When David Kirk took over RF Monolithics Inc. in 1999, he had
to downsize his work force from 600 to 200 to make the company leaner and stronger.
And while he knew it would be hard, he also knew communication
would help ease the pain. He held a meeting to tell employees about
the cutbacks so that there would be no surprises later, but he also gave
them reasons why the cutbacks were necessary if the company were
to remain competitive.
During the next two years, Kirk — president and CEO of RF
Monolithics — helped workers find jobs elsewhere. And many were
able to find work on their own, because he gave them more than just
two weeks’ notice.
Smart Business spoke with Kirk about how he makes tough decisions and leads change in his $54.2 million wireless solutions company.
Q: How do you make tough decisions?
Look at the total picture for the company. If you get too focused on
the short-term, meaning a month or a particular quarter, you can get
yourself in trouble.
Keep looking further down the road one, two, three years. Take into
account a lot of different areas in the company as far as what’s going
on with people, facilities, a variety of different things. Benchmark
what’s happening in the competitive arena.
You have to make a lot of different decisions, and it’s a process that
never ends. Even though we had some good growth — 17 percent last
fiscal year — you can’t sit back. You’re continually having to look at
what are the next hurdles ahead of us.
Q: How do you lead change?
It really is putting together a strong, strategic business plan and
challenging yourself. We call it being brutally honest with yourselves when you form that plan. The question you really don’t want
to ask, you’re kidding yourself. Ask that question and challenge
yourself.
Separate it from a regular weekly meeting. Take the time to really think long-term.
Looking at the challenges facing the company, start to formulate
the pictures of how it’s actually going to happen. Benchmark and
understand how that’s going to happen. Go through an entire
process and start to build consensus by doing an analysis understanding what’s going to happen out there.
As the ball begins to roll, people see you’re having success changing
the company. It’s a long, steady process. It’s not something you can
say, ‘We’re going to change,’ and in three months, you’ve done it. It’s a
building process and will continue to be.
The other thing is to openly communicate that business plan to the
company and use your employees.
Q: How do you effectively communicate changes and plans to
employees?
It’s not, we put a plan together, put it in a binder and put it away
on the shelf, and then when we get an internal audit or some regulatory thing say, ‘Well, here’s our strategic plan’ and pull it off the shelf.
It is a living document that we’re continually benchmarking and studying.
We communicate that plan a minimum of twice a year to all management and support people in the company. We then create a document from that, called a dashboard, that is given out by functional
area. It lets each functional area know how they’re participating and
proceeding toward supporting the company’s plan.
The dashboard is updated monthly and posted in their particular
department so they could see. Then we hold regular all-hands meetings to communicate what’s going [on], as many as four to five meetings.
We try to avoid giving quarterly meetings. We want to make sure that
we don’t just focus quarter by quarter. We want to focus on the bigger
picture. Don’t just hold a meeting when there’s a significant event —
hold it on a more regular, even-keel basis.
Then it’s other things. Hold company picnics. Talk to people and
have general conversations. Get to know them and understand them.
A lot of good feedback can come from the people.
Q: How do you get feedback?
You build that over time. You can’t just walk out there and make
one presentation and someone says, ‘Oh, I have to go talk to him.’
Build that in employee meetings. Go get yourself a cup of coffee.
Walk around.
A key thing is to do what you say you’re going to do. We started to
look for cost-saving ideas. We started a recognition program, and
through that process, we received ideas for half-a-million in cost savings.
If you make suggestions, you get a $10 Blockbuster certificate. If
your suggestion gets to the next level, where it’s getting considered
and potentially implemented, it was a $50 American Express card.
Give a small reward for that idea generation. We had a committee that studied that suggestion, and following through with that
showed them we were committed to trying to save costs. HOW TO
REACH: RF Monolithics Inc., (972) 233-2903 or www.rfm.com