Reward employees. Projects are important. You have a certain project you need done and (an employee) gets it done or the department gets it done very well and very quickly, you can bonus them. But never set it in stone. All the bonuses come across my desk, and the only one that makes that decision is me. It’s totally discretionary.
When you structure it and say, ‘This is what you are going to get,’ they take it for granted.
I’ll put it on the store level. You take your guys and you buy them lunch every Friday. All of sudden they expect it. Well, if you skip a couple of weeks and they really hit a home run and do $40,000 in a week on a Wednesday, you buy them steaks instead of that routine thing. The bonus structure is the same way. ‘OK, if this store closes, I know exactly what I am going to get.’ Well, that gives you no incentive to push harder. If it’s to my discretion and I can see you are really working and putting in the time, I’m going to give you more, and I’m going to give the other guy less.
Know your weaknesses. The first thing you need to do is be honest with yourself and be honest with the others around you. Because the guys that try to run a company and try to be everything, they usually get to a plateau or they fail. I would recommend you take a personality test. And see where your weaknesses are. And be honest with yourself. They are weaknesses, and people don’t change. You have to recognize that about yourself. ‘OK, I see the weakness; I need to work harder on that.’ But in four months you’re still not doing a good job because you have all these other responsibilities.
Find out, if you’re walking into a company with 50-plus employees, find out who runs those areas better than you do. Watch them and see if they are doing a satisfactory job or a spectacular job. Either get them off the bus or help them grow, but give them freedom. You’ve got to give them freedom. If you are going to give somebody responsibility and you look over their shoulder on everything, it’s just a frustration to people. It’s not fair to that person that you gave the authority to because he really doesn’t have any.
Stay in the know. There’s only 22 of us in the office, so I have a pulse on the things that are incredibly important that we have to carry out by deadlines and that sort of thing. I know what those projects are, so when I come in the morning and walk down to my office, I’m hitting it and saying, ‘Where are you on the Web site, what’s happening, why aren’t you done? OK, you IT guys, you’re designing this infrastructure, and I want to know where we are with it and these important things after the infrastructure. What are our deadlines; what are you looking at for timelines on that?’
How to reach: Christian Brothers Automotive Corp., (281) 870-8900 or www.cbac.com