In difficult times, Eric Maryanov strives to maintain a direct connection with his 32 employees at All-Travel.
“The core message of an organization and its core factors do have stability in this ever-changing world,” says the company’s founder and president. “You need to apply the message in all aspects and communications.”
Focusing on his message and on open communication has helped Maryanov grow the company, which he founded in 1984, to 2007 sales of $38 million.
Smart Business spoke with Maryanov about how to maintain open communication and how to set the tone at the top.
Q. How do you develop a message for employees to follow?
By open communication and their ability to query back, so that if they’re sensing, ‘Wait, that’s not the message I heard last time,’ their ability to question it, so I am able to either redefine or reclarify it. Listening to the staff and all of their input is a huge part of success. They know more of what is happening on the customer level. And not listening to only one member of the staff but getting information from all staff and multiple perspectives of the same questions.
It’s regular and consistent communication and consistency in your message, be that through e-mail, staff meetings or one-on-one conversations. The consistency of the tone and message has to be there. It’s not one of those things that just happens once in awhile; it’s ongoing, daily, it’s a reinforcement of the message.
The tone comes from all aspects of everything you do. Sometimes we don’t realize the staff watches our every move, motion and attitude, and it’s an awareness that we have to have at all times.
Q. How do you keep the lines of communication open?
Make sure that sometimes you’re out and about in the office. E-mail is a wonderful tool, and I spend a good amount of my day on e-mail with staff, being accessible to them, raising questions to them to trigger back their response and keep a dialogue going back and forth.
It’s being responsive and at least acknowledging. I try to encourage most of that communication to come in the form of e-mail. But also what fosters that is, at times, sharing the positive with the staff. By receiving a commentary e-mail, when you’re able to put it in a positive light, it’s easier to respond not only to the person who sent it but share it with a greater segment of the staff with a positive response and/or explanation. But if you always start with, ‘That was a good question, and here’s why,’ or, ‘That’s something we should give some further thought to,’ and letting everybody hear that response, it doesn’t give people the fear factor of coming forward with their own comments or ideas.
(You learn about) trends in the marketplace, trends within the business itself, and oftentimes, it’s the first source of finding out if there’s an employee problem. It’s important to treat employees as individual people and recognize that everybody’s needs are different and their individual needs change over time. Show an honest interest in the basics and fundamentals of their life.
