Q. How do you mold several opinions into one decision?
It kind of happens naturally when people are involved in the process. They tend to have an input, and they steer it. When I get into a critical decision, a lot of times I don’t know what the right answer is, so we as a group can talk about it and argue about it.
It’s a dialogue. There’s a lot of dialogue. I’m the final decision-maker, but there’s dialogue.
People don’t always agree. You build the right management team where there’s trust among the players. All the people on the management team have to leave their egos at the door. They have to be willing to dialogue and debate issues, and that’s about building consensus.
If you have smart people that are rational and can think through things, you generally come to an agreement based on the set of ideas that come to the table.
Q. How do you, as the leader, maintain a voice during this process?
The thing that you have to be careful about is that I want to emphasize consensus, but there is one CEO. You still have to take responsibility for the actions of your company; that’s why you have to be the final decision-maker. You’re accountable for the company.
Accountability is distributed throughout the company on different levels. But there’s still one CEO, and that has to be clearly communicated and people have to understand that.
What (employees) want is that they know that they have an impact and what they say really matters. And it really does fundamentally.
How to reach: Kent Displays Inc., (330) 673-8784 or www.kentdisplays.com
