  • When there are no values to guide decisions, employees can become paralyzed without explicit rules.
  • Values also allow a business to adapt and make decisions in new, unforeseen circumstances.
  • Core values should align with the company's strategy and protect from downsides while promoting the company's goals.
  • At Acquisition.com, our values include unimpeachable character, sincere candor, and competitive greatness, reflecting my personal philosophy and the brand's aspirations.
  • A brand promise is an external demonstration of core values, like "your dream haircut in less than an hour" or "15 minutes or less can save you 15% on car insurance."
  • A strong brand promise builds trust by setting and consistently meeting customer expectations.
  • Departmental expectations help translate core values and brand promises into specific actions for different company areas.
  • Without departmental expectations, it's challenging to measure adherence to core values and brand promises.
  • Departmental KPIs operationalize values and promises, providing measurable targets to assess performance.
  • Individual role KPIs break down departmental KPIs into specific expectations for each employee, allowing for precise management and accountability.
  • Explicit instructions and clear expectations prevent assumptions, ensuring that employees understand how to achieve company goals and contribute effectively.
  • Without properly defined expectations, employees may not understand how to succeed or even play the game correctly within a company.
  • Being explicit about expectations helps employees transition from their previous experiences and aligns their actions with the current company's culture and goals.

Video

How To Take Action

I would suggest starting with your core values. These are like a compass that points you in the right direction. Make them simple to remember, like "Speed is King," so they stick in your mind easily. Use these values to guide how you make all your choices. This way, if something new pops up, you can think, "Does this fit with 'Speed is King'?" and make a good choice even without a rule for that specific thing.

Next, you might want to craft a brand promise that shows everyone what you stand for. This could be something that tells customers what they can expect – like getting their dream haircut in under an hour. This promise builds trust because people see you're doing what you say you will.

To put your core values to work in different parts of your business, set up departmental expectations. These are like special tasks that make sure your values are being used in each team. For example, if "Speed is King" is your value, and your customer service team is part of that, their task might be to always respond to customers in five minutes.

Now, don't just have these expectations floating around in your head. You need to measure them, which means you need departmental Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). These are like a scorecard that tells you if you're meeting your goals. If you want customer questions answered fast, set a KPI for how many are answered within two minutes.

Lastly, individual role KPIs break down the big department targets into what each person needs to do. This way you can see who is doing great and who might need a little extra help.

Always be clear with what you expect from people. It’s like giving someone a map instead of just telling them to find treasure. When everyone knows exactly what to do, nobody has to guess, and that means everyone can help the business win.

Quotes by Leila Hormozi

"If you want people to be inspired, then lead with values"

– Leila Hormozi

"Values give you a framework to make decisions that have not occurred yet"

– Leila Hormozi

"If you lead your company with values, then you create leaders"

– Leila Hormozi

"A brand promise… creates trust in the person that you have expressed the expectation to"

– Leila Hormozi

"Lack of clear expectations leads to assumptions, assumptions lead to unmet goals"

– Leila Hormozi

Full Transcript

when I was 24 I managed 120 employees and I figured out this one thing that helped me not lose my mind while I was doing it and today what I want to do is I want to share with you that one thing and how you can implement it in your business to make sure that you also don't lose your here's the thing the way that I was able to not lose my mind had nothing to do with like marketing or sales or money or any of that stuff it had to do with understanding how to manage large groups of people and the one thing I realized that made the most difference was learning how to set expectations so there's four levels of expectations I'm going to walk you through in this video the first one is core values so here's the thing most businesses if you chunk it up they have about four levels of expectations which is really like four places to make expectations four places to verbalize instructions whatever you want to call it so core values are the base of everything else because essentially they are the filter in which you build everything else through so for example if I have a core value of speed is king and a customer comes in and they're inquiring with our customer service department and my customer service doesn't answer for 2 hours okay well that conflicts with our core value so if my core value is speed as king my customer service procedures will all be ones that evolve around speed AKA one might be hey always resolve a customer inquiry in 5 minutes as you understand core values inform the rest of the pyramid so values are the filters in which you make decisions to build all the rest of the expectations in the company and so for example lots of people supplement values for rules and so they have lots of rules that people follow but people do not understand why the rules exist the importance of the rules or get any reinforcements from the rules and so you end up with this company where it got like between 10 and like 40 different rules that people are expected to follow and the thing is is that the likelihood that someone follows a spreadsheet with like 40 rules on it is very low but the likelihood that someone can remember like speed is King and they can chant that in their head all day the likelihood is much higher and so I will always gravitate towards companies that lead by values rather than leading by rules because one it's inspirational it's like we're going towards this thing rather than rules which are usually written in a way that's like going against this thing don't be late never say these words always do this and they're very have much of a negative connotation if you want people to be inspired then lead with values and values serve as a filter in which people can then every time they're met with a decision to make filter it through that value and decide should I do this or should I do that well if speed is King then I will do this and I will act in accordance with our values so for example if I wanted to rule my company with rules I might say answer the customer within 60 seconds respond to your teammates within 2 minutes at all times respond to your boss within 5 minutes max or I could say speed is King we want to try and be fast everything we do speed is King on a micro level and so people by consequence of AD hearing to speed as king will then fall in line for the most part with these rules on the other side and so one of them is punishing and often like puts things in a negative light whereas the other one paints things in a way of like we know where we want to go and this is how we're going to get there and the thing is is that if you lead your company with rules then you create rule followers if you lead your company with values then you create leaders and people who can think and unless you're on here and you have a company that's like Fortune 500 with I don't know hundreds of thousands of people it is much easier especially in smaller businesses where you have maybe just a few hundred people or even a thousand in my opinion to rule with values because rules they are endless the difficulty is that if you don't have a rule for something that comes up the person just like cannot compute isn't able to answer your question like I'm sure that you've inquired with customer service before and you've been like hey can I get a refund you put cheese on my chicken and I wanted no cheese and they're like we don't give refunds you're like right but you did it wrong so I should get refund it's not me it was you and they're like uh I don't know we said we're not supposed to give refund so I don't know what to do I have to guess I have to get my manager but my manager not in so I don't know you're like dude can you like make a decision and the reason they can't make a decision is because there's no rule that was in place for them to make a decision and they don't have values so they don't have a frame to make decisions that are not foreseeable and so values give you a framework to make decisions that have not occurred yet and so when someone steps into a new scenario they can apply that value or decision-making framework to that scenario rather than have to wait for a rule and also allows you to move faster the thing about values is that they should inform behavior and so an example would be one organization has the value speed is King another organization has the value pace yourself those are probably fit for very different companies and probably both advantageous for different companies speed is King might be very advantageous for a company for a b Toc Makeup Company and they're just booming and they're growing super fast they're like speed is King we've got to fill these orders fast we going to get back to customers fast we got to Market fast versus pace yourself might be a better mantra for a company say a dental clinic that's looking to scale from 1 to 20 dental clinics and quality of service is very important you know making sure that we get things right and do things by the book is very important because there's High compliance standards you know versus over here where there's much less you want to make sure that the values also play to the strategy of the business and will help you achieve those goals faster yes but in a way that also protects you from the downside so for us at acquisition. comom we've got three values we've got unimpeachable character sincere cander competitive greatness right and theas Reon I have those values is because of a few things competitive greatness I want people who don't just want a job to make a paycheck I want people who do work to be great and they exemplify Excellence through their work and this is the way that they demonstrate their Excellence to the world why do I want that because that is what I am doing in mind I had my last company in which I think a lot more of it was to make money but I no longer am thinking about making money I'm thinking about how do I build something amazing incredible that's long lasting right and so I want other people who think that way the second one since you're cander is because we have a portfolio of companies we have to give them advice to help them grow if we don't get the truth from them then we cannot give them good advice in out I need people who are sincerely canderous if I don't have people that are sincerely canderous I can't help them grow their business and the last one is unimpeachable character which is I find you know a huge aspect of acis.com is our brand and so I want to make sure that everyone that works with an acquisition. comom as well as the people that we work with are people that I am proud to associate with both inside work and outside work and if one of those does not feel good then I don't think it makes sense to work with them and that's just because I think that that helps uphold our brand because if I had somebody for example on my team who was like married but on the weekends you know snorting coke off a stripper's ass and y'all knew about it you'd probably be like seems really weird and now I feel very differently about their brand and I would be like me too now the second piece of the pyramid is brand promise okay a brand promise is essentially the core values almost displayed externally a brand promise is often tied to strategic metrics that drive the business forward they tell your customers what your internal values are as well as what to expect in terms of results or service or experience with your company okay so let me give you some examples to exemplify this your dream haircut in less than an hour 15 minutes or less can save you 15% or more on car insurance I'm sure you've all heard that one your questions answered in 5 minutes or less we will get you your package by 10:30 a.m. the next day or even Jimmy John's I go there all the time they won't deliver if it's not 5 minutes these are all brand promises and so essentially what a lot of these companies have done is they have taken their internal vision mission values and they have operationalized them into brand promises that are seen externally if you think about it like this at acquisition. one of our values is competitive greatness right I want to do this to exemplify excellence and a brand promise to the employee base that I'm trying to attract is praise over punishment which is that I will not punish people that are within our organization I will praise them and we will encourage them to do good work rather than punish them for doing bad work right and that's a message we put out to the employment Community just as businesses put these things out of like your dream care cut in 5 or less to get people in the door you also do it to get people in the door to work for you and so either one can be a brand promise whether it's to customers or employees what a brand promise does is if you can uphold it which you would never make a brand promise if you cannot it creates an immense amount of trust because you advertise something and then you fulfill it you literally are setting an expectation and then meeting that expectation which then creates trust in the person that you have expressed the expectation to if I tell you I'm going to meet you at 10:00 a.m. tomorrow for coffee and I show at 10:30 do you trust me more or less so if I tell you that I'm going to deliver your food in 5 minutes and I deliver it in 5 minutes or even 4 minutes do you trust me more or less are you more or less likely to do business with me again companies typically engineer a brand promise to be one that they are positive that they can hit 100% of the time if not overshoot and so then when they do this they have an opportunity out there into the marketplace to gain people's trust because they know that they're going to hit 100% of the time so for example in gym launch when we had a customer service department I said we will get back to you in minutes or less because I saw that our first response was always within 90 seconds so if it's always within 90 seconds I'm pretty sure 5 minutes is reasonable and people were very impressed because they were like wow you guys are so fast and they were always like holy crap it said it was going to be 5 minutes it's like 2 minutes I would never have set that Target if the average was like even 4 minutes because I'm like oh man if something happens somebody had to go to the bathroom like and 1 minute off so you always have to really unders shoot with that so the next piece of the pyramid that we have are departmental expectations so this is essentially how you take the core values and how you take the brand promise and you flow them down and disseminate them down into the Departments you have of your company so here's a common scenario right so say you're restaurant and a customer comes in at 11:15 and they want eggs but you stop serving breakfast at 11:00 a.m. how does your employee know that it's okay to serve eggs or not do you expect them to always Delight the customer or hold the agreed upon service hours so a mom and pop shop might say we always Delight the customer and that is like our promise of our staff and the kitchen versus McDonald's you get fired if you serve eggsit 11:15 if you only have these two that's great but we need to make sure that we have measurement in place to make sure that we're operationalizing core values and brand promise the third one is departmental kpis let me give you a real example of how this floods down so at gym launch we had a core value speed is King which then turned into a brand promise of your questions answered in 5 minutes or less which then turned into all client inquiries were responded to in less than 120 seconds so then what ends up happening is we create a kpi in that department to measure that so the kpi for the Department is what number of inquiries are answered in less than 2 minutes versus how many are answered in more than 2 minutes because again I'm not going to make the metric 5 minutes cuz that's what people are expecting I need to make it 2 minutes so I know that we're completely overshooting and so the customer service department that would be the metric that we are measuring our brand promise and our values on so then you can see how speed is King the brand promise of 5 minutes or less seeps down into the customer service department so then the kpis that we measure success on are based on those two things another example would be the customer is always right say we have a company it's like the core value is the customer's always right say a chain of hair salons right and so the customer is always right translates into a brand promise of your dream haircut or your money back so all the stylists get measured on this did the person bring in a picture of the haircut they wanted and show it to The Stylist before the stylist started and then did that stylist get approval from the master stylist that there is a picture and they have confirmed this is the picture of the haircut and then we measure the effectiveness of that by how many people refer somebody else to that Salon this is actually a real Salon that exists and I think it's actually one of the coolest models I've seen so they promise you your dream haircut because they say oh the key here is that we have people bring in one to three pictures of the exact haircut they want and then we get approved by the master approved by them and then we measure based on how many people refer somebody else really cool so if we have a core value and we have a brand promise and we don't have departmental expectations here's the issue is that people don't know including you as the boss if people are upholding the brand promise or the core values I have a different video where I talk about accountability but it's essentially expectations plus measurement times reinforcement and so if we have expectations the way that we know that those expectations are occurring is by measuring them and so having departmental kpis is essentially measuring our core values in our brand promise and the last one is individual role kpis role expectations are simply departmental kpis tied into the role and then measured against their performance let's take one of the scenarios we already did core value of speed is K which translates into your question answered in 5 minutes or less which translates into a departmental kpi how many inquiries are responded to in less than 120 seconds which translates into a r expectation of making sure that 80% of your inquiries are responded to in less than 120 seconds so essentially what you do is you look at the departmental kpi and then based on that you determine what the average needs to be for each person in the department so you can set a benchmark for them so you look at what you want to have as a department and then translate it down into a benchmark or a medium that you give to each employee the reason that role expectations are important is because you can measure a department but to understand how to improve a department you have to understand all of the units that add up to the hole if you want to improve the department a lot of the times people like oh my gosh how do we get our stats up it's like actually we have three people that are complete top performers and they're actually exceeding the goals when then we have two people who are dragging us down and so we don't need to train five people we need to train two people and a lot of bosses make the mistake of looking at Department that's underperforming and saying oh gosh I have to train this entire team on all this stuff it's like no you've got to train JN JN sucks and he brings down the average of everybody there A lot of times the lift that you have to put into a department to raise it is actually much smaller than people think but they just don't dive into the details of looking at who are the exact people on your team who are bringing the average down now if you can do that it saves you a lot of time and resources so what having these kpis does is it really helps with managers for knowing how to manage their employees because essentially what you can do is say here are the kpis that we need for the Department here's the kpis we need for the roles and then based on where those kpis are at it's either green or red and then they know and the employees know and they know where they sit on a performance Spectrum so it's much easier for people when they have a measurement in place to know whether you're effectively carrying out the brand promise and the core values so let me give you an example to exemplify the difference in a verbal cue to somebody hey can you write that follow-up email sequence for the people who don't buy on the page say you have an e-commerce business and you're like hey go write an email sequence for after people buy versus saying please write an email sequence that will help us reduce refunds within the first 24 hours of purchase all the differences there which will have a massive impact on results is the instructions that you give the person how explicit were they because lack of clear expectations leads to assumptions assumptions lead to unmet goals so if people have to assume how to do something they are less likely to do it than if they know to do something it sounds simple but so often in business we don't do it we just let them assume how to do their job and what we want and so often times expectations are the unsaid Rules of Engagement they're actually non-negotiable agreed upon norms and behaviors that everyone on the team aderes to and is held to but often are never verbalized written or explained but here's the thing if you don't properly Define and verbalize your expectations then nobody knows how to win or lose the game they don't even know how to play the game it's like in their last company the game might have been like Checkers and so they're playing according to the rules of the last game they were at which was like how to play checkers and now they come to your company and it's like chess but then they play the game the same way that they played Checkers it doesn't work and you automatically lose and you look like an idiot doing it this this the same thing that happens when an employee comes to your organization and you're like this idiot doesn't even know how to no it's that that's what he did in his last job and you haven't said anything differently so what's he going to do he's going to do what worked before playing checkers is all he knows he's going to play Checkers on your chessboard

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