Richard Cottingham sees no reason to micromanage his employees. Instead, the president of the $39.8 million Cottingham Paper
prefers to spell out his company’s goals and let his 81 employees do their jobs. When you hire employees with independent spirits and the attitude and work ethic to be good decision-makers, you don’t need to be a micromanager, says the leader of the disposable, industrial and chemical products company.
Smart Business spoke with Cottingham about how he successfully manages
his company.
Perform assessments. Over the years, we’ve
tested (potential employees). You can have
them take (an assessment test) on a computer and get an immediate answer. It gives
you a full report and shows the applicant’s
strengths and weaknesses. The weaknesses are things that you’re going to have to
work with them on.
You don’t make your entire hiring decision just on that test, but it helps eliminate
a number of people that are applying for
the job that just aren’t going to make it.
Follow your instinct. You still have to interview and you’ve got to get a gut feeling for
somebody. If you have a gut feeling that
somebody would do well but they bomb on
the test, then they did a snow job on you in
the interview.
You’ve got to feel comfortable with them
because if you don’t, you hired the wrong
person.
None of this is precise. If anybody could
ever figure out how to hire a great salesman every time, they’d be a millionaire.
Have faith in your employees. They know that
I have trust in the job they do. That goes
back to not micromanaging. I always tell
my supervisors they have to think like an
owner: ‘If you owned this company, what
decision would you make?’
Establish a standard. We’re going through a
process now that we haven’t done in a long
time. We’re setting up standard operating
procedures, and it’s very important to do or
I wouldn’t be doing it. Without standard
operating procedures, people will just
make a decision on their own that could be
costly or might not be the right decision.
We’ve been doing this for about a year. It’s
not an overnight deal. We’re using in-house
people to write up the procedures. They
put down who’s accountable for implementing the procedures. … With the standard operating procedures, everybody
should do it totally right.
We share it with them as we get it done.
You have to do it a little bit at a time
because they have to understand it. If you
overflood them with information, then it’s
going to go in one ear and out the other.
The benefits are that there shouldn’t be
anymore questions of, ‘How do I do this?’ It
cuts out mistakes. You can do everything
98 percent right and 2 percent wrong, and
guess what gets the most attention? We’re
just trying to eliminate that 2 percent as
much as we can. It’s never going to be 100
percent, but at least it will be better than it
was.
Listen to your customers. We do surveys and
customer visits where we get feedback. We
ask them, ‘What are we doing right and
what other things would you like to see
that we’re not doing?’ Another question is,
‘If you were going to choose your perfect
distributor, what would they be doing for
you?’
You need to be prepared to sometimes
get negative feedback. That’s what you
want, though, because if you don’t get that
kind of feedback, you can’t correct things.
Anytime somebody responds on a survey,
it’s always personal to them. It doesn’t
mean your entire company is wrong; it
could be just one episode.
For example, if you go out to dinner and get a waiter or waitress that doesn’t treat
you very well, chances are you’re not going
to go back there. Out of 10 waiters and
waitresses, nine of them might have been
great. You just got the one that was bad and
guess what? They just lost a customer.
It can take five years to get an account
and 30 seconds to lose one. You’ve got to
keep telling your people that.
Be the customers’ choice. Customers have a
number of people they can buy from. They
make a decision to buy based on a lot of
parameters: price, variety, service.
When it comes down to making that decision, I want the customer to choose
Cottingham. We have to convince the customer that we’re the best out there.
How many employees actually come in
contact with your customer? Here, it’s
sales, customer service and our drivers.
You’ve got a lot of other support staff that
still have to do their job in order for that
customer to be happy. We train that all the
time.
It only takes one person in this company
to mess up and upset the customer.
Join a networking group. Almost all of the
people in the groups I’ve been with are in
different businesses, but what I’ve found
out is almost all the problems are common
to all of us.
When you’re running your own company,
it’s sometimes lonely at the top because
you have nobody to talk to. One thing that’s
good about (networking) is you find out
you’re not alone.
Hit the road. It took me years before I took
two weeks of vacation because I felt guilty.
After I hired my current CFO, I felt comfortable that she could handle pretty much
everything if I was gone for two weeks.
It’s in your mind; you think you can’t be
gone for two weeks. But when you do go,
guess what? Nothing happens. You’re only
a phone call away too. Just do it and you’ll
find out that maybe they had the best sales
week of the year.
HOW TO REACH: Cottingham Paper (800) 870-5441 or
www.cottinghampaper.com