Unifying the team
Because Energy Transfer was built with acquisitions, the company now has a lot of offices in cities far away from Dallas. Davis says communicating to all employees is important, especially those in remote locations.
Energy Transfer’s management has periodic meetings in which the management staff from the remote offices comes to one location, and they talk about the company’s goals and issues, and the company’s management accepts questions from those location managers at the meetings.
“If you don’t have a chance to get answers to your questions directly, if you feel like they’re being filtered, you’ll think the worst,” Davis says. “If you can look at the people who are making the decisions in the eye and ask them questions and get a response, it’s a lot more meaningful.”
Davis says great management is crucial to managing remote locations. Energy Transfer has two offices, one in Cincinnati and one in Jacksonville, Fla., that he has never visited. But he saw the managers often. His hands-off approach is to keep an eye on what the offices are doing, to be available for questions, but, for the most part, to let the managers do their jobs. Watching the numbers coming out of the offices tells Davis and Warren much of what they need to know about the offices’ performance.