The 10-year trek from manager to investor to owner hasn’t bloated Stacy Hastie’s ego. He knows he can get further by leading his team laterally than he can by charging ahead.
Since Hastie took control of Environmental Operations Inc. in 2002, he personalized the company’s mission. To him, “We do what we say we’ll do,” means he does what he asks employees to do.
He works side by side with employees to set an example at the company, which provides environmental consulting and contracting services as well as demolition and waste management.
“I walk in every day with a can-do attitude,” says the chairman and CEO. “That’s the only way to keep reminding them. You have to live it every day.”
The work force has grown to 150 people from 60 in 2002. And since 2004, revenue has rocketed from $7 million to more than $50 million.
Smart Business spoke with Hastie about setting an example for your company culture and bringing employees on board with passion.
Lead with passion. You all have to share in the same mission. If you don’t have buy-in from 100 percent, it’s next to impossible to grow a company. You need universal buy-in.
First of all, you’ve got to be able to sell it. And you can’t sell it by just speaking it. You have to live it, and they have to see you living it.
You have to lose a few, and they have to see you losing a few to really believe it. They’ve seen me lose a few where we lost pretty big dollars. But we still did what we said we would do. They need to see you in the bad times, too, not just the good times.
You need to stay positive. I’ve been calling the last few months, instead of an economic downturn, this is opportunity for us. So I’m kind of spinning it and they’re seeing it.
You don’t lose sight of your mission. You remain passionate and persistent. And you have to do that day in and day out. If you’re starting to second-guess yourself, it will start trickling down.
You can’t tell them you’re passionate. They have to sense and see you being passionate. You have to be sincere about it. They just see how excited I get when we come up with a good solution on a challenging project or how active our company is and I am in the community.
Work side by side. Secondly, you also have to do your best to train them and work side by side with them. Not just you and them one on one, but you and them with your client, maybe with the financial institution, with all parties involved in a transaction so they can see how you react in a meeting and how you read people and how you ask questions.
You need to know what the hot buttons are, and you need to understand how to ask the right questions to get the answers that you need so you can get that understanding. That just comes from experience. So I try to share my experience with everybody.
[You build trust] by not asking them to do something that you will not do. They see me working as hard as they do, if not harder, leading by example.
Our executive team, all of them have been in front of me with multiple clients. I call it baptism by fire. I make sure that they’re very active in the process. I don’t try to dominate it. You want to give them ownership. The first deal that they enhanced and facilitated, it’s a rewarding feeling for me because it’s very rewarding for them.
