Q. How do you set goals for a growth culture?
It starts at the top with our director group. Everybody sits down and goes through an annual personal plan — what they’re going to accomplish in the next 12 months. They do that in conjunction for the most part with me.
We break those goals down into four areas: business development, production, management and leadership. They have specific goals in each of those four areas. Especially in the growth area, we have specific goals in that area. Not just financial goals in terms of number of leads and dollar amount leads, revenue that is generated, new revenue that is generated, but also, are they doing the activities that they need to be doing that are going to help those things happen — things like attending business luncheons, writing articles, doing presentations and public speaking, all those things that help position them in the marketplace to give them a better chance of being successful.
Q. How do you hold people accountable to the goals?
We meet on a quarterly basis to see where you’re at. That is real key, too. You can’t just do it on an annual basis at the end of the year or at the beginning of each year. You have to do it throughout the year and make sure that people keep focused and if there’s a need to readjust what you’re doing at that time.
The biggest advice there is you have to constantly be in touch with them. With the concept of return and report, you assign a task or a responsibility to somebody and they take that task and have responsibility to return a report to whomever it is they’re working with. Being appropriately demanding of each other helps all of us push each other along and make sure that the things do get done, because we know we’re counting on each other.
Q. How do you link every employee to growth?
We spend a lot of time stressing to everyone that it’s their responsibility to help grow the organization. It’s not just the owners or a few people within the firm or the salespeople or the marketing department; everybody has that responsibility and ability to do that.
The very first thing you do is you lead by example in terms of demonstrating the activities that people should be doing in general to help grow the firm. It starts there.
The other thing is, you have to remind people that they’re always representing the organization no matter where they’re at. If they share things that we’re doing with others, you might be surprised that an opportunity might come out of that. We’ve had at least one administrative assistant that I can think of that was talking about one of the new service offerings we have with a neighbor. The next thing we know, the neighbor is calling up, because they’re interested in knowing more.
You just never know when you’re going to strike a chord with somebody. That is what we try to stress.
When those things happen, we try to give recognition and highlight people. We give more of an effort to recognize people who don’t have that as a primary role.
Q. What is the importance of recognition?
Recognition and giving people credit are really key. So many times, especially at the upper level, if there’s a team involved with bringing business in, you have to step aside and make sure that you’re not trying to take the credit for yourself, that you’re really recognizing the people and the team that was involved with bringing in that new work.
We do a lot of that with trying to find ways to say thank you, both publicly and privately, to let people know that we really appreciate what they’re doing. That is a big motivator.
How to reach: BCG & Co., (330) 864-6661 or www.bcgcompany.com