In the interest of keeping his staff thinking about generating
meaningful results, Mark Young likes to ask a few questions.
“How does that make our product better? How does that help us
with our customer satisfaction? How does that advance our education and make our people better?” Young says. “Sometimes people
think they’re doing things for the greater good, and it may be a nice
thing in the end, but the question is, ‘Did that really produce value?’”
With a culture that aims above all else to make a difference in the
marketplace, Tapestry Solutions Inc., which designs and implements graphical software products, posted 2006 revenue of
approximately $45 million.
Young, Tapestry’s founder and CFO, spoke to Smart Business
about flexibility and why growth requires a willingness to change.
Q: How would you describe your leadership style?
I try to focus on tangible results and try to stay away from the
stuff that is just sometimes nice to have, but not stuff that I consider to be results and value.
The other part of my style is to be flexible. I try to involve the
folks that are engaged in working with me and understand what
the issues are and not always be hell-bent on everything having to
be my way. That tends to bring out better-performing people.
Q: What are the advantages of being results-oriented?
At the end of the day, you get out of the business what really
needs to happen. In business, there are different degrees of what
you can do to survive.
You could do anything and everything to make the business nice
and beautiful; however, a good part of that is probably not needed
to run a successful business. When I say we focus on results, it’s
things that truly make a difference in managing the business from
my perspective: getting contract stuff done, etc.
What’s less important is keeping track of how many chairs you
have. Applying priorities to results is critical.
Q: How do you encourage involvement?
I consider it like a doctor doing his rounds. I’m not necessarily
big on, ‘Let’s have a meeting every week at 2 o’clock,’ or that type
of thing.
I make sure I have one-on-one interaction with people to get
them involved and to understand what they’re doing. I am not the
micromanager from a practical standpoint. We may talk about the
big issues, but I’m assuming that, from there, the execution is happening. I’m not a believer in meeting with big groups of people
because that tends not to produce a lot of results. It’s good for
keeping people educated on what everybody else is doing and
keeping everyone collectively on the same sheet of music, but
those types of things are not the most effective way to manage a
business.
Q: How important is flexibility during a growth phase?
You have to be able to be flexible to take advantage of opportunities as they’re presented. If you lack that flexibility and the world
changes quickly and you can’t meet those needs, the marketplace
you have will slowly dry up and you won’t be able to replace it. You’ll
be too far behind the curve.
A lot of businesses that can’t do that or can’t adjust their management styles or change their products are the ones that will tend
to burn out in my marketplace. Maybe a guy who is building
mousetraps can keep building mousetraps forever. But in a technical world, if we don’t keep being flexible and helping people out,
it doesn’t work.
Q: How do you encourage employees to embrace change?
You have to show your employees the value in change. There are
definitely people who get used to doing the same thing, and any time
you try to change, it’s obviously one of those situations where they are
less likely to make the change.
We are successful, and we are able to survive by being able to do
this. If we choose not to, then this great little company that’s
become a nice middle-sized company will potentially shrink down
and have its problems.
I’m a firm believer that if people know what the downside is, they
will tend to motivate themselves, too.
Q: How does a company change as it grows?
We’ve implemented a middle layer of management, which is a big
change for a small company becoming a medium-sized company.
As you grow, the big difference for those of us who are doers is
to go from being engaged in everything down to working with the
clients to transition to more of a manager-type. You’re guiding the
ship now as opposed to rowing the boat.
You can’t cover all the ground that you used to. You cannot effectively manage. Things start to fall through the cracks, and you
become aware pretty quickly when things aren’t getting done.
You have to get some management in the different places to help
manage the workloads and manage the people and so forth.
HOW TO REACH: Tapestry Solutions Inc., (858) 503-1990 or www.tapestrysolutions.com