When you are really
good at developing the
potential that exists within your employees, it’s only
natural that some of them will
take those skills and leave for a
new career opportunity, says
Christopher Clapp, president and
CEO of ANGEL Learning Inc.
“People need to feel like they
are getting satisfying careers,”
Clapp says. “If they are not
enjoying what they are doing
and they think they are best
served by leaving, that may hurt,
but we want to try to feel good
about that for them. We’re not
encouraging people to move
out, but if that’s the reality, we’ll
try to support you on that.”
The company’s investment in
developing employees has
helped the 80-employee learning
management solutions provider
grow its revenue by 70 percent
each year from 2004 to 2006.
Smart Business spoke with
Clapp about how to get the best
from your employees and engage them in your company’s
growth.
Q. What is your role in motivating employees?
Recognize that you may not
have all the answers right away,
and you need to canvass for
insight and input from a lot of
different folks. There is a certain
amount of humility that is
required to accept that we don’t
have all the answers.
We try to make sure people
feel welcome to use me and
other members of the leadership team as sounding boards.
They don’t have to have their
ideas fully baked and ready to
recommend. They can use leadership, including me, in the formative stages of the process.
The availability for hallway
conversations or more structured meeting environments or
walk-ins to the office, those are
things that I encourage and that
we all encourage here.
Q. How do you put your
words into action?
We share openly the results of
our organization and goals. We
really encourage people to explore alternatives as opposed to
getting locked in to just doing
things the way we have done
them. In a fast-growing
company, your customers’
expectations change dramatically over time, and
the organizational structure to deliver it changes
dramatically over time.
Even though we may be
very convinced that we
have historically done
things in a very effective
manner, we have to accept that with new requirements and new
expectations, the right
answers will likely be different than they were in
the past.
A lot of it is about
exposing that and keeping visible the need to
change, supporting people through interactions
with their peers and leadership.
We make it part of the dialogue.
Your natural tendency as you’re
getting bigger is to add a layer
of management. That’s nice and
clean because that layer of management can just take care of
this vaguely conceived challenge.
Try to do that very selectively.
Why do we need a layer of
management here? Is there some
other way to organize the work
that a manager typically does
and distribute it so that we’re
still getting the work done?
Q. How can you personally
affect your company’s growth?
Be self-aware and try to understand what makes you tick and
where your strengths are and
where your weaknesses are, and
be candid about that. Get comfortable with those ideas, and do
not try to lead or perform in some
way that is somebody else’s style.
Go with your strengths and
mitigate your weaknesses.
Try to involve people who
have different strengths than
you do, and try to respect those strengths. At the end of the day,
I’m just trying to stretch myself
and to not become somebody
that I’m not.
Q. How do you get the most
out of your employees?
We provide them with an orientation, a series of sessions to
make sure we’ve rearticulated
the vision of the company and
how we present ourselves to
customers and a few key fundamentals about how the organization works.
We try to get them exposed to
work flow, no matter what part
of the organization they are in.
Give them opportunities to see
how we present to customers.
It’s also an opportunity for us to
greatly improve.
We’re very keen on trying to
help every individual develop to
their full potential. I say that regardless of whether we think
being in a traditional leadership
role is something they might
aspire to or it’s just simply
being effective as an individual
contributor.
We’re trying to identify that
and work with each individual
to develop those skills. Those
people who aspire to and who
we think have potential to be
strong leaders, we’re trying to
give those folks opportunities to
stretch themselves with new job
experiences and job participation in various vehicles.
We’re also using that as an
opportunity to expose people to
other parts of the organization
and other people and have them
take responsibility for whatever
the objective of that team is.
Each individual wants and
needs a different path. People
need to feel like they are getting
satisfying careers.
HOW TO REACH: ANGEL Learning Inc., (317) 333-7300 or www.angellearning.com