NO SYSTEM. NO RESULTS.

THE STORY
Rusch Publishing, founded in 1994 by Alex Rusch, is one of Europe’s top publishers of audio books in the areas of self-help and management. Many of the company’s audio books are the best-selling American books, including Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Fit for Life, and others. Rusch also publishes books and magazines, and conducts seminars under a number of other company names. But while the company is enjoying great success today, getting there hasn’t been an easy process particularly when it came to finding and hiring people who were as dedicated to the success of his company as he was.

Says Rusch, “At every stage, I’ve had adversity. But hiring and managing people has almost driven me to the edge. When you first start a business, it’s a one-man show. Then you start to grow the company and hire the people, and suddenly you’ve got staff problems. Usually, the people you hire at the beginning are not that efficient. Before you know it, you’ve got all these people working here, and you’ve got no efficiency. You’ve got no quality in customer service. You’ve got all these problems. I had to spend a lot more time wording my help wanted ads and doing interviews. We learned not to hire people until they’ve worked with us for a couple of days and demonstrated their skills and their fit with the company. And in Switzerland, there’s a three-month probation before you definitely hire anyone, so that helped.”

To grow your business, you have to hire employees. There is only so much value you can create by yourself, so hiring employees allows you to multiply the potential value of your company many times, creating an engine of growth that can quickly propel your company forward. However, when you begin to hire employees, you need to create an infrastructure of systems and policies to guide their efforts. In the early days of his business, Alex Rusch didn’t recognize the importance of management systems and controls and he feels his employees took advantage of the situation.
“I found that I needed to be tougher, not so easygoing. If you’re always a nice guy, if you don’t set goals or have any expectations, people work less; people are less productive; people are less efficient. Our business was growing, but I became certain that we were making less money because we had so many people here, and they were not that productive. Certain things just weren’t getting done, even though we had enough people. I know how long everything takes because I did everything myself in the beginning. I was a one-man show. I know how long all the processing takes, how long it takes to make a parcel, how long accounting takes. I’ve done everything in the past. Suddenly I noticed that we’ve got all these people, but they don’t get their work done. Things just sit on their desks. Certain things are just not getting done, even though they’ve had enough time to do them.

LESSONS LEARNED
“One of the lessons I’ve learned is that we need to have a company manual, and an operations manual. You need to have things written down. A manual that describes all the steps in all our processes-step one, step two, step three, and so on-makes it easier to explain to people how we do things and helps them not to forget anything. The manual needs to be something that people can easily read and easily apply. That’s been a big help.
“We have also developed some systems to track goals and assess productivity. For instance, we track incoming phone calls. Every employee is required to write down all the phone calls that came in that they answer. First, that enables me to learn who called and why they were calling. Second, I can see how many people called when I look at all the sheets of the day. When employees tell me they didn’t get their work done because the phone rings too often, I can say, ‘That’s not really true; it didn’t ring that often. Look at your sheet. You only picked up ten phone calls yesterday. That’s no excuse for not getting your work done.’ And when the volume of calls picks up, I can tell from the sheet, and then I can decide whether we need to hire someone else. I don’t like too much administration, but there are certain policies, procedures an forms that you need to manage your company.

“I need to have employees. There’s no other way because we need the people at the phone; we need to have people who sell. But, you have to feed all these people. You have to pay them salaries. And when you feel they don’t put in enough effort to justify that salary, you have to act quickly to change their behavior or you have to let them go.”

“At the beginning of the year I hired a customer services manager who used to work for a large corporation, but I had to fire her after two months because she couldn’t change her large company mentality. She was used to being in meetings all day and she kept wanting to have meetings. We are a very small company, and everybody here has to work. I have to work. We can’t just sit in meetings all day long.

“I had to fire somebody last week who was here for only six weeks. He was very unproductive. I warned him, but it didn’t get any better. In the past, I probably would have kept that person three or four months just to see what would happen—hoping for improvement. But now, I don’t wait that long. I can tell a lot faster if somebody is going to work out. I knew that he would never be productive. So I fired him after six weeks. It just needed to be done. You can’t just wait, and you can’t just hope. It’s difficult if you have to fire somebody and that person becomes unemployed; it was real tough for me last week. But it had to be done in the interest of the company.”

Alex Rusch has learned that people are essential to his success, but they need to be managed and led. He learned to take more time hiring people and trying them out. He now sets goals and has developed a company manual and an operations manual that describe the various steps in the process. He tracks activities, assesses individual performance, provides feedback, warns employees whose performance doesn’t meet his standards, then fires those who aren’t able or willing to perform. Rusch found that better management systems enabled his employees to be more productive and his company to be more profitable. And when he determines the people will not work out in his company, he doesn’t wait a long time to fire them. Some might say Rusch is harsh when he says, “You can’t wait. You can’t hope…. It has to be done in the interest of the company.” But if you want to be successful and grow, you have to hire and develop a team of people who share your company’s values and will perform according to your expectations. If you have hired the wrong people, you need to follow due process, and then let them go. If you don’t fire them, you send the wrong signal to those employees who are working hard and share your values, and they will become de-motivated. If you don’t fire poor performers, your company’s performance will be negatively affected. And if you do fire them, they have an opportunity to look for another company that’s a better fit with their values, performance capabilities, and career aspirations.