Why Your First Seven Jobs Are Important Today

Nobody knows who you are. Even those you may have worked with for years. I bet they don’t know your history, your story, how you started out, who your most inspirational boss was, or what you learned while working as a teenager.The list is endless.

Start by telling your story. How did you start out?

Here are my seven and what I learned:

1. Newspaper Deliverer
Just like Walt Disney himself, I got up at 6am to deliver the morning newspapers every morning before I went to school.
My lesson: I learned the power of always being on time. 

2. Babysitter
Three rambunctious kids once locked me out of the house.
My lesson: I learned great negotiating skills. I seriously needed them to open the front door, fast!

3. Lottery scratch card door-to-door sales
Before the national lottery existed, I sold scratch cards every Wednesday to a regular set of customers who agreed for me to knock on their door every week at a set time. It was like Amazon Prime while Jeff Bezos was still in diapers (nappies.)
My lesson: I learned that people would buy anything if you bring it to them regularly. 

4. Ice Cream sales
Restaurateur Brian Murdoch used to freshly make real ice cream out of four ingredients. I sold them along the river of Stourport-Upon-Seven in England.
My lesson: Simplicity works and sells, you don’t need complexity you need what your customer wants right now.

5. Cafe caterer
Weston Super Mare Football Club had a match day coffee shop where I worked with my sister and mum.
My lesson: Speed is essential. In a football (soccer) match, there is a 15 minute half-time-break where everyone wants tea, coffee, and a burger. You have to batch process and prepare to make the most money during that time.

6. Lingerie sales 
Jeanette Payton, the Store Manager taught me the art of selling and was my inspiration for the start of my retail career.
My lesson: I learned that a few choices rather than endless choices increases the speed of decision making.

7. Managing Director 
I founded my first company when I was 16. Sponsored by HSBC, we had to raise money by issuing shares, choosing a product, and developing a marketing strategy. Then we had to go sell the product and write an annual report.
My lesson:  Practical experience is more valuable than any exam or test.

 
All of my first seven jobs I held before I was 18. A recent study shows only one in three teenagers are now taking a summer job, which is a diabolical loss to their exposure and perspective before they hit college or the world of work.
 
Share your first seven with your team, and ask them what they learned from their first seven jobs.

I’d love to hear your seven.

Dedicated to growing your business,

Val

Six Reasons Why Your Perfect Team Is Not So Perfect

A happy team can make the workday more enjoyable, but working with people you like may mask some important issues. A happy team doesn't necessarily mean you have a productive and creative team. Here are six signs your team may not be as perfect as you think:

1. You enjoy spending time with each other.
Enjoying your relationships and having fun is an added bonus after achieving incredible results, but it's not the reason to go to work or to stay in a job. Work isn't always pleasurable, and liking each other isn't a requirement for a team to function successfully. Stop trying to be liked and focus on being respected for the results you deliver.

2. You make fast decisions.
Be careful. It could be because you all think the same way and you will never achieve breakthrough thinking. Sometimes good decisions take longer; speed isn't always the criteria of success. Amazon's principle "disagree and commit" is at the cornerstone of their success. Sit in any meeting at Amazon and you will hear clear and vocal disagreement. But when it is time to make a decision, the energy is focused on implementing that decision, not fighting it.

3. You have been together for years.
While longevity has its benefits, a team that has few fresh ideas and perspectives will be stale. It's an issue I address early with executives: Who has been on the team, for how long, and in what roles? Nobody moving on is worse than everyone moving on.

4. You execute flawlessly.
While it is commonly talked about that failure leads to innovation and breakthrough ideas, actually encouraging and rewarding failure requires bold, candid conversations in the face of mistakes. If you are not making mistakes, you are not running fast enough.

5. You believe the CEO isn't ever going to leave.
It is delusional not to plan for the CEO's eventual departure. Too often, everyone believes they will remain in their current job forever. Perfect teams focus on building an exceptional pipeline of future leaders, from the CEO down. The average tenure of a Fortune 500 CEO is 4.6 years; 8.6 for all CEOs. That doesn't leave much time to prepare the replacement waiting in the wings. Without adequate preparation, you could end up like Twitter and Square and have to share a CEO.

6. The real decisions happen in the hallways.
You may pride yourself that your informal casual atmosphere allows for fast decisions in hallways and at happy hour, but teams suffer under such circumstances. Any team of eight or more people needs to have clear guidelines about how to make decisions and share information, otherwise you end up relying on the equivalent of playground gossip passing on critical ideas and opinions.

Making changes to a team can be almost as hard as moving to a new city. You know that making new connections will require you to break habits and get out of your comfort zone, which is exactly what is needed to provoke and inspire new ideas that produce rapid results.

What are you doing to galvanize your team today? Do you have a question for me on building your team? My AMA is currently live here - ask me anything! 

This article originally appeared in my Inc Magazine column you can read the original here.

To your rapid team growth!

Dedicated to growing your business,

Val

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Are You Focusing On The Right Spot For Rapid Growth?

Are you satisfied with where you are spending your time on your business?

Only ten percent of executives tell me they have the perfect balance of where they are spending their time. The other 90 percent don’t feel like they are spending enough time on longer-term strategic areas. Take a look at Focus on The Right Spot. It is my most popular visual that I draw for executives. Start by reflecting on the last three months of your work. Ask yourself where your time and energy has been focused. Has it been on customers, products, and finances of the immediate here and now? Has it been on projects and initiatives that will impact your business in three to six months time? Or has it been on your two or three year growth plan? There is such a strong gravitational pull to the bottom left-hand corner that it takes extreme focus and discipline to stay in the right zone, whether you are a board member, a CEO, or a leader.
 
I used to work for a leader had that discipline. Every morning Don Mattrick as CEO of Xbox thought of the three biggest issues that prevented him from growing the business and focused on those that day. He monopolized meetings to focus on the long-term goals of the business, ruthlessly and relentlessly. We learned how to make meetings more effective by building Don time into the agenda where he could share his strategic thoughts and ideas, but the executive team could still cover the topics that needed to get decided as a group. He knew how to not get sucked into the tactical day-to-day execution and stay focused on long-term strategy and give space to his team to play in the right spot too; we even redesigned his role and appointed a COO to focus on the zero to twelve-month horizon.
 
What can you do today to move towards your right spot?

Dedicated to growing your business,

Val