Emma R. Dickison isn’t afraid.
The president of Home Helpers recognizes that the down economy scares some leaders into stagnancy. But she’s focused on proving the continued relevance of her company, which provides nonmedical, in-home companionship and personal care. She’s also grown her company in the process, adding 100 franchised units in 2008 alone.
“Now is not the time to be stagnant,” says Dickison, who also presides over Home Helper’s emergency response sister company, Direct Link. “Now is the time to make sure you stay relevant with your customer, your strategic plan, your employees.”
But tweaking her vision to adapt for economic pressures is only half the battle. She also has to update everyone to show that the company is keeping up.
“Communicating during this economy, both internally and externally, is key,” says Dickison, who oversees 700 franchise owners across both companies.
That communication keeps Home Helpers visible while giving each stakeholder a role to play in the company’s success.
Smart Business spoke to Dickison about breaking down your message for every audience.
Communicate the rules of the game. In the current economy, it’s more important than ever to make sure that you’re communicating at every possible turn to every stakeholder — whether that’s internally to your employees or externally to your vendors or your customers — so that they know who you are [and] what you’re about. Continuing to make sure that your customers know that you’re still relevant in this economy is key.
During our current climate, what is important is that each stakeholder knows what the overall goals and objectives are of the organization and how do they fit into it.
I use the analysis of a sports team. You don’t have players playing basketball that just go onto the court and never know what the rules are. They can’t win if they don’t know what the rules are. So it’s the same with any organization. All the parties need to know what the rules of the game are so that they know how they can be successful — that’s where your strategic plan comes in. And then make sure that each department understands how they fit into that strategic plan, what their goals and objectives are and how they’re going to execute against them.
Break down employees’ roles. We meet with our employees quarterly as an entire team. … They get to hear from the management team a state of the union, where we are and where we’re going. Then beyond that, the management team meets every month, minimally, with their employees as a group and then with all of their direct reports so they can touch base to see where we are, how we’re doing, what’s the plan, and how it’s being communicated and what feedback we’re getting.
You’ll see in different departments there’s a visual aid of some sort to see how they’re tracking against their particular departmental goals and objectives. We have several areas where we post results of key metrics around the overall organization’s success. For instance, [in] our break room, we have a bulletin board that gets updated monthly. We have [one in] our copy area, which is a pretty high-traffic area. And then each department head reviews their results with their supervisor at least monthly one on one.
Some [managers] will choose to communicate the entire strategic plan as it is. Some will take components out of the plan and communicate to their team what their deliverables are against the plan. They break down those parts of the strategy into the tactics that their individual department will be responsible for and how it relates to the overall plan.
