In 2004, St. Louis Staffing’s
third-largest customer
declared bankruptcy, putting the company into a deep
hole. But that challenge paled
next to the challenge of getting his entire team aligned
around a common vision, says
Keith Jacob, founder, president and CEO of the $11 million company.
“You have to be able to see a
better future,” Jacob says.
“Then you have to have the
audacity to get everybody to
work toward it. You don’t want
to be the CEO who thinks they
have all the answers.”
Smart Business spoke with
Jacob about why you need to
communicate until your
employees can finish your sentences and why you should
dance with the girl you brought
to the dance.
Q. How do you align your
team with the vision?
Be pretty quick to show people the door if they’re not fitting
in. Be quick to fire and slow to
hire. Take your time; make sure
it’s the right fit.
Talk about your values constantly until some people will
know what words are coming
out of your mouth next. Once
I’ve got to that point, then I am
communicating our values
enough — when people start
finishing sentences for me.
Listen to what they want.
You’ve got to listen to what the
people want who work with
you — both personally and professionally. You still have to get
stuff done, and I still have to be
the guy to determine what stuff
we’re going to get done. But if
I’m not at least trying to help
them achieve their goals, they’ll never help me achieve the goals
we have for the company.
Q. How do you develop that
vision?
You have to be able to see a
better future. Then you have to
have [the] audacity to get everybody to work toward doing it.
So you have to have some ego.
You have to ask yourself, as a
founder and an owner, what
do I want to accomplish with
the company in a broad sense?
Then, I don’t want to do it in a
vacuum either. So I’m happy to
bring in some of the key
leaders, key decision-makers in the company.
We establish what the
key points of our vision
are going to be. I am
not the kind of owner
who sets daily policy.
After all, I don’t do it, so
how could I be an
expert on it?
Q. How important is
delegation?
In our organization, we
want people to have an
ownership mentality. So
you cannot hoard what
it is you’re doing. I’ve
got a front-line manager
who has to delegate to
the people who work
for him. He has to trust that
they will take stuff off his plate
and do the little things that
need to be done. Everybody in
our organization has to be able
to delegate.
If you don’t, then one person
becomes an island. They get
frustrated; they don’t see
someone else’s point of view.
They don’t see what’s important to someone else who’s
helping them get this work
done. It’s critical.
Q. How do you motivate or
empower employees?
I treat them like owners, and I
expect that they will act like
owners. Frankly, if they’re
uncomfortable in that, that cuts
against our values and what
we’re trying to accomplish.
I want them involved in the
policymaking; I want them
involved in the decision-making.
I want them to feel that a part
of this company is theirs. So I
share profits; I share numbers.
We have open-book management, so everybody knows where we stand — revenue-wise, gross-marginwise, profit-wise — and they know what
their stake in it is.
Q. How do you manage
business growth?
We plan for growth; we know
every year we lay out a game
plan anticipating how much
we’re going to grow that year
and what infrastructure we’re
going to need.
Also, it sounds crazy, but you
have to decide if you want to
grow. A few years ago, we grew
by 97 percent in one year, and it
wasn’t very profitable. We just
threw a ton of resources against
the growth to try to manage the
growth.
Well, the next year we only
grew by 30 percent, and we were
much more profitable. We said,
‘We’re going to stem the tide of
growth here for a while because
we’ve got to get our profits
straight now that we’re a much
different company — twice as
big as we were the year before.’
Q. How do you lay the
groundwork for business
growth?
You’ve got to stick to your plan
and execute the plan. When it
comes to growth, you decide
how much bigger you want to
get, and you do what you have
to do to get that much bigger.
Dance with the girl you brought
to the dance; quit looking at the
other one who may look prettier. Do what got you there, and
do it really well. People would
be amazed how much growth
can actually come from their
own current customer base if
they just do even better at what
they profess that they do.
HOW TO REACH: St. Louis Staffing, (314) 423-1223 or www.stlouis-staffing.com