Ken Tumblison was excited about Buckeye Shapeform’s proud legacy in Columbus. But history was also one of his biggest concerns upon joining the manufacturer in 1995.
“I had people who worked in certain areas of the plant that had been here for 10 or 15 years,” says Tumblison, the 50-employee company’s president. “They had never seen other departments. They really didn’t understand globally the impact of what they were doing on the company. These people were working very hard, but they had blinders on.”
Tumblison needed to convince employees that changes can be a good thing for a business and that working together more closely would pay dividends.
Smart Business spoke with Tumblison about how to earn the trust of your people when pursuing change.
Q. What should your initial approach to change be?
Talk to your people. Talk to the folks and understand what their concerns, issues and problems are. Change happens slowly.
Rarely are there going to be the home runs when it comes to the effect of a change. Show folks that there are small successes that we can achieve without a lot of disruption, just minor things that we can do to be better tomorrow than we were today. That gets people engaged. It shows them that their efforts aren’t for nothing. That quickly becomes contagious. Everybody sees that.
Q. How do you figure out your best role?
I recall wanting to do a good job early in my leadership role here at Buckeye. I felt that doing a good job meant making everyone happy. That’s impossible. No matter what I do, there is no way for me to make everyone happy with whatever decisions we are making here. Don’t worry about that. I don’t know what other CEOs will tell you, but I have found that to be impossible.
As long as you’re doing what is best as a whole, don’t let the little things wear you down. Every decision is going to have its negative aspects to it. What you try to do is make the decision that has the least negative impact. Whether it affects the employee or the business as a whole, you just try to minimize the negative impacts.
Because my personality is someone who likes to fix things, sometimes people will bring problems to me and I want to fix them quickly because I think that’s what I’m supposed to do. I have to make a conscious effort to not be so reactive.
Go gather facts; go find out other sides of stories. Early on in my leadership role, I think people used that to their advantage. They knew I was going to fix something for them. I’ve had to learn to step back and gather information.
I don’t mind bringing other people into the decision process. I tell my management team, ‘You can get anybody to sit in my chair if you guys are doing your jobs.’ I encourage my managers to be involved in decisions. I don’t want to make every decision here.