Scott Trench (32:24)
I'll be really clear. I would change this depending on business context. Right? So like if I had a very seasonal business, for example, like that, like we had that Christmas tree lighting business or whatever. Yes, that guy. Like this would be silly to do in that context. Right. This is a business that, this was a media business that had that. Right. That Christmas tree business. What I would be doing is I'd be building out a projection of what I thought sales and operations would look like during the season. And I'd be really intentional about following that curve right across there. How am I above or below that curve of sales and interest and operations in there that I thought I would be in? Then I would spend a lot of time reviewing it, then probably sit back and work on something strategic or some other Other, other lines for the other eight, nine months of the year. But it's. So it's mapping this to the, to the context that's really important here. But that, but I would certainly put in that rigidity to that stat portion of the seasonal business. If that was a hundred person business, you know that, that direct that, that, that required the, the executive oversight and to do not just a single person. This would be silly for one person Christmas tree lighting business to do. But I'm using that as an example of the seasonality. There would be differences in this approach if the sales process was a monthly subscription product or something like that, or a tax business, for example. But anyways, I digress there. Next up is the hiring and performance management process which is the whole key to this. I think this is the. After setting the strategy and saying what are we going to do and how do we win? And do I understand the customer? It's, it's. How do I say here's my plan, how do I actually get it to get it executed? And how do I get the people that I'm hiring to improve upon the plan? Right? I should be handing them, I should be handing a draft a good idea of what I need my, the CFO to do and they should take that spirit and improve upon it. Right? If, if things are going well. So this is where this became central to our process here about what I call the unicorn search. Right. So if I want to hire an elite CFO for an organization, something that's in a really critical position, what I do is I actually invent a fake person first. I say if I could write down a piece of paper and invent this person, what would their skill set be? Well, they would have experience at several repetitions at businesses just like ours. They would have a. They would be insanely efficient at closing the books and completing the monthly reporting package. There'd be no errors or the errors would be so infrequent that they'd be memorable. They'd be memorable in the context of this. That's how strong the basics are. They'd knock out all those basics right away in the first 90 days. I don't have to worry about it. I don't even think about it. I just hit a report every month and it's always right. And it tells me what's going on and why. Right? Then we move on to value added finance. And this person is a strong operational leader. I can hand off portions of the divisions that are in trouble or that need extra attention to them. So I Can focus on the next big opportunity and their strong executive presence in the room. Very rigid, very making sure that things are moving forward there, they're aligned, they push back and say, here's what I think. I don't have to babysit them with the board. They go directly to the board. I don't want to go interface with the board about why this line item was higher or lower last month. The CFO is going directly to them and I trust that relationship because I'm sitting next to them every single day and we're talking about these things on a regular basis. They have an M and A framework. They're very rigorous and thorough. But also understand what we're trying to do and are not just conservative cost cutters. They're aggressive revenue, aggressive about revenue opportunities and growth in there. So I'll put that down. Right? Those are hard won situations, right? You, if you're listening to this, are probably thinking about your own boss or your bosses in the past or people that have worked for you and saying here are the things that they did well and here are the things that I wish they would have done. So invent the perfect person, right? Then once we have the fictional perfect person, I create what's called a set of first round draft picks. So these are going to be. If I could wave a magic wand and poach people from the industry, it would be this person, this person, this person and this person, this person. They're phys, they're actual people. Right. And then we go outbound to those people and invite them to apply for the job. Right. That's typically done with an executive recruiter at this level, but you could do this with your HR person. And in fact, Nigel, our old HR guy, used to do this for me in certain roles that didn't warrant an executive recruiter function. We also do a second round draft picks or whatever in there and then we'll post the job because we may miss people as well as part of that. So from there we have our interview process. Nothing special about our interview process necessarily in there. I don't, you know, this is standard, rigorous stuff where we'll have executives talk to people. But the real thing that I think is really important about our interview process or the one I would bring is at the end of it, I ask the executive to use my definition of strategy, diagnosis, guiding principles, specific action, and tell me what they think they need to do in the first 90 days, first year at the company. And that's a presentation that's specific and actionable in there. And when I like it, I redraft my job description or the, whatever, offer them the job with that and that's what they go to town executing on so I don't lose this first 90 days. So common to executive hires where they go in and play this, you know, I'm going to learn and whatever they're going to learn too. Like we're not going to go in and just, just make a big mess right away, but we're going to come in with a clear hypothesis about what to do in the, in the early days and we're going to align on that with the executive and the board so that if there's a hiring plan that's part of the job acceptance, if there's a, you know, change or a change in roadmap, you know, that's going to be part of the hiring process. So that's a really critical process for me and I'm spending a lot of time on it intentionally because that is such a huge component of the CEO job, in particular, such a huge component of executive function as well. And again, one last thing on this, a big part of this is knowing what good looks like in this person. And I try to be very prescriptive about this. I have what's called a scorecard that is alongside the job description that says this person's mission is to, for example, bring a culture of value added finance to the entire organization and then it will be very prescriptive about the outputs. Finance 101 is knocked out after 90 days. We don't talk about it, we don't worry about it. You're not coming to me telling me you can't do anything important work like M and A or strategic planning because you're bogged down and closing the books or building the financial, you know, building the projection for the next month, you knocking that out in a reasonable period of time, 40 hours a month, 25, 30% of your time, and you're spending the rest on driving the business. And if you're not up for that, you're not going to work out here. That's because that's in the scorecard before we hire Jeff on this. And that then is updated every year with the executive in alignment. And I give a performance review based on how much of that we complete or not. So that's central. That's my whole job, I believe is refining, is deriving these artifacts, these performance management artifacts from a central strategy and making sure that they are more or less executed across the year. And yeah, there's PIVOTS and changes from time to time. But that's the job.
