Charles Lipman admits that
he has limited skill sets when it comes to technical
products. And that’s not an
easy admission to make, given
that his company, DiversiTech
Inc., manufactures air conditioning condenser pads and
supplies other technical components for the heating, ventilating, air conditioning and refrigeration industry.
But Lipman has found ways
to overcome this weakness and
has grown DiversiTech to annual revenue of about $150 million by trusting his 350 employees and knowing when they can
help him with something he’s
not as knowledgeable about.
“It’s, one, confidence in your
capabilities and that of your
people,” the president says.
“Second is being unafraid of
risk, and third, it’s understanding that every decision you
make can be wrong and [having] a commitment to review
and adjust.”
Smart Business spoke with
Lipman about how to grow your
company by trusting in people
and being unafraid to take risks.
Don’t fear risk. It’s confidence in
your people. Of course, you
have to have the people to be
confident in. That’s important.
You can’t have confidence and
have it be misplaced.
[You know that] by the results.
They have to be placed in situations where they have options,
and they have to illustrate the
right choices.
You can gauge that even in the
simplest of actions — someone
who spends enormous amounts
of time in critical situations and
burns the midnight oil, as they
say, is a person with energy and
passion, and that matters. A person that will come to you and
tell you that the situation is bad.
That’s the person you want on
board because you don’t have to
wonder about it.
If you have people who have
demonstrated their abilities to
get stuff done and deal with
difficult areas, then you
shouldn’t be afraid of going
into another one.
I have confidence in people
because they’re here, first.
Second, the review process is
proportionate to the amount of
trust and the amount of risk. If
the risk is great and the trust is
modest, then one would have to
review fairly frequently. On the
other hand, if the risk is low,
then the review would be a very
long period in between.
It’s very important to have
metrics on anything you do.
Even if it’s wild speculation,
it’s important to put that speculation in writing and have a
measurement of where you
expect to be and when you
expect to be there and milestones to that objective.
