Alex Gallo has always been a
fan of the Ritz Carlton Hotel chain; it amazes him how, no
matter which one he stays at, the
service is always wonderful.
He began asking himself how
it maintains that consistency
throughout its locales and how
he could do the same at
Alexander Gallo Holdings LLC,
his court reporting and litigation
support services company.
“Anybody who’s ever done an
acquisition of a company can
relate to the ‘us vs. them,’” Gallo
says. “There’s got to be something to bring it together, and
maybe somebody doesn’t realize
what it is, but it’s culture. I cannot
imagine anything as important.”
Since founding his company a
decade ago, the president and
CEO has seen his business
grow to more than 60 offices
through 14 acquisitions. With
more than 1,000 employees
scattered from coast to coast,
he constantly draws on inspiration from the Ritz to help him
unify his people and create one
corporate culture.
Smart Business spoke with
Gallo about how to unify people
from different backgrounds to
create one new culture.
Create a plan.
Hire a very good
consultant. Anyone at the senior
level who spends time with the
people in the field and understands the business could have
sat there and said, ‘Hey, here are
the top 10 things,’ and you’d be
right on. The advice really is
spending time from the bottom
up with the people in the field
who are making the decisions
and running the company and
keeping it together.
We had consultants come in.
It started with interviews with
about 150 employees and
clients from across the country from the bottom up. They
had a general theme of questions they were driving
toward, and they assimilated
the information and went
through it and said, ‘OK, here’s
the top 10, 15 hot points, here
are the concerns, here’s the
direction.’ Some of it is stuff
you would generally see —
integrity, honesty — but it really rubs in to some of the principles and issues as a company that you would have when
you’re bringing together different cultures, the ‘us vs. them,’
and how do you get past that.
Then, from there, it was
exploring who we are. What’s
the common thread among all
of us that drives us that needs
to be present for you to wake
up and dedicate yourself to
what’s required? It’s a guiding
principle. It’s the rules by
which you operate.
Roll it out.
It shouldn’t be the
senior-level management team
only kind of spouting off — you
absolutely must involve the people and get the buy-in. You’re trying to get people behind a common goal and common vision
going a common direction.
It’s easy for people to say,
‘Follow me and run,’ but how
many people are sitting there
nodding off?
We formulated it into words
and print, and then we rolled it
out in regional meetings to the
company. For something like
that, we kept the energy level
high. It was about a three-hour
meeting, and I spoke about 15
to 20 minutes. We have 14
guiding principles, and you
had a different person for each
speaking to it and saying
what’s the meaning of it.
It wasn’t Alex Gallo saying,
‘Hey, here’s who we are —
now act like this.’ It was the
people speaking about who
they were and who the company was and what makes them
do what they do.
When it’s a peer that you
respect and they’re talking
about, ‘Here’s what this means
to me,’ all of a sudden people
tend to think, ‘Yeah, I like
Suzie. She does live this every
day. This is a great thing,’ and
people start getting behind it.
There was a realization that
this wasn’t a top-down
approach. There was that
understanding, so it builds
momentum as the people saw
that we were serious about
what we were doing.
