When we had a job posting for a position with Chefparade,
quite many people applied
(40 in first 2 hours…over 600 altogether in first week).
Going through their CV’s one thing stroke me.

Recurring pattern virtually in every CV I have read.
All of them listed their previous jobs, positions, job descriptions but nobody, yes, NOBODY listed any results achieved in those jobs.

Simple question comes to my mind.
Didn’t they achieve anything?
Did they just went to work everyday to do “something”?

Also, what would I write in my CV?
What would my people write in their CV’s should they look for other opportunities?

For some of them I can imagine, they would proudly write:
“I doubled Y on Y revenues for segment I was responsible for” or
“I took our e-shop from 0 to 100k a month revenue in 4 months” .

Those are people you should be looking for.
Ones that don’t consider sending email a job well done.
Ones that don’t mix activities with results.
Ones that add value.

Having people like this on board is inevitable for success of your company.

My ex boss and still a great friend Roman always used to ask:
what is the added value of this?
what is the added value of spending time on this project?
what added value you going to have at this meeting?
With everything you proposed or did you could bet he would ask on added value.

When I think about it, this is very right question to ask anytime.
Anytime you’re planning to spend your time, energy or money on something or somebody.
What is the added value? How much does this improves my life?
How much does this contributes to my goals in life?

Simple question with powerful outcome if you ask it often enough and will answer honestly.
You will spend your time with people who are adding value to your life.
You will spend your time and energy on things that are adding value to your life.

As employee. What value do you add to company you work for? What is your value for your team?
How much do you contribute? Do you add value at all?

As a company owner, what value do you add to your employees and clients? What value is your company adding to this society?

And for all of us – what value do we add to we add to our family? to our friends? to our neighbours? to this society?

People complaining about their effectivity have all kinds of reasons.
One thing they have in common is that it will all change Someday.

Someday they will set their goals and organise themselves.
Someday they will start proper To Do list.
Someday they will call their old friends.

I checked the calendar but there was no Someday.
Only Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and you know….other days.

How to turn Someday into a day that is in the calendar?

Here are some tips:

1. Plan Your Day Upfront
Once you plan your day in advance, you will not come to the office in the morning and ask yourself: ‘what am I going to do today?’
You will seek and see solutions. You will no longer be escaping to things you like and procrastinating on those you don’t.
You will skip chit-chat or coffee with colleagues. By being proactive, instead of just reacting to your environment you’ll put yourself in control and get things done.

2. Decide on Top 3 Priorities
Pick 3 things that have to be done no matter what. Do them.
Make sure to distinguish things that are important vs those merely urgent.
Stay focused. Don’t do anything else until you’re done.

3. Eliminate Time Wasters
Office is amazing place. You meet people, enjoy free coffee, read newspaper or simply surf the net.
Be able to say ‘No’ to all time wasters and do not let others steal time from you.
Be master of your time or someone else will be.

4. Stay in Touch
We are not hardware designed to execute prescribed tasks.
There are moments, when your To Do list should be put aside.
Many times, trying to be very efficient can ruin personal relationships.
Listen with your ears and judge with your heart.
Putting aside task at hand and showing genuine care for person is sometimes the best thing you can do.

Best career advice I’ve got while in P&G was:
“You have to succeed regardless of your boss”

I have it on my mind since then in every tough situation.

You have to succeed regardless of weak economy
You have to succeed regardless of what people say
You have to succeed regardless of where and who you were born
You have to succeed regardless … fill in your excuse …

Firing people is never easy. Hiring even more so.
The better job you do on hiring side, the less job you have to do on firing.

Over years of running my own company I had to hire and fire many people.
I never got used to firing people, so I tried to focus on best possible hiring to avoid this pain.

These days hiring process at Chefparade.cz looks as follows:
Step 1: send us motivational letter answering 4 questions
i) give us specific example when you came up with new solution
ii) give us specific example on situation when you did an extra step
iii) give us specific example when you solved problem
iv) what would you improve on our website

Step 2: testing – candidates with reasonable answers (Step 1) will go through GMAT kind of test consisting of 3 parts
i) math and calculus (to prove he/she is smart)
ii) text understanding (to show he/she can see important things)
iii) logic (to see he/she can connect things)

We have benchmarked all previous employees and some friends in managerial positions and set a border of minimum 85% score to get in.

Step 3: personal interview – we always have 2 people doing interview together (one man and one woman) to have different views on candidate.
It is crucial to get specific examples of past achievements.
We use many small questions here.

Step 4: cooking together – remaining candidates are invited to cook with all Chefparade staff and we spend evening cooking, eating and talking.

Every candidate can talk to anyone from Chefparade in informal environment and all Chefparade employees get to know all candidates.

Once evening is over, and candidates leave, everybody will make a list of who they would hire (without discussing with others).
Then all lists are collected and we start discussion. Person who gets most votes gets hired.

This process is time consuming, expensive and takes lot of efforts to administer and organise.
As a result you will get quality person who most probably fits your company culture.
And you save yourself job of firing couple months down the road.

Your desk is the extension of your mind – this is what Gordon, my colleague at P&G used to say.
I am strongly convinced that he’s right. I have never yet met successful, productive person who would have messy desk.

All successful people I know have clean desk with only what they really need on it (things they work on right now), bit of personal items, solid filing system and clear (as sharp clear) calendar.

This is also working the other way around.
If you have many things in mind, don’t really know what to do, where to start – there is a simple solution – start cleaning your workspace.

After you throw away some papers, file couple documents, put pencils at their place suddenly what you will notice is that things in your mind are becoming clearer and more structured.
It’s like sun coming out of the clouds after the rain.

For me it works and I am convinced it will work for you.

This is video from my speech at Creative Mornings Prague.
I talk about how to make great steak and also how to build a great company.

You can also find key ideas presented in this video in this post.

Still, if you want recipe for a great steak you need to watch a video 🙂

Everybody wants to be successful. People want to be happy, healthy, wealthy, have friends and enjoy what life has to offer.
Success like everything on this planet has a price tag. And not everyone is willing to pay the price.

Take simple example – being healthy. To be healthy you must eat well, exercise, stay away from smoking and drugs, get enough sleep etc. All of this takes a lot of effort … like skipping that good looking dessert after dinner. Or, think about last time you cancelled your jogging/exercise because you were too tired after all day work… and this is price to pay

On business side – everybody wants to have strong, growing and profitable business.
But, are you ready to pay the price? Long hours, hard work, risk of losing everything, stress, zillion obstacles to overcome, employees, bureaucracy and tons of others… this is the price to pay.

I am meeting too many people who want to have their own companies but I don’t feel they are ready and willing to pay the price. They don’t see all effort, energy and determination that is behind every overnight success, I guess they believe it really happened overnight.

To be successful in anything – be it life or business – you must be ready to pay the price.
It’s OK if you don’t but then don’t expect to be successful.

Next time you just don’t feel like doing something that needs to be done, put yourself together and do it.
This is the price you pay… to be successful.

Break the rules
If you don’t then you end up being average
If you go with the crowd you can only get as far as the crowd goes
If people watch TV, you read the books
If others quit, you stick bit longer and give it a bit more
If you do what others do you will have what others have
Break the rules

Many times your employees will try to get away with bullshiting about tasks they have had to do. Like, “did you call our potential clients who were interested last year?” – “yes, I called like half of them already”. This is clear bullshit and you can’t simply leave it like that. Best thing here is to ask simple questions: who did you call? what did they say? when exactly do you call others? etc.

Or different example, our operations manager is preparing shopping list. You take a look at it and ask: i) why we need this item? ii) why 3kg of this? iii) how much we needed last time? If he will give you answer that makes sense, all you have to say is Thank you! and be happy you have great people working for you.
Unfortunately, most of the time this is not the case.

All the simple questions (how many? when? who? how much? why?) will help you challenge your people without being offensive. You simply show, you care more and want to go deeper to understand.

More importantly, when they will become used to fact the you’re asking them these questions all the time, they will start to ask them themselves (to prepare for your questioning) – thus they will start challenging themselves.

This will help you tremendously as your people will get much more effective and start thinking about what and why they are doing.
Guaranteed.