Dear Little Brother,

At some point in your management career you will have an employee where you realize that it is probably time they moved on and did something else.

And because you are human will likely use some kind of justification to keep that person around just a little longer to see if you can make them successful.

The good news is there is a simple signal you can watch for to see if this is happening:

If you start moving furniture around, be careful.

Should you find yourself moving the furniture around (literally or figuratively) to accomodate an employee that is less than stellar, chances are you are violating the logic of the Fifth Rule of Management: Don’t Rearrange The Furniture.

I once worked at a small web design startup where the young managers had someone working as an administrative helper who just happened to be satanic cult member.

She was the usual superstar: showed up late, did poor work and was starting to become the punch line to the jokes we would tell at lunch.

One day she even showed up in a headband tied up like she had just graduated the initiation ceremony for a Compton street gang or was headed on tour with Kid Rock later in the afternoon.

Photo Credit

And in my experience, when someone shows up to a semi-normal office environment looking like they are going out with Kid Rock after previously being suspected of participating in satanic worship, people start talking.

They say things like:

When do you think “management” will get rid of her?

Or:

No way do I want [that person] sitting by me – have them sit on the opposite end of the office so I don’t have to deal with her.

Or:

Do you think maybe we can talk her into quitting, joining a biker gang and riding off into the sunset?

And after listening to everyone I worked with ask questions like that for a while, one day it happened.

“Management” decided to move the furniture.

And it was glorious.

Before the furniture moving started, I didn’t realize that it was actually possible to stack filing cabinets, fake ficus trees and cubicle walls in such a way that you could completely physically isolate someone from the rest of the team.

But it turns out it is — kind of.

“Management” moved desks, filing cabinets, trees and ficus trees so that while we were all aware that she was there, we couldn’t actually see her.

And it worked!

For about a week or so.

Everyone went about their work in that small office environment, and our bandana-wearing friend did her thing in complete obscurity.

But a problem remained.

Even after all of the furniture moving was done, the same problems still existed.

And a week later, one early morning when she came into work, “management” decided that it was finally time to have the it just isn’t working out conversation with her.

And after she was gone?

We had to move the furniture right back where it was before the furniture-moving-managment-experiment started.

And that is how the fifth rule of management was born:

Don’t Rearrange The Furniture.

Anytime you find yourself with an employee who isn’t doing a nice job at whatever-it-is-that-their-job-is, chances are they won’t be good at something else if you try to change their job.

Or more bluntly: if they are lousy at one job, chances are you as a manager changing their job isn’t suddenly going to make them a superstar.

So should you someday find yourself thinking that moving the furniture around is a good idea …

Save everyone some grief.

Tell them “it just isn’t working out”.

Love,
Justin

Related:

The First Rule of Management:Be There
The Second Rule of Management:Fire Fast
The Third Rule of Management:Never Shoot The Horse You Are Riding
The Fourth Rule of Management: No One Calls In Sick On Wednesdays

Some days I get busy playing a finance SEO messing around with ecommerce stuff and some days I get a chance to do other things.

Recently, I had a chance to sit down with two local sales legends, Chris Conrey and Dave Cooke. They rock a podcast they named “Don’t Sell Me Bro” and they let me sit down and grill them with all of the questions you always wanted to know about sales guys but were afraid to ask.

Just a few questions I fire away at these two pros:

1. How important is it to have an MBA and be able to read a balance sheet if you are a sales guy?
2. How much of a base salary do you need if you are a sales guy?
3. How many weekly reports should you fill out if you are in sales?
4. Does anyone really use salesforce?
5. Is it possible to have too many leads if you are a sales guy?
6. Is it possible to have too many leads for your sales guy if you are a sales manager?
7. Is it possible to have too many leads for your sales force if you are a company owner?
8. Do you want a VP of Sales or a VP of Marketing?

The entire session was split into multiple episodes, so if you liked part 1, be sure to tune in for part 2 — where it gets really good.

Update: Part 2!

There are a few things in life that I happen to be pretty good at.

And being a guy is one of them.

Candles, worrying about what the best eye cream is or shopping isn’t something that I think about every day.

So when I ran across this, I couldn’t help but think to myself …

Awesome.

Have you heard about “Man Cans” yet?

It’s about time someone injected some testosterone into the candle market and who better to pull it off than a 13 year old?

Man Cans: Ten Things I Like About Man Cans

1. When your wife tells you to light a candle, now you can surprise her with some great smells. No more suffering through the smell of bad flowers, vanilla or pumpkins. Well, at least it will work once.
2. You can now give candles out for birthday gifts to your dood friends and not lose your man card at the same time.
3. One of the scents you can order is … bacon.
4. You can mix up the smells. For example, I just ordered “opening day special” and plan to sit by a TV somewhere and smell leather, fresh cut grass and big league chew. All in the comfort of my own man cave.
5. It makes candles less wimpy.
6. There isn’t a multi-level-marketing scheme in place to sell these at poker parties and you don’t have to wait until Black Friday to buy ‘em, they have their merchant account set up and running today.
7. The founder of the company is probably still too young to know what some of the best smells in life are as a man. Which means he has quite a bit of room to discover new popular scents. Translation: product diversification is coming.
8. The founder can write off the scent discovery of these popular smells as a business expense.
9. It is a green company. Green is cool.

Man Cans: How ‘Bout These Smells?

If you have gotten this far and you happen to be a guy, chances are you are already thinking to yourself:

Man, I wish that kid would make a candle that smells like ________________.

Me?

I would like to put in my formal request that Man Cans makes acandle that smells like a new pair of Air Jordans when you take them out of the box.

Any of you other doods out there think of a scent request you would like to see?

Dear Little Brother,

Now that you are in charge of a group of people, I will let you in on a little secret that you may have not noticed before you were put in charge:

Rarely does anyone ever call in sick on Wednesday.

Fridays?

All the time.

Mondays?

Yep — Almost as bad as Fridays.

But almost never on a Wednesday.

So whenever flu season rolls around (or the hiccups or whatever), just remember – you are going to need to plan your work goals around some of your people just being out sick on any given Friday.

Or Monday.

I have always noticed that somehow Wednesdays seem to be good for getting stuff done that requires people … actually being at work.

Love,
Justin

Related:
The First Rule of Management: Be There
The Second Rule of Management: Fire Fast
The Third Rule of Management: Never Shoot The Horse You Are Riding