John Seiffer

How to Build a Hiring System

• How to Build a Farm Team: Hiring is critical for any company to thrive, yet too many owners treat it like a trip to the grocery store. Thinking they’ll just run down and get something when they need it. John will share why and how you should hire like professional sports teams do, by grooming a farm team of people whose skills and traits you know before you have an opening.
• Missing Pieces of the Job Description: Hiring starts with knowing what you need and most job descriptions are lacking in this area. John shares 3 parts of the job description that should become the framework for your hiring system, including one of those that should not be made public.
• Hiring isn’t finished when the offer is accepted: Onboarding starts the day an offer is made, and finishes 90 after the new hire starts work. A complete system starts with the job description and finishes with the 90-day review. 

Three Reasons Management is Hard

John talks about 3 things managers struggle with and provides solutions to each. 

• It’s Not Your Full-Time Job. When you combine being a manager with being an individual contributor, management can take a back seat if you’re not careful. The solution is understanding the true definition of management and using time blocking to focus on what’s important but may not be urgent.
• You’re Afraid of Micro-Management. Unleash your people’s full potential by getting rid of all rules that don’t ultimately benefit the customer and explain the reasons behind those that do. 
• Management is an unnatural act. John shows how you can be friendly and genuine without compromising your leadership authority. 

How to Plan for the Future When You Can’t Predict it

Even when you don’t know what the future will bring you can still plan for it. John shares how companies of any size can use a tool that’s been used by the US military, the Rand Corporation, and Royal Dutch Shell since the 1950s. It’s a way to develop a playbook of how to deal with potential eventualities so you can adapt as the future unfolds even if you can’t predict it. 

Typical Valuation Metrics Miss This

All things being equal, a company with more revenue, profit, and cash flow is more valuable than a similar one with less. But the factor that’s often not obvious is more under the owner’s control. The more systemized the company is, the more it’s worth.

Even if a company is not for sale, the benefits of systemization are:

• Less dependence on the owner’s day-to-day involvement
• Easier to hire and train people
• Easier to promote good people
• More consistent output

John will cover the key aspects of systemization and the steps to achieve it.