Get buy-in. I think you have to get in front of people face to face and let them hear what you have to say. Let them read your emotions when you’re saying it, give them a chance to ask questions.
A lot of times in larger groups people don’t want to ask a lot of questions, but they’ll come around. They’ll get to thinking and questions will come out eventually. But we met with everybody in the firm.
We started with an ownership retreat. That group went through a very extensive three-day exercise of … along with all the things that are so key to our foundation, what level of growth will complement all of those things and allow us to be the organization we want to be.
If you try and go down an initiative and your ownership or senior people are what I call silent killers, you’re in big trouble.
If you have people who are violently opposed to something and they’re willing to yell and scream and argue, I think that can be healthy because you know where they stand, it lays it out, people have the ability to say they don’t agree. When you have people who are just passive naysayers – ‘I’m not going to yell and scream, but when one of the people comes and asks me what I think, I’m going to roll my eyes’ – well, that kills an initiative.
You have to start with the senior people to make sure they’re totally committed. Knowing that you could make mistakes, but nonetheless you have to get the commitment that says this firm has to do this.
Then we had a management team meeting. So we go from having our 20 top people, then we have a meeting with our top 80 people and go through a similar process to make sure people have the time and ability to buy in to it.
Then we had a full meeting with everyone in the firm where we talked about how important it was. We rolled out the strategy we were going to use to get out in the market more and to grow the firm.
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