It’s not that Mark Elwood wants to go back to the old days when Elwood Staffing had one office in Columbus, Ind., and a handful of employees. But it sure makes it easier to keep your finger on the pulse of what’s going on with your business when things are small.
“We’ve grown and we’ve spread out, and now, we have a corporate office in Indiana, and we have all these other offices in all these cities and states,” says Elwood, the company’s CEO. “People come to work every day and they may not see one of the owners or executives that day or that week.”
So why does that matter? Elwood says the trust that develops in close quarters helps to earn buy-in on company decisions and builds trust — or at least knowledge — of what’s happening with the business.
When you’re out of touch and your only tie to the home office is by electronic means, it’s not as easy to stay tuned in.
“People don’t always just necessarily give the benefit of the doubt,” Elwood says. “They don’t walk into every situation and say, ‘I completely trust you until I’m proven wrong.’ Sometimes, they come in a little more cautiously and perhaps they say, ‘I’ll trust more thoroughly once I have some evidence that I feel like I should.’”
Trust is one of those things that you either have or you don’t. It’s not really something you can shoot for as you would with a sales goal or some other benchmark.
“I’m not waking up every day and saying, ‘Oh my goodness, I’ve got to get people to trust me,’” Elwood says. “Or, ‘What can I do to make them trust me?’ I’m not coming to work that way. Some people probably do that and they probably are trying to compensate or overcome some things they do or maybe have done in the past that compromised people’s trust.
“It’s the result of a whole bunch of smaller actions, decisions, communications, responses, initiatives and so forth that are taking place. You can’t just say, ‘Hey, I have an organization and I want there to be trust.’ You have to act and behave and respond in ways that, over time, begin to build trust.”
This approach has helped Elwood maintain its strong culture as it has grown from $52.5 million in 2005 revenue to $140.4 million in 2008. The culture is always top of mind when new people are brought into the mix and when decisions are made that affect the company as a whole.
Here are some of the things Elwood does to ensure the company’s 170 employees have trust and confidence in leadership to help the company keep growing.
