Put course corrections into context
While Pizzuti is working hard to keep his company on track and innovate within a comfortable space, he concedes that this is one tough time. Because of that, his company, like most, has had some projects that have slowed. You have to address those things with your people because being stagnant will lead to worry, but he says you must do it in the proper context.
“A lot of leadership comes from communication and delivering a clear message,” he says “A message that explains the vision of our company, where we’re going, why we’re doing things and then it goes to the next level, which is effectively communicating with all of our associates how we together achieve that goal and what we expect from each and every one of them.”
To make communications clear, you can’t sugarcoat them. Instead, you have to honestly address things that have been taken off course slightly and tell employees how those adjustments still fit into the overall plan.
“We’ve been very honest with all of our associates,” Pizzuti says. “We have told them what we think the challenges are, and we’ve consistently done that. It’s been a little over a year since things started to get tough in our industry, and we have taken the position that sharing with them exactly what’s going on, why we think that’s happening and what our plan is to move through this challenging period. That way people aren’t asking questions, people aren’t wondering, and that’s been very effective.”
Doing that means having those honest conversations with employees, but it also means regularly refreshing the context of their daily work. For example, when employees are doing a little more preliminary work on project approvals and the like, they need to hear why that’s part of being ready to take flight when the downturn is over. Providing that framework helps motivation.
“Again, it’s about communication and sharing with people where we’re going and why we’re going there,” he says. “When we’ve explained to folks, ‘This is what we’re doing for the next six to nine months; this is where we need to focus our energy and time,’ all of our people get it. And they know there is a light at the end of the tunnel and they’re excited.”
Once you’ve communicated your vision and expectations to employees, you then must stay sincere to your original vision or plan. When times are tough, drawing up a brand-new vision makes people nervous and they have a hard time believing in you. But if you revisit your vision and explain alterations in a way that you believe, you’ll get buy-in.
“It’s critical that the leader believes in what he or she is preaching, and if that is the case, then it’s critically important to deliver that message clearly and concisely,” Pizzuti says. “But equally important is the idea that he or she has to follow it themselves. So we try very, very hard to stick to the path that we set.”
That means you don’t change your core ideals, you simply adjust them to the market. If your quarterly budget will be different due to external forces, you explain that, but you don’t scrap the whole budget and start over, you use it as your reference point for alterations.
“I don’t think the core way we want to run our company, the tone we want to set, ever changes,” Pizzuti says. “Now our day-to-day decisions or our quarter-to-quarter decisions can change — they’ve changed a lot in the last 18 months — but it’s my job to take that information, figure out what we should be doing and explain that, explain why it is the case, and then push in that direction. It’s more important to be consistent about how we’re doing things and why we’re doing them.”
How to reach: The Pizzuti Cos., (614) 280-4000 or www.pizzuti.com
