Short spoken reflection distinguishing process problems from people problems: if no process exists, create one; if a process exists and is followed by a repeat failure, treat it as a people issue and enforce accountability (including termination). Includes an anecdote about an employee (“Cohen”) who lost footage, which the speaker used to illustrate lack of process and responsibility for hiring choices.
If something wrong happens, there's only one or two reasons. It's either a process or a people problem. My rule is, if there's no process, create the process. If there's a process that I train against a process, then if they do it again, I know it's a people problem. Then I sit down, I explain to them my expectations and what they did. I remind them there's a process. I remind them been trained. And then if they do it again, I escort them out the door. Cohen is amazing. I love Cohen. One day he lost all the footage we shot for a day and didn't have the footage. First. I asked myself, was there a process? And the answer was no. Cohen knew exactly where it didn't have it immediately. I'm not upset at Cohen. I created the process that hired the person. So right off the bat, you gotta understand that those people on your team, you picked them. You can't even be mad at them because you could have not picked them.
