Jesse Meijers » Entrepreneurship

Go R.O.W.E – Results Only Work Environment

Jesse Meijers — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 19:00:40 +0000

Recently I posted about location independency. This is one of the great opportunities that the Internet has given us. But it also means that we need to adopt our management strategy, to match the location independency of our team. The Results Only Work Environment is a proven strategy used by a few very successful companies (large and small) to do just that.

The idea behind R.O.W.E.

R.O.W.E. is a strategy which focuses not on how many hours we make, but on the results we achieve. This means that workers have complete freedom in choosing their hours, and choosing in which way they do their work.

Obviously some jobs don’t allow for completely free choices, but there are strategies to make this work well. An example would be a system where you’d have to make sure, as a team, that the presence rate is at a certain level. This is true for call centers for example. However, if done well, it doesn’t matter whether the call center agent works from the office or from home. Or from the beach on Hawaii for that matter.

What counts is results. And results are measured in happiness of workers, the retention rate of workers/talent, worker productivity, and lastly financial results. The key thing here is that R.O.W.E. focuses on the people, not the finances per se.

Business Culture Shift

The old business culture where we try to make people fit into the 9-5 schedule isn’t working anymore. We are in a global financial crises because our old bonus structure isn’t doing a good job in making good executives, there are traffic jams longer than ever before every day and many, many people are not happy working the job they have. Something needs to change. Now.

I have often stated things as ‘I do not care whether you earn $10.000,- an hour’ and people look at me in amazement, because they don’t understand. What I mean by this is that I only care about results. If I pay you $5.000,- because what you give me as a result is worth $5.000,- to me, does it really matter whether you do that in 30 minutes or 100 hours? No!

This is a very big culture shift for business owners and managers alike. We were taught from pre-school on that there are set times to do almost everything. Especially work. But studies have shown that 9-5 are not good times for everyone. People will be happier when they can pick up the kids at 3 pm from school, without discussion. And as a result people have more fun in their work and yield a higher productivity!

Example Companies

Great examples of companies who have adopted R.O.W.E. like mindsets are Atlassian and Google. Atlassian has gone completely R.O.W.E. and while at first the company had some struggles (people had to get used to it and kept showing up 9-5), eventually everyone was very happy about it. Some employees who couldn’t handle the newly given freedom and responsibility left, but as a result the team is much more in sync now.

The second example is Google. Google has a 20% rule. 20% of your time is spent on doing something that you choose to work on. A pet project for example, or a crazy new idea you have for an online service. People work on these things with all their heart, because it is something they love. Things that have come out of this? Maps and GMail are only two examples of fantastic services that are directly a result from the 20% rule. Isn’t that amazing!?

Go R.O.W.E. too!

If you are intrigued by this, there is a website which explains in more detail what R.O.W.E. is about. They also offer consulting on the topic. As a note, I am completely unrelated to this company, and make no money at all from mentioning them. I just found them via Google when searching for R.O.W.E. implementors, so go ahead and have a look too: www.gorowe.com.

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Intrinsic motivation versus extrinsic motivation

Jesse Meijers — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 18:56:54 +0000

The current economic crisis has led to a lot of new insights in how we should deal with our economy. On of those insights is that it seems that big bonuses don’t seem to work well. The banks of who the top executives had huge bonuses, haven’t exactly performed very well. There is a different way to get results, and would you believe me if I told you this has actually been scientifically proven and has been known for over 60 years?

Extrinsic Motivation

Whenever we encourage someone to do something in exchange of a reward, we are extrinsically motivating them. In simpler terms, their motivation should come from external stimuli, such as a money bonus for example.

The financial crisis has shown that these extrinsic motivations do not actually produce the results we expect from them. We would expect people to improve in performance if we give them the proverbial carrot to chase. Using the proverbial stick to ‘punish’ unwanted behavior has the same counter-intuitive effect.

Our society is drenched with extrinsic motivation. From a young age, we are given rewards and punishments for wanted and unwanted behavior respectively. It is no wonder we don’t know better than to use extrinsic motivation to get what we want from others…

Intrinsic Motivation

The opposite of extrinsic motivation is intrinsic motivation. It is the motivation we get from inside ourselves, without any other external rewards, when doing something.

Intrinsic motivation is what drives people to play an instrument, do sports, learn photography, etc, without ever having a chance to make a single dime from their efforts. Their intrinsic motivation consists of a form of fulfillment they get when pursuing the activity.

This intrinsic motivation is hardly used by entrepreneurs, executives and managers. While we all know what it is, because we all have activities we do without any gain other than personal fulfillment (i.e. fun).

Scientific Proof

There is actually scientific proof that extrinsic motivation isn’t nearly as effective as intrinsic motivation. As early as 1949 an experiment was conducted by Harry F. Harlow, that suggested that intrinsic motivation was present in primates.

The experiment showed results that were so controversial, that the idea was completely ignored until 1969. In that year Edward Deci got interested in the topic, and decided to use it for his dissertation at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Soma Cube

Edward Deci used the Soma cube, which is a puzzle consisting of 7 pieces which look like Tetris blocks. Deci divided his test subjects into two groups; group A and group B. Both groups were taking part in three sessions of one hour each, during three days.

Each session took part as follows. The participant entered a room where the pieces of the Soma puzzle were placed on a table, drawings of three possible configurations of the puzzle and copies of Time Magazine, The New Yorker and Playboy (remember, it was 1969). Deci was on the other end of the table to give instructions.

During the sessions the participants of both groups had to reconstruct the configurations they were presented on paper, using the Soma puzzle pieces. During the second session they did the same with new drawings, but now Deci told the participants from group A that they could earn a dollar (equivalent to roughly 5 dollars today) for every configuration they successfully built. Group B wasn’t given a reward.

The last day was the same as the first, so neither group was given a reward. The final schedule looked like this:

	Day 1	Day 2	Day 3
Group A	No reward	Reward	No reward
Group B	No reward	No reward	No reward

The crucial part took place half way during the second session. When the participant had reproduced two of the three configurations, Deci stopped the experiment. He told them he had to enter the results in a computer (big, slow machines back then) to determine which drawing to give the participant next. This meant that Deci had to leave the room. In the meanwhile, the participant was allowed to ‘do something for themselves’.

Instead of entering the results, Deci went to a room with a two-way mirror to observe the participant. During exactly 8 minutes he observed the participant’s behavior.

Day 1 showed little difference between group A and B. Both continued with the puzzle for roughly 3,5 minutes before starting to do something else. On day 2 group A (the paid group) performed better than group B (non-paid group), spending over 5 minutes on the Soma puzzle.

But the interesting thing happened on day 3. Deci told the participants from group A that there was only enough money to pay them for one day, so that the last day was unpaid. The participants from group B spent more time on the puzzle than they had before. But the participants from group A (the previously paid group) spent far less time on the puzzle.

This led to the conclusion that human motivation works in completely different ways than we had until then taken under consideration.

Other Experiments, Same Conclusion

There have been countless other experiments that have been conducted since, that all prove the same thing. The reason to conduct so many experiments was that the results are so counter-intuitive, that they are hard to accept.

The conclusion always was that when people are motivated intrinsically, they perform better and more consistently than when they are motivated extrinsically.

Extrinsic motivation works very well for a short duration. Much like caffeine does, before the effect wears off. But if you want to have good performance from your employees or team members, they need to be intrinsically motivated!

Title image copyright by Paul Foreman – Mindmapinspiration.com

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How to create a location independent office

Jesse Meijers — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 12:34:48 +0000

With the internet becoming an ever greater part of our lives, there are more and more possibilities. One of those interesting possibilities is to make yourself, and your office, location independent. As an entrepreneur, there is no greater feat than location independency. It makes your life so much easier and much more fun!

Location Independency

With the term ‘location independency’ I mean the fact that you can work from ‘anywhere’ in the world. Basically, it doesn’t matter whether you’re enjoying a cappuccino in Italy or you are sitting in an office in New York. Either way, you can do your job.

To translate this to an office, let me first say that I view an office as a place where my employees can work. We prefer an office because it is a place to go to every day, to do our job. However, I want to make sure that my employees can do their work from home, or better yet, from a nice cafe if they want to. That is what location independence is all about: working from where ever you are.

Internet

We recently moved our office and it amazed me how easy it was. We picked up our laptops, some small stuff like a printer and some ordners and we were basically good to go.

When we arrived in the new office, all we had to do was enable the new wireless internet connection on our laptops, and we could continue to work. We moved in about 2 hours. Okay, we moved one door down, but still, 2 hours is pretty fast.

All we need for our employees is for them to have internet access, and their laptop.

Our Setup

The setup we use is pretty simple. We use only hosted applications for our main business applications. This allows us to access them through a web-browser from anywhere that we have an internet connection. In our case, this is our customer portal, project management system and CRM (Customer Relation Management) system.

Our e-mail is hosted through Hosted Exchange, which means we can connect our laptops, home computers and mobile phones to it easily to get any mail or calendar updates we get.

We use a file server which is also hosted, and connect through a VPN (Virtual Private Network). Then we can easily access the files as if they were stored locally.

All our mobile phones have internet access, with a flat fee subscription service. The mobile phones can be connected to the laptop and function as a modem. This means that we can go online anywhere that our mobile phone has internet access.

My Location Independency Gadgets

It has happened on many occasions that I was sitting at a road side cafe, waiting to go to a next meeting, that I had to get some work done. Simply connecting my mobile pho

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The OTOM principle: Other people’s Time, Other people’s Money

Jesse Meijers — Tue, 18 May 2010 22:15:20 +0000

There is a principle that is widely used amongst successful entrepreneurs, and especially those with the aim of making money. This principle is called the OTOM principle: Other people’s Time and Other people’s Money.

Leverage

The first thing you have to understand about the OTOM principle, is the principle of leverage. In very simple terms, leverage means that you use less to achieve more. The term comes from mechanics, but is very easily explained by a simple picture:

You can achieve more with less, by using leverage. In this case, the 50 lbs weight tips the scale in its favor, even though the 400 lbs weight is obviously heavier. This is exactly what leverage does.

Other People’s Money – Financial Leverage

Leverage in financial terms means to use debt to supplement investment. But it can be explained simpler than that. You borrow money at a certain expense (interest) to earn more money than you have to pay in interest.

There is a great example which will immediately show you the power of using Other people’s Money to yield higher percentage returns on your investment.

Let’s assume we are buying a property at the cost of $100.000,-. If we buy this property with our own money, we have nothing to pay in interest. If we sell this property after a year for $120.000,- we have made a whopping $20.000,- profit (we won’t take into account any rental income you could have earned for the sake of simplicity). This comes down to a 20% return on investment ($20.000 / $100.000).

Not bad, considering the bank gives you about 3-5% return on investment per year (interest on your savings account) currently!

But now consider this. Instead of pouring in $100.000,- of your own hard earned cash, you only pay $10.000,- and borrow the other $90.000,- against 10% interest at a bank (current interest rates are actually much lower). This means if you sell the house after a year you have not earned $20.000,- but only $11.000,- because you have to pay $9.000,- (10% of $90.000,-) interest. But after paying back the loan and paying the interest, you have made $11.000,- by investing $10.000,- which equals a whopping 110% return on investment ($11.000 / $10.000)!

Here’s an overview of the numbers:

	Your Own Money	Other People’s Money
Downpayment	$100.000,00	$10.000,00
Loan	$0,00	$90.000,00
Interest Payment (10%)	$0,00	$9.000,00
Gross Profit *	$20.000	$20.000
Profit (Gross Profit – Interest)	$20.000	$11.000
Return on Investment (Profit / Downpayment)	20%	110%

* Based on selling the property for $120.000,- after 1 year

This means that you could do 10 investments by using the Other People’s Money principle, than you could with the Your Own Money principle, if you had $100.000,- to invest with. This would mean that you could make $110.000 in a year with the Other People’s Money principle, whereas with the Your Own Money principle you would only make $20.000!

Other People’s Time – Time Leverage

Using other people’s time is a form of leveraging the time you have to spend. Let’s face it, here we are all equals, we all live NOW and none of us really knows how much time there is for us on this world. Or more philosophically speaking: time is your most valuable asset, and you’re running out of it at a steady pace.

Basically Other People’s Time can be explained along the lines of an investment as well. Let’s say you have a project which would mean you’d earn $100.000,-. The project would cost you 10 weeks working full time to do by yourself, so this means you earn $1000,- per week.

The Other People’s Time solution to this problem would be to hire someone else to do the work for you, for example, an employee or a third party company. The trick is to find a cheaper way to do this, for example a company or person that can do it in the same amount of time for $80.000,-.

Your income would suffer, because the Other People’s Time solution would only mean $20.000,- in your pocket. While the Your Own Time solution would yield $100.000,-. But the big advantage is that you’ll spend far less time on searching a company or person to handle the work (let’s say 1 week) which means your weekly rate is much higher!

Here’s how the numbers work:

	Your Own Time	Other People’s Time
Turnover	$100.000,00	$100.000,00
Third Party Costs	$0,00	$80.000,00
Your Share	$100.000,00	$20.000,00
Time Spent (weeks)	10	1
Weekly Rate (Your Share / Time Spent)	$10.000,00	$20.000,00

As you can see, using Time Leverage can mean increasing your weekly rate with 100%!

Combining Other People’s Time and Other People’s Money

I hope that this article will lead you to understand the reason why people borrow money to build businesses. The borrowing money part is Other People’s Money, which is then used to hire people, the Other People’s Time part. This combination greatly increases your money making ability and is key to building a successful business.

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Create a win-win with these 3 simple rules

Jesse Meijers — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 09:33:07 +0000

The concept of win-win was introduced by Stephen Covey. A win-win situation is one where both parties in an agreement ‘win’. For example a customer of mine wants a special software application. I know that I can sell the same application to another customer, with a few minor modifications. So I give my customer a discount (his win) in return for the right to sell the application to another customer (my win).

In this situation I have applied 3 rules for creating a win-win. If you use these rules you will make sure that any agreement you will make is a win-win agreement.

Rule 1: What don’t you want?

The first rule is to make sure you know exactly what you don’t want. If we use the above example, I don’t want to give a discount without a benefit on my side.

The idea behind the first rule is to get yourself comfortable with the option of not making an agreement. If the agreement can only be made with you ending up in a situation you do not want; then don’t make an agreement.

Always remember: it is not a bad thing to not make an agreement!

Rule 2: What do I have to offer?

The second win-win rule is that you identify exactly what you have to offer the other party. In our example, I have a certain discount to offer. I could decide to be willing to offer a 5-10% discount, so that is what I have to offer. Another possibility would be to offer extra functionality for the same price.

Again this rule determines, in a way, what you do not have to offer. I do not have 25% discount to offer. If you have a clear picture of what you have to offer, it makes the process of making a win-win agreement much easier.

Rule 3: What do I want?

The final rule is concerned with specifying exactly what you want from the other party. In the example, this would be the right to sell the application to another customer, including minor modifications.

This final rule is used to identify whether what the other person has to offer to your own needs.

Preparation is key

Whenever you are about to make an agreement, make sure you use these rules before going into the meeting. Just make a quick note for yourself with the answers to rule 1, 2 and 3.

This way you will make sure that you do not give away things you don’t want to give away. It also makes sure that you know what you want in return. And above all, that you do not end up in a situation that you absolutely don’t want to be in!

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Identifying Core Qualities, Pitfalls, Challenges and Allergies in Teams with Daniel Ofman

Jesse Meijers — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 07:27:21 +0000

The post on the Daniel Ofman model that I posted recently explains the Core Quality model very clearly. But it only focuses on personal personality traits, not on those of others. The question is; can we use the Daniel Ofman model for teams? The answer is yes… with a little adaptation, this is certainly possible.

Step 1 – Personal Traits

The first step to use the Daniel Ofman model for teams is to start with a normal model, for your self. Since this process is explained in detail in Identifying your Core Qualities, Pitfalls, Challenges and Allergies with Daniel Ofman, I won’t go into detail here. Remember the complete model:

Step 2 – Pitfall as Allergy

The second step that we’ll take is to identify our pitfall as someone else’s allergy. In other words; something we tend to do which gets on another person’s nerves:

Step 3 – The other person’s personality traits

The final step in this model is to identify the other person’s Core Quality, Pitfall and Challenge. This is done by simply traversing model, starting from the other person’s Allergy, to his or her Core Quality, his or her Pitfall and finally his or her Challenge:

Example

As a final explanation, let me give you an example. This example builds on the previous example, used in the article Identifying your Core Qualities, Pitfalls, Challenges and Allergies with Daniel Ofman:

So, from my Pitfall (being ‘Too Busy’), we can identify that the other person’s core quality must be a Relaxed Attitude. So it is someone who doesn’t easily become stressed. The pitfall for this is Laziness (note that this happens to be my Allergy). From here we can deduce that the other person’s challenge is, in fact, my Core Quality (Proactivity).

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How successful entrepreneurs organize their business advisers

Jesse Meijers — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 11:46:23 +0000

All successful entrepreneurs have a group of business advisers. Basically, this group is a number of people that you have around you for advice. But let’s face it, we can’t just go to anyone for entrepreneurial advice … so how do we pick the people we need in our adviser group?

No one knows it all…

If you’ve ever met someone who knows everything … they probably hadn’t accomplished much. There are many people who think they know how to do things best. For example, everyone around me can tell me how you can become rich. Yet none of them are rich…

I’d rather listen to advice from people who have a proven track record. I don’t take accounting advice from my baker, nor do I take baking advice from my accountant (unless he happens to be an exceptional cook too of course). You definitely want your advisers to be experts in their field. Stop listening to your bum friend who keeps telling you how you can become successful.

Don’t think you should know it all. Intelligence defined as IQ has little to do with being a savvy entrepreneur. Actually, there are many entrepreneurs that aren’t ‘IQ smart’ but are very successful. What those entrepreneurs can teach you is that it isn’t about knowing it all, but about finding the people who do know it, and combining their knowledge.

The 5 fields of expertise you need

In order to combine the knowledge of several experts, you first need to determine which fields of expertise you need. Apart from specific expertise in your field of work, there are 5 fields you need:

Personal development
Accounting
Investing
Marketing
Law

1. Your Personal Development Adviser

I believe that the only way to become truly successful is to keep working on yourself. There is an unlimited amount of learning you can do in this field, and the sooner you begin, the more effective your achievements are. As an advisor in the personal development field, I highly recommend you find a personal coach.

2. The Accounting Adviser

This one is simple, hire an accountant. Many entrepreneurs who just start out try to do their own accounting… This is the stupidest thing you can do. And I should know, because I was one of them. Why is this stupid? Well, because:

You don’t like accounting
You are not good at accounting

And the fact is, you don’t need to be. You only need a general understanding of the numbers. Reading a balance sheet, understanding cash flow, those are the things you need to be able to do. Booking stuff and filing tax reports is what your accountant can do for you.

Find an accountant who also offers to do your bookkeeping, so you can easily do it all at a single company. Of course, the accounting advice may cost more than the bookkeeping. Also make sure you have an accountant you trust and, preferably, one that is easily accessible. Don’t become a number at some big accounting firm that ‘has a good name’.

3. Investing

This is one field where you should NOT get an adviser. I hear you thinking ‘but there are so many of them’. Yes, and are any of them rich? No! Well, then why would you listen to them!?

There are many different ways of investing and I’ll give you a few options here. Try to find one that suits you, learn about it and get your feet wet slowly. As you learn, you’ll become better:

Stock market
Real estate
Gold/Silver coins
Art
Start ups

Many more opportunities exist and the best thing you can do is to get started now.

4. Marketing

Don’t try to become the world’s best copywriter. Also don’t try to know everything about Internet marketing. Why? Because you can hire people to do it for you.

If like me, you are interested in Internet marketing then maybe you’ve picked up a course from one of the people who have made a lot of money with it. Well, I bought and studied several courses and there was 1 thing they all had in common. The marketing person wasn’t alone. They just use their name. They run a company just like you do.

So the bottom line is: the marketing guru isn’t actually a marketing guru. He is an entrepreneur who hires people with great marketing knowledge and puts this into a course. Nothing wrong with this, as long as you’re aware of how it works.

Personally I have 2 advisers here. One is a good friend who is an online marketing specialist, so I learn cool stuff from him. And best of all; I only have to buy him a beer or give him some of my advice for free in return.

The other is a company we hired to come up with a marketing concept. It costs us a lot of money, but the result is something we could never have come up with ourselves. That includes our entire team of smart people (about 20). Because the company we hired has marketing experts.

All in all, it is cheaper to hire them than to come up with something bad yourself!

5. Law

The final piece of the puzzle is law. You have to understand the law. Of course you don’t learn all of the laws by heart, that would be silly. Instead, you hire an attorney and/or a notary.

Make sure that all of your important contracts pass the notary. It costs you money now, but saves you money in the long run (your first lesson in investment – right there!).

How to use your advisers

You don’t carry your team of advisers in your briefcase, obviously. Rather, you use them as you see fit. That said, I try to keep to the following intervals with my advisers:

Personal coach: every month
Accountant: every quarter
Marketing: every quarter
Law: once a year

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Why every entrepreneur needs a personal coach

Jesse Meijers — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 07:30:00 +0000

In the last year and a half that I have had a coach, I have had amazing things happen to me. Do I think this is coincidence? Not a chance. It has to do with creating a surrounding for yourself in which you can blossom.

Why I started with a coach

I have read many blogs that advocate coaching, but most of those have coaching to sell. I don’t. So let’s just get started with me telling you why I hired a coach a little over a year ago.

A year ago I was just starting the discussions about starting a joint-venture between my company and a management consultancy firm. The discussions had a level to them that I couldn’t understand. There were things being said which I heard, but the meaning was unclear to me. You can compare this to standing in a dark river where you know there are fish because you see fishermen, but you can’t see the fish. I couldn’t see the meaning.

I needed a way to understand what exactly was going on in these meetings and someone I knew told me that I should go see a coach. He knew just the guy for me.

What I’ve learned since then

Since I started with my coach, I have learned more things than I could have ever imagined when I just started. He opened a world to me that includes personal development, sales but also coaching my employees. It is simply fantastic.

My coach has helped me break a barrier that I was walking into only a year ago, that I couldn’t break myself. My problem was that I didn’t use my intuition enough. Well, I recently did a test that showed that I am now actually perfectly capable of using my intuition. It is just a matter of choosing to do so. I couldn’t have done this without my coach, or at least not within a year. It might have taken years and years…

A note on cost

There is one thing that I have come to realise. You need other people to make you better. You cannot do it on your own. That is why I have a coach. But having a coach is NOT cheap. I won’t disclose how much I pay, but don’t expect a good coach to be cheap. You are paying someone for their time exclusively with you, to help you get ahead.

But what you should understand is that this is worth the money. It is probably the best investment of my life. The costs that go into coaching are nothing compared to what I have earned by using these lessons. Not to mention what I’ll earn in the future because of it…

How you can find your personal coach

There are many personal coaches out there and if you search around on the Internet you’ll find many. I however am a strong believer in using your network to find one. Ask around if people know a coach and ask if it is okay to have a free tryout session with them.

If you are on this website and you happen to speak Dutch, make sure you check out the website of my coach! He comes highly recommended!

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Identifying your Core Qualities, Pitfalls, Challenges and Allergies with Daniel Ofman

Jesse Meijers — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 11:10:01 +0000

One of the best read articles on this website is the article on how to identify your strong and weak points by using the Belbin model. The Belbin model is great for discovering your strong and weak points, but there is more to it than that. In order to find out what, let’s take a look at the Core Quality model by Daniel Ofman.

Step 1 – Core Quality

The model is as simple as it is brilliant. Basically it is a four quadrant model, which means you start with drawing two axes. Then enter a core quality in the upper left quadrant. For example, proactiveness is one of my core qualities, so I would enter that in the upper left quadrant.

Step 2 – Pitfall

The next thing you do is think of what too much of your core quality would lead to. This is your pitfall, something that you must be careful of not to do.

Think of what too much of the core quality can lead to. Write this down in the upper right quadrant. For example, too much proactiveness can result in being too busy.

Step 3 – Challenge

After you have identified the pitfall that relates to the core quality, you can now find your challenge. Your challenge is something which doesn’t come quite natural to you, it takes an effort. But it is very important to do.

Think of the positive opposite of your pitfall and write this in the lower right quadrant. For example, the positive opposite of too busy is taking rest.

Step 4 – Allergy

The last step in the model is to identify your allergy. An allergy is a property in people that triggers a negative reaction in you.

Think about what too much of your challenge would lead to. This is your allergy, so write it down in the lower left quadrant. For example, too much rest leads to laziness, which is then the allergy.

Note that the positive opposite of the allergy is your core quality again, which completes the cycle.

Example

Here is the example of one of my core qualities, proactiveness. Too much proactiveness leads to being too busy. The opposite of that is to take enough rest. Taking too much rest however, leads to laziness, which is indeed one of my allergies.

You can use this model to identify those properties in other people that you are allergic too. But also to find what to avoid (pitfalls) and what you must do because it doesn’t come natural to you (challenges).

It is not necessary to start from the Core Quality quadrant, but usually this is the easiest. If you want, you can start from any of the four quadrants.

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10 Smart Tips for an Excellent Job Interview from a High Ranking Bank Executive

Jesse Meijers — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:51:42 +0000

Recently we hired two people and already I am looking for another person to hire. Because I have only limited experience in handling employees and hiring people (I only employed 1 person before), I decided to see if there were people who could help me.

So I contacted my coach and I asked around in my network for people with extensive knowledge on job interviews. A high ranking bank executive of a big international bank who is a friend of our family wanted to help me out. He has about 30 years of experience with hiring people, so this was a great opportunity.

Whether you are an employee or a business owner who has never had a job in his life, at some point you will be faced with a job interview. You are either holding the interview or you are there applying for a job. Either way, these tips will help you a lot!

Tip 1: Be prepared!

This is probably an open door if you are applying for a job, but it pays to be prepared. Visit the company website and look up information on the person you are being interviewed by. Try to avoid asking questions to which the answer is easily found online or that you should have just known.

When you are holding the interview you want to read the resume and mark things that need further investigation. If you are doing the interview with someone else, make sure you both know your role and who is leading the interview.

Tip 2: Find out something interesting.

When you are applying for a job, try to find out something about the company in the news. This is an easy opener for the conversation and can help get the job interviewer in a talkative mood.

If you’re the job interviewer, you might want to see whether there is something in the resume of the applicant that he or she would be interested in to talk about. Start with this to get them into a more relaxed mood.

Tip 3: The 2 most important questions!

After the preparation is done, there are 2 questions that you must be able to answer in any job interview (and you must ask these or find them out if you are the interviewer!):

Why do you want this job / what is your motivation?
Why do you want to work for our company?

I cannot stress this enough: if either of these questions are answered with a negative answer, your job interview is over. If you are holding the interview, make sure you get a clear answer to these questions!

Tip 4: Always ‘pair up’.

If you are holding a job interview and are in the lucky position like I am that you have a human resource (HR) manager, have them sit in on the job interview. They are accustomed to asking the right sort of questions.

As an applicant you can use this to your advantage. Try to direct questions towards the hiring interviewer, not the HR interviewer. The hiring interviewer is usually more into talking about the company, whereas the HR interviewer just wants to ask you the nasty questions you’d rather avoid.

Tip 5: Never ‘partner up’!

If, like me, you have a business partner, this is perhaps the most valuable tip I have got. Never hold a job interview together. I cannot stress this enough. NEVER hold it together.

The reason is that when you do, you will have the same feeling because you have the same conversation. If however you both have an interview together with an HR interviewer, then you can independently assess whether you think the applicant ‘has what it takes’.

This is a VERY powerful tool that is almost too easy to use…

Tip 6: Let the HR interviewer ask the nasty questions…

Let the other person, who is more accustomed to do so anyway, ask the nasty questions. What are nasty questions? Nasty questions are those that question the answer to a previous question in a polite manner. For example:

Q: What is your experience in software engineering exactly?

A: Well, I have designed a sales system, CRM system and an Internet application.

Q: Can you give an example of a problem you ran into when designing the CRM system?

As an applicant you should be aware of these sorts of questions. The best way to avoid them is to ask a counter-question and direct it at the hiring interviewer! An example would be:

A: We ran into many problems, some big, most small. All the problems were eventually solved and the customer was very happy with the design. Is there a specific area of the design you want to know more about?

This diverts the question from the ‘problem area’ and gets it into the more descriptive and technical details.

Tip 7: Ask for experience!

Never ask questions along the lines of ‘what would you do if’. Always ask for experience. This keeps the applicant from thinking up an answer.

Tip 8: Ask for a salary indication

When you have a job opening and you don’t give out a salary indication, it is always good to ask the applicant for one. What they earn now, at their current job. If the applicant is interesting you can ask them to prove their claim in a later interview by bringing a salary slip.

If you are applying for a job without a salary indication, ask for one. Also ask what the secondary benefits are like a phone, lease car and number of vacation days, etc etc.

Tip 9: When in doubt… don’t do it!

Simple. If there is even a shred of doubt, don’t hire the person (or don’t go work for this company). Simple isn’t it? But very hard in practice, trust me!

Tip 10: The last question…

Whether you are the applicant or the interviewer, there is one question which is a great closing question:

Q: Do you need anything more from me at this time?

This ensures that you have talked about everything the other party has wanted to talk about.

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