The Game with Alex Hormozi - How To Get More Out Of Your People Through Great Management | Ep 744

Episode Date: September 16, 2024

"When training does not work, it's because we made an assumption of a skill set that they didn't have." In this episode, Alex (@AlexHormozi) explains his infamous management diamond to you. This framework is how he has managed hundreds of employees over the years.Welcome to The Game w/Alex Hormozi, hosted by entrepreneur, founder, investor, author, public speaker, and content creator Alex Hormozi. On this podcast you’ll hear how to get more customers, make more profit per customer, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons Alex has learned and will learn on his path from $100M to $1B in net worth.Follow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

Welcome back to the game. Today I'm going to be talking about the management diamond. So I ended up teaching this concept at the school days for the top 10 communities you fly out once a month from the people who start 30 days ago on school. So every 30 days, the top 10 newest fastest growing communities on school get to fly out to Vegas to have some fun and talk about business. And so one of the big topics was how do I scale my team? And so that is the framework that I go over. If you hear some whiteboard sounds in the background, it's because I am using a marker to write on the whiteboard, but my team said it was such a good moment that they thought we should share it with everyone.

So enjoy. Okay. So if someone doesn't do what you want them to do, the first and obvious reason is they didn't know what you wanted them to do. And so you fixed this one through communication. This is, by the way, a really good framework for having hard conversations when someone's not doing a good job. So you say, hey, Carly, I wanted you to do this and you haven't done it. So I just want to figure out what the reason was so we can solve it or make it less likely to have in the future. So I figured the first was that you didn't know that I wanted you to do that. Did you know that I wanted you to do that?

If they say, no, I didn't know, then you're like, great, now you know. Now if they're like, I did know that you wanted me to do that, then you're like, oh, did you not know how to do it, which you solve with training, which will dovetail into the whole teaching thing in a second. But okay, yes, I did know that you wanted me to do it and I know how to do it, but I didn't know you wanted it by now or by tomorrow. And so I didn't have a deadline here. So we assigned deadlines when we tell people to do things.

And that's just, again, to hold them responsible. Now, if someone knows what you want them to do, they know how to do it, and there's a deadline associated and they still don't do it, then the question is, did they need some sort of incentive where they not motivated to do it?

Or with something blocking them? I could have the best chef in the world who's the most motivated, know that I want to make an omelette, knows how to do it, knows I want it in the next five minutes. He's like, bro, I don't have eggs. It doesn't matter how much I do.

It's like, sometimes people don't have, like, we actually had this issue with my editing team was I was like, why don't you all fucking edit in the building? And they're like, the upload speed. They're like, my upload speed at home is faster than here. And so it actually just takes me more time. And so we paid Google Fiber to drill a hole into the fucking wall. And here we are. Now they can up, it's faster here now. But it's fundamentally like, if there are blockers, then it's like, okay, well, can I just solve whatever that blockers? Can I remove that impediment? And so walking through this has helped me have a lot of hard conversations with people and not make them

hard. It's like there's five reasons that you didn't do it. You didn't know what it was, how to do it, when I wanted it. You weren't incentivized or something's blocking you. Any of these sound familiar? And if there's more than one, then you got to fix more than one. And oftentimes, if you delegate, if you basically, you hand something off to somebody and it gets worse after you hand it off, it's because you didn't delegate it, you advocated it. You just said, here you go, good luck. And so that's a very easy limitless test. If you hand it off and it gets better or it's neutral, then you actually delegated it. And so what happens is most entrepreneurs just find a human being that has a pulse, say they have a meeting like this and just say a lot of things at them,

expect the person to have 100% retention and know exactly what to do when they want to do it, how they want it done, with no blockages the person's not aware of, and then be done. Be like, oh yeah, I already, I told him once. It's like, yeah, once, not in a written format and no structured form. And then you're just yelling at them on a Zoom call. And then two weeks later, you're surprised that they're not doing as well as you after having done it for fucking years. You know what I mean? So we think through this, so this is how I think through, trying to figure out employee issues. So this one's fairly straightforward, in my opinion. This one's fairly straightforward. The two hard ones are these guys. So from a training

perspective, I'll give you an example I had to do recently with a teammate or an employee here. I'll just give a So let's say there's somebody in your team who's a dick Right? You're like hey Caroline you're being a dick The thing is is that Stop being a dick is actually a pretty terrible directive And the reason is because they don't know what they're doing

Because they're dicks You're like, you just want me to not be me? And you're like kind of And so what we have to do is So I call it bundling and unbundling terms And this is fundamentally why I think my content is better than most people is that, like, you've heard me to find terms. It's like, okay, patience is figuring out what you do in the meantime. So if I told someone be patient, it doesn't mean anything. If I say be charismatic, how do I be charismatic? It's like, okay, I need you to have more vocal ranges when you're talking. I need you to pause for emphasis.

I need to say people's name. I need you to look them in the eyes. I need you to nod when they're talking. Like these are a series of activities that when someone does all of them, we bundle them together and say, this person's charismatic. And so rather than saying be charismatic, I need you do these six things or stop doing these six things that you are doing. And by doing that, then people will stop describing you as a dick. And so we had a teammate who was really high potential, like really smart, hardworking, you did all that stuff.

But somebody started happening and started acting a little bit dickish. And we had four leaders in my company have like sit-down talks, which normally wouldn't do, but the person was really good at their job. I don't really want to lose the productivity. And so I was the last stop where I was like, it's me or you're out. So we've got to figure something out here. And you'd already been given a lot of instruction,

a lot of don't be a dick, be nicer, things like that, but that doesn't help anyone change their behavior. And so fundamentally giving someone a frame of what I want to have happen as a result of this conversation helps filter what you're actually talking to them about. And so like me insulting them were making them feel, but it doesn't actually do anything for increasing the likelihood that they behave in a certain way.

most of the time it's just clarity. Just like when you hop on the call and you tell people to do this stuff immediately, they will not like you. And if they don't like you, they'll complain more, which makes it more like you get fired. You don't want to get fired.

Great. So all you have to do is not do that at the beginning of the calls. People will stop describing you that way. He's like, this is so eye-opening. I didn't even know. There was like four or five other items that I'd ask for specific examples so that I could say like, stop doing these things

and people will stop calling you a dick. And within a month, people were like, dude, he's completely turned around. He just actually had specific instructions. And so most of us aren't willing to do the hard work of saying, like, what is this person doing? Or what does this person need to do? Which is why I'm a big fan of checklist because it's like, this is what you have to do. When you onboard someone, like check your hair.

Make sure that there's not a bed in the background. Like, yeah, you're onboarding a customer and it's got like, you know, a pink bunny poster behind you. It's like, that's probably not the first impression I'm really looking for. Right. So it's like, these are the checklist that you go through. It's like first you greet them by name, second, you look at the notes and you tell them about the goal. And then when you took a recording of the onboarding call, it's like, why does Sarah suck? And Caroline's great.

You just say, well, Sarah, here's the checklist. You did three. There's 11 items. Sarah consistently, or Caroline does, you know, nine out of 11 and hers consistently get higher scores. Now, if she, if Sarah follows the checklist and she does all 11 and her scores are way below the other girls, then it means the checklist is wrong, which means that's on you, not on her. her. And so it means that you're incomplete in terms of what you're trying to train them on. And so sometimes it's useful to know that. So if both people do the checklist and they objectively meet the things, then there's other things that you don't know about. And so fundamentally,

soft skills and hard skills are all just skills. It's just that soft skills, people just have a harder time teaching because it's bundled language. And I think that's why so many people struggle teaching them. So in training the team, to loop back to your question, I want to figure out what the problem is with the person, so I can try and loop to these things. If it's a training issue, I try and break it down as much as I humanly can. If it's a motivation issue, it really comes down to reinforcing stimuli. So either people do things that, because they get stuff that they like or they avoid things they hate. Getting fired is usually a pretty aversive stimulus. So a lot of people will do things that just not get fired. So it's fairly

strong. But the best performers do it, do things because they just like doing them. Like the best employees, the best teammates, they just work all the time because, the actual conditions of work are more reinforcing than any boss can be, right? Which is why a lot of people like on my team, for example, with like a lot of editors and whatnot, they just edit in their free time. They picked up editing because editing itself is a reinforcing thing. No one called cold calls in their free time. Oh yeah, I just picked up cold calling on the side.

Yeah, I just cold call like on my days off just because I just like it. Like no one says that. But the thing is that sales and editing have very fast feedback loops. And so you can immediately get off the call and get a reward. You immediately get, you see an edit and you, you're, you see it to edit and you're you catch a moment and there's this, a lot of feedback loops that are really tight and good. Other roles have slower and longer feedback cycles. And so as a manager, you have to basically artificially input more feedback loops into

longer project timelines or jobs that require more complex tasks that motivate people through reinforcement. And so a lot of people, I think, in culture, say, oh, someone did something crazy. And so what we do is we say, what happened that caused them to do it? But we actually invert how behavior works, which is people do things because of what happens after they do them, not because of what happened before. And so that's like what happens after you do stuff is the latency of training. And that's how you train people.

And so anyways, I geek out on human behavior stuff a lot. But motivation fundamentally comes from deprivation, which is what are you most deprived of? So if somebody is very deprived of praise, which many people are, giving praise, motivates them. If someone gets praise all the time, praise might not motivate them. It just depends on the person. And so this is figuring out what are the reinforcing stimuli from someone's past, that's getting to know your employees better, so you can do the things that motivate them. Money, by the way, has been conditioned as a universal reinforcer.

We've learned at an early age that this thing equals whatever we want. So it's just a generalized reinforcer. But there are more specific reinforces that you can give to individual people. So yeah, that's that. And then block, you just unblock the thing if you can afford it, whatever the problem is. So that's my little manifest on management if that helped out. Okay, cool. Oh, great.

Where do you find, like, more information to better understand these concepts? Because we're in a very, like, human capital intensive industry. Management is the big piece. that's missing for like every company and that's why so many people fail where would I find like this in more depth and in more volumes that I can understand these concepts better so I've got a special CTA free today this excerpt was from a school day so this is from the school winners who came out they were the top 10 and they asked me about managing team and so I answered that question but if you don't have a business

then none of that matters and so to start a business you can go to school.com We run the school games. It's for people who are just getting started in business, and that's what that's for. If you already have a business and you have a big team and you want to scale your team, we run workshops occasionally at Acquisition.com at our headquarters here in Vegas. And so if you'd like to partake in one of our workshops, you can go there and click the scale button, and hopefully we'll see you soon. So most of these concepts were derived from the ground up from just like rat studies

with Dr. Cashie, who Sam knows, my good buddy. And so I think most people just do a lot of things and just like see what happens. Like it's very haphazard. I think almost no knows how to train, period. I feel like understanding human psychology, like that was always my foundation. Even ignore psychology. Really? I completely ignore it.

I would say that you talk a lot about it. You probably never heard me say the word psychology. Not the word psychology, but what you're like, maybe I'm blanking it. Right. So to get, I don't want to get too far into that. I will go there. So this is like for everyone. Like if you want to basically have your bullshit omitore always turned on, it's separating

out when people give reasons because statements or just blank statements of like the other day. Someone was like, there's only three ways that you can make a customer worth more. And then they continue the sentence. I was like, that's just false. They just started the statement that way. And a lot of people make statements that are just false. They have no idea what they're saying.

And so we walk through a framework when we're talking. trying to basically detect bullshit, which is logic evidence utility, which is what does this mean? How do you know? And then so what? So I'll give an example. So I had someone the other day say, I'm stressed because I'm lonely. And I was like, okay. I was like, what does lonely mean to you?

It's a bucketed term, right? It's a bundled term. it was like well i was like that on friday night you have known a text or that people don't respond back to you or like what what is the what what does that mean to you because it's there's a thing there's an activity that occurred and then they described that they chunk it up as loneliness but when you get two steps below that of to like what occurred what was the action that got stunted or something that you wanted that you didn't get then you can get a lot more specific we're like okay so then i say all right so that was the lonely occurrence now have you been

stressed before when that wasn't happening? Yes. Okay. So then how do you know that that thing has anything to do with your stress? They're completely decoupled, right? And it's like, all right, and who cares? You're stressed. Have you been stressed when things are going well? Yes. Have you been stressed when things are not going well? Yes. So in general, you're stressed when you're alive. Noted. What's your point? Right? And so we like breaking this down allows you to just be less confused. used about what other people say. And so the reason I'm going here is because most people are full of shit, not purposefully, not maliciously. They just don't know any better. And so they just like parrot out other things. They talk about pop psychology, whatever. And I for the most part have

just erased feelings, intentions, beliefs, all of these words from my vocabulary in terms of what influences behavior. Because I just only focus on what can we observe. Because if I would say, this guy is really motivated. I'd say, how do you know, what does motivation mean to you? I'd say, can you motivate me? I was like, define motivation. And she just like stood there and melted. And I was like, right.

So you want me to answer a question that you can't define the word for. So what's the likelihood that you get what you want? Really low. And so, but the thing is, is we ask questions about stuff all the time and we can't define. Which means maybe we need to ask better questions or at least know what the fuck we're talking about. And so, anyways, I bring this up because

if you, going back to the motivation thing, If I say, this person's really motivated, you'd say, how do you know? It's like, well, they do all the stuff. It's like, great. Then forget about the concept or label of motivation and just say, this person does these things. Great. And so I don't care if you feel motivated or not. If you do these activities, people will describe you that way.

And if you do these activities, when I had the conversation with the dick in particular, right, I said, I want to be clear. I don't care if you're a dick. I don't care if you hate everyone. As long as you behave this way, it doesn't matter to me. And so a lot of people spend all this time trying to be like, there's these seven stages of awareness. I'm like, how do you know? How do you know that? What's your evidence for that?

And so what? Like, what are the activities someone has to do? Okay, they have to see your ad. Great. Then they have to interact with it in some way. They have to take an action. So if you go through the leads book, I walk through the lead stages in the book, and it's only best on the observable. They took a step.

Then they give you their information. They give you means to contact them. Then after you have means to contact, like you, these are the things that, like, no one can, like, fight me. Like, these are the things they have to occur. And so if you reason up from what can I observe with my eyes, it makes life a lot easier. Even when you're talking to, like, a spouse, you're like, okay, I'm really upset. It's like, okay, what does that mean right now? How do you know you're upset?

And so what? What do you want me to do about it? And so I think you're just like, when you say this, what do you want me to do? When you say, like, if someone says, like, you should know, it's like, I don't play that game. I'm hungry. Either means you would like me to go get you food. You would like us to go get food together.

It could mean that you want space. It could mean you're in a bad mood. I was like, but I won't take one cue for six behaviors. Pick. And then it makes things a lot easier. And so you can start training realistically, like anyone in your company, to behave a certain way,

by just saying, when you say this, what do you want to have happen? And also when you're having the conversation with staff or employees or whatever, Like sometimes we in the moment, like someone disrespects you. You want to like immediately insult them or whatever, right? But you're like, okay, well, what do I want to have happened? Well, if I insult them, they're going to be more resistant to me in the future. But I need to have more influence over them, not less. So me counter punishing to prevent their thing in the future, it's probably going to be counterproductive. And so what can I say that increases the likelihood that what I want to have happen happens? And so it's like taking a second step forward and being like back to think what's the second order of attitude effect on their behavior rather than what I feel like doing in the moment. And so when you're trying to look for, okay, how do I manage people better or how do I train people better? Most training is just not chunked down far enough. And so the people who are

successful and whatever your education thing is come in more qualified than other people. Like if you ever had a student or a customer who you're like, this guy's going to win no matter what? Right. It's not you. It's because of them. Because they have a history of skills. They have a larger skill set that they bring to the table. And so fundamentally, the people who are successful with your program are lacking the things you teach. The people who are not successful lack those things and other things. And so to have the most comprehensive training, you would have to start with here's how you write words. Here's how you type. Here's how the internet works. Of course you're not going to do that because there's a base assumption, which is what qualifies someone to be a customer,

of a certain level of skills. It also works the same way with an employee. There's certain level of skills that are required to work for this role. And so if someone does have a deficiency, then the question is, what's the return on effort? I think I could teach someone who has downcentered and be a neurosurgeon.

Well, I couldn't, but somebody could. It just might take 30 years. It's probably not worth it. Because for the same resources, we get 2,000 other neurosurgeons who don't have down syndrome. And so if you think about your customers that way, it's like simply thinking about it,

like take out character traits, take out beliefs, whatever. It's just, I need them to behave this way. That's it. Just break it down to the activities, and it makes a lot easier. And so fundamentally, it's like, I wish I were more charismatic. I wish I were more patient. I wish more more confident.

If you just debundled those things and just say, how do I break this down to the smallest level and how do I just do those activities, it makes it a lot easier. And so usually when training does not work, it's because we made an assumption of a skill set that they didn't have. And so the more advanced someone is, the vaguer the instruction can be. So I can say, or Sam can say, hey, man, do you think you just market school? And I say, sure.

That's it. That's the directive. It's not like, okay, do you think you can make this many pieces of content? You think you can run this many pieces of ad or whatever it is, right? And if I'm like, hey, do you make an amazing product he making? He's like, sure. It's not like, do you think you'd have an activation sequence or onboarding or we're going to do these things. I trust that he's to do it because he has the skill set.

And you trust that I can do it because I have the skill set. And so fundamentally, the more skill the person is, the vigor the instruction can be. And so if you have low-level people, you don't have a lot of room for vagueness, so you have to be more specifically with your instruction. As people get higher and higher up in your organization, you can be vaguer and vaguer with the instruction, so they have more skills. And so experts fundamentally just have more ways to be rewarded within the same context. Like if you're really good at editing video, then you have many things that reward you because you have more skills.

If you're really bad at it, there's very few things that reward you. And so that's what mastery development is.