Build consensus
While you try to instill a long-term vision in your employees by encouraging them to think about big pictures and end results, keep in mind that you’re the ultimate puzzle master tasked with putting all of the pieces together in the end.
“Building something from the bottom up and allowing someone to have ownership helps, but it’s not a perfect democracy,” Dameris says. “Sometimes a decision has to be made and you hope that people are constructive. But sometimes you’ve got to make decisions where you feel like, as passionate as someone believes that this is the direction you go, they’re looking at just one aspect of their plan and not taking in all the needs of the organization.”
Still, try to maintain an inclusive culture in those cases. Dameris realizes that resolving disagreements can be one of the toughest skills for executives to learn — but that consensus building is one of the most important. So he offers some guidance.
He calls it “charm school training,” and it teaches managers communication and dispute-resolution skills. Dameris lays out expectations for how managers should treat each other and their employees, but the bulk of the training comes through examining other situations.
“We do a fair amount of case study work where we give people examples of prior incidences in corporations and, at the end of the day, how people reacted, what the end result was, and how it could have been handled better or worse,” says Dameris, who also reaches out to third-party talent coaches for training help.
Once employees go through training, at least you’ll all have a similar arsenal of skills to use for building consensus. Then part of the process is explaining to them what makes certain options more appealing than others.
First of all, you try to explain the thoughtfulness, discipline and reason that goes into your decision-making, like how you look for the option that will give you the biggest bang for your buck.
“You look at the opportunities where best to spend your time and resources,” Dameris says. “What has the largest market opportunity? Are you focused on long-term or shorter-term success? What has the highest probability of success when you take into consideration the resources you have to deploy?”
Not everyone will always agree on the best use of resources, but you can make every decision a learning process by discussing what works or what doesn’t and why.
“Now, it’s tough to then communicate back that, ‘Hey, this was a great idea, but it’s something we can’t execute on right now,’” Dameris says. “But the way we handle that is by identifying the positives versus the negatives, showing that people’s ideas were submitted and some were implemented and have improved our business versus just focusing on yours wasn’t adopted.”
That way, you’re still reinforcing the collective team goal and fueling an employee-centered culture.
By rebuilding that culture — and bolstering it with a couple like-minded acquisitions along the way — Dameris has more than doubled the size of On Assignment, from 2005 revenue of $237.9 million to $618.1 million in 2008. He recognizes it can take a lot longer than that to build a culture that brings results, but it’s worth it.
“Short term, it may not generate any financial return, but like anything, you reap the fruits of your labor,” he says. “To the extent that my leadership team spends time in developing their direct reports and making sure that we have the brightest and most constructive people, it makes all of our jobs easier.
“So longer term, people really underestimate the positive benefits of having a good culture and a good leadership team that’s been trained on soft skills as well as hard skills.”
How to reach: On Assignment Inc., (818) 878-7900 or www.onassignment.com