Douglas J. Erwin is a culture nut. Culture, he says, allows people to work in a fun environment and gives them something to
believe in. Erwin has created fun environments wherever he’s worked, from peddling an ice cream cart around the office and
serving tasty treats to employees or turning a parking lot into a beach party. It’s hard to create that environment, but Erwin, who
became chairman and CEO of The Planet in 2006, has focused on making sure that his 500 employees are excited to come to
work each day at the Web and Internet technology hosting company. The business hosts more than 22,000 small and mediumsized businesses and 2.8 million Web sites worldwide, posting $110 million in 2006 revenue. Smart Business spoke with Erwin
about how to get employees excited to come to work each morning and how to create a fun-filled environment.
Have fun and work hard. Create a workplace
where people want to come to work.
People like to work in cool places. You’ve
got to have fun at work. If you don’t have
fun at work, that’s not going to get transferred to when you deal with customers.
It should be an environment where, you
walk in, the people will say, ‘Wow, this is
cool.’ It’s creating an environment where
it’s fun to work. Just something that would
make it different.
If you could take somebody out of a standard job and move them to something else
for a couple of days, it gives them a break
and gives them a chance to see that maybe
their job isn’t that bad after all.
Try to bring more value to a person’s day-to-day job by involving them in other things
outside of their realm of job responsibilities. You get buy-in with these people
because they had a chance to do something a little different.
Have the patience to make changes. It’s not an
easy thing to do, to create culture. What’s
worse is to start down that journey and not
really want to. People will see through you
immediately, and you will lose credibility
as a leader. Hire somebody that can do it
for you. Find somebody on your management team that has that twist.
You can’t just go in and wave a wand and
say, ‘New sheriff in town, here’s the new
culture, here’s what we’re going to do.’ It’s
an evolution, a journey, a slow process.
The first thing I would ask is, ‘Do you
really want to do that?’ If that person doesn’t have that passion to do that, it will fail
immediately. Throw in a foosball table, big
deal. Throw in a ping pong table, big deal.
That’s not what makes it cool.
Just tap somebody on the shoulder
when you walk by a cube and ask them
what they do and listen to them. If they
don’t jump up and start rattling off what
the company does and how great it is,
you know you’ve missed it.
If people are happy at their job, if they
feel like they are more than a cog in a
machine, if they’re getting paid fair, if their
management treats them fair and if they’re n an environment that’s a cool place, you
will have loyalty like you’ve never had
before. That’s hard to do, and it takes time
to build.
Be a model for employees. People are constantly looking at you. You could be walking down the hall to get a cup of coffee, and
people know that you went by. Once you
know that you’re in the limelight, you have
to be on ‘go’ all the time.
When you talk about culture and successful cultures or not, you take a look at
any of the successful companies, it starts
right at the top with the leadership. Then it
has to go to the next level down because if
you have guys in the next level that are not
leading and doing the same thing, you lose
that whole side of the business.
The team should ask, ‘Are we approachable? Are we involved? Do we go out and talk
to people? Are we behind closed doors?’
Let employees know their opinion is valued. You might not follow it, but at least
you took the time to ask it.
Look for passion, integrity, trust, ownership and
customer focus. You can see passion the
moment candidates walk in and shake
your hand. You can see it in their eyes, you
can see it in their body language.
Start talking, and their eyes are either
going to be engaged and locked in on you,
or they’re going to be distant.
During an interview, I go to my board and
start drawing and explaining. The passionate people will sit there and watch, and
before the interview is over, they’ll be at the
board drawing what they think, and you
just see it in them.
Ask questions about how they manage
people. Ask them how they fire people.
There’s a right way and a wrong way to fire
people, and most people do it the wrong
way. The right way is to make sure that
you’re helping people and that you’re helping them so much that they get frustrated
and say, ‘I can’t take this anymore,’ and
leave. A firing is usually a mutual thing if it’s
done properly.
Talk to them about their style of management. Start asking them to describe
their strengths, and the word trust is
going to get used there one way or
another. That trust, unfortunately, is
going to have to be a gut feel.
Turn back around and ask them a question you asked four interviews ago and see
how they answer the question, see if the
story changes a little bit.
Look for a person whose capacity is
greater than the job they’re going to be
asked to do.
When a problem occurs, own it. Don’t
pass it to somebody else to fix. You might
need somebody else’s talent to help you fix
it, but you own it until the customer’s
happy.
HOW TO REACH: The Planet, www.theplanet.com or (713) 400-5400