Some people equate our coming in and firing and replacing people who should have been fired long ago as not caring. To us, that shows more caring about the company, because without doing that, the company truly does have a chance of failing, and then everyone in the company loses.

MG: That brings us to our main topic of discussion, namely eliminating wasted time, when as you say you have a window of three to five years. First, am I correct that making the most of time is important?

Paul: Next to ROI, the most important thing is ROT, which is Return on Time. As I mentioned before, we are about meeting or exceeding the expectations of our investors, and they want x-return by y-time.

If that doesn’t happen, it again creates more of a negative buzz about us, that we don’t know what we’re doing, not to mention the exhaustion of having to explain to investors why something didn’t work as planned. Even though we always tell our investors about the risks involved in these kinds of investments to make the ROI they are seeking, they still take poorly to disappointment.

In fact, part of our due diligence in accepting certain investors is really figuring out their risk tolerance, because the last thing we need is some investor who sold us on a risk tolerance they really didn’t have because they were so greedy at the front end. Dealing with those types of investors is as big a waste of time and energy as dealing with time wasters in the companies that we take over.

MG: So what are the biggest time wasters in the deals you do with the underperforming companies you buy?

Paul: Just like in many divorces, and I’ve had one so I should know, one big time waster is the mess down the road caused by a marriage that is rushed into because it felt much more right than it actually made sense — you know, the old, “when you’re in love, or more accurately lust, smoke and stupidity and foolishness get in your eyes.”

The same is true of an ill-conceived deal with a company improperly evaluated and assessed for its upside potential and what will be necessary to have it reach it within five years.

MG: If the deal meets all your due diligence criteria, what is the next greatest waste of time?

Paul: It’s actually very similar to what causes a personal divorce.

MG: Okay, Paul, I can see you’ve really made an effort to figure that one out. So what is the greatest waste of time in both?

Paul: You’re right about the effort to figure that one out. I know many divorced colleagues who have told me that they don’t want to do business deals that fail, but that is the risk of our business, however, they all tell me that their divorce nearly killed them and they never, ever want to go through another one.

But back to your question, the greatest waste of time in both an underperforming marriage and an underperforming company is conflict avoidance. Any time there are differences of opinions, disagreements and conflicts are inevitable. However, when disagreements and conflicts rapidly escalate into arguments, fights and zero sum wars, most rational people cannot stand that.

MG: So do you think that what is involved is that people who have had terrible experiences with those kind of escalations of conflict in the past want to avoid them in the future?

Paul: Absolutely! In fact I’ll use a term from your field. I think the more highly rational a person is, the more that such an escalation causes them to have something like PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) and just like anyone who has PTSD feels the first trauma nearly killed them, they don’t want to go through a next one to have it finish the job.

MG: Wow, Paul. I’m guessing you know that first hand from your divorce. Sorry about that.

Paul: You’re right about that, but as you can see, I’ve given this a lot of thought because I’m determined to not let it happen again.

MG: So are you saying that if people had the skills to deal with conflict, which as you say is inevitable, head on and do it effectively, efficiently and quickly, that would eliminate the biggest time waster?

Paul: Yep. Both in business and marriage.

MG: Since you seem to be a student of this, what are the necessary steps to doing that?

Paul: I actually focused on it from an opposite, more positive end result of effective and lasting conflict resolution and then reverse engineered it. I emphasize lasting, because if you think you have resolved a conflict, but both sides leave still ticked off, that’s a recipe for another one to come which also has the potential to escalate. And that pattern of one poorly resolved conflict followed by the next is both exasperating and exhausting, and takes a cumulative toll out of you over time.

So to reverse engineer effective and lasting conflict resolution the backwards steps include:

5. Both believe the resolution to be fair and equitable one day, 10 days and 10 months down the road and more importantly completely defensible to their respective bosses
4. Both believe they had been able to get most of what they needed, even if they didn’t get everything that they wanted
3. Both believe the other person was by the end of the process more cooperative than combative
2. Both believe that the other person understood and respected — not to be confused with completely agreed with — what their position was and why they took it
1. Both felt listened to and heard out vs. continuously interrupted and cut off or having the conversation completely hijacked by the other person

MG: Now you’ve hit a “sweet spot” of mine, namely listening. How important do you think your last or beginning point, namely that each person feels listened to or heard out, is to the final result?

Paul: It is not critical, but what I have discovered, at least when you’re talking about being inside a company vs. doing a “competitive” deal with someone or something outside, is that the more you have to deal with someone who doesn’t listen or hear you out and instead interrupts, becomes defensive or as you say, hijacks the conversation to being all about them, the more cumulative the negativity you feel towards them and the more you want to just avoid them.

MG: Are we talking about dealings within a company or marriage?

Paul: Both.

MG: Thank you for taking the time with me Paul. Are there any final comments you’d like to say?

Paul: Becoming a better listener is still a work in progress for me. I used to be a lousy listener and I used to be able to handle the negative reactions I would trigger from the other person both in my job and marriage.

There was even a part of me that relished a good verbal fight, but as I have become older I realize that such an approach is really a young person’s game, and even then was probably a waste of time and energy, not to mention how it made conflicts worse. What I realize now is that life is too short to deal with a jerk who doesn’t listen or hear or to be one.