Satish Gupta says it all startswith communication.
Your company goals, thebasis for your culture and corevalues, the wide-ranging, big-picture concepts that form thetemplate for your businessoperations — all of it beginswith simple, face-to-face communication.
At SB International Inc. — a steel pipe and tubing producerfor the oil and gas industry thatposted fiscal 2007 revenue of$195 million — face-to-facecommunication starts with dailymanagement meetings. In thosemeetings, Gupta, the founder,president and CEO, relays themessages he wants the managers at SB International to cascade throughout the organization. He then gives his managers the authority to communicate that message.
It’s a system of developing avision, informing others abouthow that vision will be reachedand then giving others the ability to carry it out.
“My leadership style is a lot ofdelegation, as much as possible, and I try to give maximumpower to my key managementpeople,” Gupta says.
Smart Business spoke withGupta about how to communicate on a small-scale level andhow doing so can affect the bigpicture.
Make communication personal. Ireally believe in face-to-facecommunication as the bestsource of communication. Ittells us the other person’sbody language, and it alsogives us better feedback. Ittells our key managementteam that they are accessibleto each other and to the topmanagement.
Once a week, we havelunches and dinners with thekey employees and the keymanagement team, so that isone way I try to make myselfaccessible. The second thingis we try to have every monthor two a family get-togetherwith the key managementteam. We get together at acertain place, have a wonderful dinner, and that gives themaccessibility to each other,and at the same time, we havesome fun.
We get two things out ofthose dinners. We want eachperson in the company to feelproud of working for thiscompany, so we try to readtheir body language, how theyfeel about it, talk about it. Italso gives us a social time tomeet and get to know them alittle bit more.
I believe that since we arehuman beings, knowing eachother better always improvesour productivity and motivates us, and each person isbetter because they are partof a team.
Identify goals. First of all, wedefine what the companygoals are, the long-term andshort-term goals. Once thoseare defined, then I try to pick acouple of key managementpeople with some of thosegoals, breaking down whichone wants to be responsiblefor each goal.
Then I give them the powerto achieve those goals. We listwhat it is going to take toachieve those goals and givethem the power to go achievethem. If it requires purchasing a processing plant or hiring more people in that area,that power is given to them.
But before that, the key partis that when we work withpeople for many years, yourealize that not all key peoplework the way you want towork. Some are good, someare bad, so you figure outwhich one has the chemistrythat goes well with what youare doing, do they understandyour vision and values.
We try to keep those whohave shown that they arealigned with our goals, haveshown an ability to take onresponsibility, and thenempower them.
