When John S. Yi came to
the U.S. from Korea as
a teen, no one gave him a free ride, and he had to work
hard for everything. Yi even
spent 10 weeks while a student
at the University of California
San Diego living out of his car
because he didn’t have enough
money to pay for both tuition
and room and board.
That experience ingrained in
Yi the importance of hard work,
and he has instilled this value in
his nearly 200 employees at
Koam Engineering Systems Inc.,
a defense contractor company
that provides information technology and logistics services to
government and commercial
customers.
“I want to make sure that
when people work hard and try
to do better, they are rewarded
and appreciated,” says the
founder, president and CEO of
KES, an $18 million company.
Smart Business spoke about
how to get the right team and
provide a good environment
that encourages them to work
hard.
Q. What are the keys to
growing a company?
It’s all about people. Making
sure that you provide an environment for people to try to
reach their best level professionally as well as creating a
culture where you are challenging them to reach that highest
level of their capabilities and
not try to penalize them when
they do make mistakes.
When you do that, you attract
people who are aligned with
what the company feels is
absolutely needed to grow the
business by growing themselves personally; by doing
that, they’ll be able to grow the
company, as well.
Q. How do you create a
good environment for your
employees?
It’s leading by example. It
starts with me and the fact that I
always don’t do the right things
or say the right things. Having
enough confidence to recognize
that what you’re doing may not
be the best for the company and
trying to listen and be an active
listener. By showing that I think
they know that I’m not
sitting on some kind of
pedestal or soapbox and
trying to tell them something I won’t and can’t do
for myself.
You need have the
patience and always
seek the speaker’s perspective when you are
having a conversation.
Demonstrate your appreciation and respect for
the speaker’s perspective,
even if you disagree.
I tell my staff that little
disagreements are
healthy and productive as
long as it allows us to
fully understand what we
are trying to address.
Your job is to create
those environments and make
sure that it’s OK to make small
mistakes as long as it’s not catastrophic failures. It’s kind of
like rearing a kid — you would
not give a sharp knife to a
small child.
As the child grows, you want
to constantly challenge them to
learn new things. They’re going
to fall, and you want to make
sure to pick them up and say,
‘Hey, you tried something; it didn’t work, try it again.’ The value
of having that kind of attitude is
that they feel like they can try
things and be entrepreneurial,
they can think a little bit outside
the box and won’t be penalized.
