The 4-Hour Workweek by Ferriss Timothy

Author:Ferriss, Timothy [Ferriss, Timothy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, Self Help
ISBN: 9780307353139
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2007-03-31T23:00:00+00:00

Income Autopilot III

MBA—MANAGEMENT BY ABSENCE

The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.

—WARREN G. BENNIS, University of Southern California Professor of Business Administration; adviser to Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy

Most entrepreneurs don’t start out with automation as a goal. This leaves them open to mass confusion in a world where each business guru contradicts the next. Consider the following:

A company is stronger if it is bound by love rather than by fear…. If the employees come first, then they’re happy.

—HERB KELLEHER, cofounder of Southwest Airlines

Look, kiddie. I built this business by being a bastard. I run it by being a bastard. I’ll always be a bastard, and don’t you ever try to change me.50

—CHARLES REVSON, founder of Revlon, to a senior executive within his company

Hmm … Whom to follow? If you are fast on your feet, you’ll notice that I just offered you an either-or option. The good news is that, as usual, there is a third option.

The contradictory advice you find in business books and elsewhere usually relates to managing employees—how to handle the human element. Herb tells you to give them a hug, Revson tells you to kick them in the balls, and I tell you to solve the problem by eliminating it altogether: Remove the human element.

Once you have a product that sells, it’s time to design a self-correcting business architecture that runs itself.

The Remote-Control CEO

The power of hiding ourselves from one another is mercifully given, for men are wild beasts, and would devour one another but for this protection.

—HENRY WARD BEECHER, U.S. abolitionist and clergyman, “Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit”

RURAL PENNSYLVANIA

In a 200-year-old stone farmhouse, a quiet “experiment in 21st-century leadership” is proceeding exactly as planned.51Stephen McDonnell is upstairs in his flip-flops looking at a spreadsheet on his computer. His company has increased its annual revenue 30% per year since it all began, and he is able to spend more time with his three daughters than he ever thought possible.

The experiment? As CEO of Applegate Farms, he insists on spending just one day per week at the company headquarters in Bridgewater, New Jersey. He’s not the only CEO who spends time at home, of course—there are hundreds who have heart attacks or nervous breakdowns and need time to recover—but there is a huge difference. McDonnell has been doing it for more than 17 years. Rarer still, he started doing it just six months after founding the company.

This intentional absence has enabled him to create a process-driven instead of founder-driven business. Limiting contact with managers forces the entrepreneur to develop operational rules that enable others to deal with problems themselves instead of calling for help.

This isn’t just for small operations. Applegate Farms sells more than 120 organic and natural meat products to high-end retailers and generates more than $35 million in revenue per year.

It is all possible because McDonnell started with the end in mind.

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