Rick Jones had put his
heart and soul into
Bluware Inc. Then suddenly it looked like he was
about to lose everything he
had worked so hard to build.
“Having doctors say, ‘If you
don’t do something, you’re
probably not going to be
around for much longer,’ that
will open one’s eyes,” says the
company’s founder, president
and CEO. “I was in this
Superman drama of doing it all
and doing it all now.”
The cold slap in the face
delivered by his doctor taught
him he needed to find another
way. His IT consultancy business — and his life — depended on it.
“It’s not better for me to do it
all, and it doesn’t all have to be
done now,” Jones says. “You
need to schedule and pace. It’s
more of a long-distance race
and not a sprint.”
Jones turned his life around,
and 20 years after launching
his business, he is achieving
success. Bluware hit $7.6 million in 2007 revenue, and
Jones anticipates 2008 revenue
approaching $10 million.
Smart Business spoke with
the head of the 55-employee
firm about how to share the
burden of responsibility in
your business.
Q. How can a leader’s
behavior affect the behavior
of employees?
Back when I was doing most
of the jobs, I was in the office
from 7:30 a.m. to 8 at night. A
lot of the employees were, too.
I think they felt like they had
to be because I was. There
was a lot of burnout, and we
had significant turnover.
People loved what they were
doing, but it got to them after
awhile. People really want to
be part of a team, and they
want to win. They want to be
seen as part of the top echelon
and will work hard to get
there and stay there. They’ll
even burn themselves out to
do it. That’s not healthy.
Q. How do you support a
healthy work environment?
The hard thing to recognize
is that I’m not the best person
for everything. Life has gotten
better as I’ve turned things
over to people.
The key for me was to
assess my strengths and
weaknesses. Where I’m
strong, keep those jobs.
Where I’m weak, hire.
I look at the places
where I have stress. If I
believe others in other
companies are doing a
better job than I’m personally doing in this particular role, then I need
someone else to do it.
When I turn an
aspect of the business
over to someone who
is talented and capable, and then I look at
it a month later and it’s
doing better than it
was when I was handling it, that only tells me I
need more of this.
Q. How does this attitude
help your business?
How can the Astros go and
play 162 games in a season
or any sports team? You’re
going to win some, and then
you’re going to get up and do
it again. You’re not going to
win them all.
Let’s not stress about that.
Let’s win enough to meet our
goals and not harm ourselves
physically in the process. Life
is there to be lived. I did, in
our early years, let the business take over my life, and I
was no happier for it.
I do use our metrics to show
people where we are, what
their progress is and what the
next step up would be.
