When Steven Zuccarini arrived at InnerWorkings Inc., he saw a $30 million company full of raw potential. Before his arrival, he had spent
25 years working for RR Donnelley & Sons Co., the largest printing company in North America with annual revenue of $10 billion that
had many Fortune 500 clients. And he knew from his previous experience that InnerWorkings’ business model — outsourced print
procurement services for corporate clients — was a good one. He just needed to convince the organization that it could sell its enterprise
printing solutions to Fortune 500 clients. In the three years since Zuccarini took the helm, InnerWorkings has acquired more than
25 Fortune 500 clients, which has helped fuel its revenue growth of more than 100 percent each year. The company posted 2006 revenue
of $160 million, and Zuccarini estimates 2007 revenue at between $260 and $280 million. Smart Business spoke with Zuccarini about
how to make your organization believe that it can succeed as a much larger company.
Let your employees stretch. You have to create
a culture that allows for the employees to
attempt something great and perhaps fail.
But if they fail, make sure they learn from it
so we don’t repeat the same mistake.
Also, help them fix it by training, depending
on what that failure might be. It’s nothing special to attempt something with mediocrity to
it and always succeed. I’d rather see our
teams stretch and go after something great.
I’m a big believer in delegation. You’ve got
to delegate to your employees and management team. Demonstrate the faith you have
in their ability. Let them show you through
their accomplishments. Provide them with
the right recognition and rewards.
There’s a real balance between monetary
rewards and recognition, being the kind of
acknowledgment that is more intangible.
What I hope is that leads to long-term loyalty and dedication to the organization.
Deliver your message with passion and clarity.
You’ve got to make it simple enough to be
understood, but passionate enough to motivate people. As a leader, I have to stimulate
genuine belief in employees that they can do
more than they think they can, and then
watch them do it.
Most of our employees have a lot more
potential in them, and you have to help them
stretch. If you stretch them, your employees’ performance increases by instilling that
belief in every one of them.
Create a creative culture, and you’ll attract creative employees. You have to have a company
that shows potential from a growth-oriented
environment. Also, you have to have an
organization that is team-oriented, so people
feel they are part of a greater whole, and that
the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.
When we’re out there attracting new
employees, one of the greatest things we
have is our own existing employees serving
as ambassadors. Word-of-mouth is a powerful tool.
Once we get employees into this organization, you have to build a culture of personal development. Give them a chance to innovate and be creative. Always be open and
honest with your feedback. You need to be
direct with your employees and hold them
accountable. People appreciate knowing
when they’re succeeding and when they’re
failing and how we can help them.
It also has to be a fun place to work. We do
some things here to try to make the day to
day a lot more enjoyable. We do ice cream
socials, pizza lunches, we do picnics.
We had a picnic on the day a tornado blew
through Chicago, so that made a lasting
impression on our employees. We were all
playing softball, and all of a sudden we’re running for the gymnasium with 60 mph winds.
Keep it simple. Over the last five years, we’ve
been growing at about a 138 percent compounded annual growth rate. Some of my
advice for others when confronted with
managing this kind of growth is, first and
foremost, focus on the fundamentals. It’s all
about flawless execution. Our credibility,
our trust, is delivering on our promise to our
customers each and every day.
One thing you can’t take for granted when
you come from a large organization is that
the infrastructure support has to be built as
you grow. So we’ve been focusing on putting
in the type of infrastructure that you might
not have at an early stage company.
Hire with growth in mind. You’ve got to build a
balanced management team. You don’t want
to lose that entrepreneurial experience, so
really it’s composed of people with entrepreneurial backgrounds but also managers
trained in classic corporate disciplines. We
have a nice mixture on our management team.
You’ve got to hire people who are comfortable rolling up their sleeves and wearing
several hats — people who are willing to
work in multiple areas of the organization to
help it grow.
This is a very flat company; all of us are not
afraid to jump in and help in any area that’s
important. It helps because we make quicker decisions, and there are fewer approval
levels. What we do here may only require
one level for approval. We make quick decisions versus, in my prior life, it might have
taken three or four levels to make a decision.
Make decisions now; correct the wrong ones later.
The inability of a leader or CEO to listen and
absorb what other people are saying and
accept ideas and views that might be different than theirs is a huge problem.
Also there’s this concept of analysis-paralysis
syndrome. It’s a real balance between trying
to collect too much information to make a decision and avoid making a mistake versus
making a quicker, less-informed decision and
then making course corrections along the way.
I’m a believer in taking some action and, if
we’re off, making quick adjustments. You can
do that with a smaller, faster company.
If I look at ways to avoid these problems, I
believe the leader must truly have self-awareness. It’s a key ingredient to avoiding this.
They’ve got to have a good understanding of
their strengths, their weaknesses, their
needs, emotions and what drives them as
well as the effect you have on others. That is
a key starting point.
You’ve got to be open and comfortable with
constructive criticism and approach situations with a healthy sense of humor. We’ve
got to be able to laugh at ourselves sometimes.
HOW TO REACH: InnerWorkings Inc., (312) 642-3700 or
www.iwprint.com