Michael Perry not only If you encourage employees Smart Business spoke with Allow employees to think on their I’ve only been president for When a person is first hired, Our company has an established set of checks and balances Constantly communicate. When The best way to do that is to The proof is in the pudding. If I believe in keeping things at a Any good leader needs to be a good communicator. If you can’t Keep the ideas flowing. You can It’s too big of an arena for one Practice the art of positive thinking. No. 1, steer away from negative people and associate yourself with positive people. No. 2, when you have a negative situation, create a way to I was a bit of a negative thinker I did a checkup on myself, and Positive thinking has helped HOW TO REACH: H.B.D. Construction Inc., (314) 781-8000 or www.hbdgc.com
believes in leadership by example, he lives it.
to join community organizations or to serve on nonprofit
boards, Perry says it is your
responsibility to do the same.
Perry, who serves as president
of H.B.D. Construction Inc., a
full-service general contracting
firm, says the best way for leaders to communicate their
corporate vision is through
their actions: If they believe in
something, they should pursue
it. And it’s a philosophy he
lives each day at H.B.D, a full-service general contracting
firm that reported $128 million
in 2007 revenue and employs
130 people.
Perry about how to delegate
responsibility, communicate
with your staff and create
an environment of positive
attitudes.
own. Delegate responsibility
where applicable. You do that
by assigning responsibilities
throughout your process to
your managers and holding
them accountable for the performance of their project. We
have review meetings, whereby
the projects are analyzed on a
monthly basis. We have yearly
reviews for all staff, including
administrative, and that’s where
compensation comes into it.
four years, and delegating was a
little difficult at first, only because
I worked my way up through
the chain here at the company
and was, at one time, a project
manager. When you realize that
there’s way too much to do it all
yourself, you’re forced into delegating, and you learn quickly.
give them small amounts of responsibilities, and then quickly
ratchet that up as they perform.
You wouldn’t have hired a person if you didn’t trust them out
of the chute.
on virtually every operation —
the way our costs are handled,
our schedules, our procedures
— so I rely on those checks and
balances. If a person is not representing my company well, I will
certainly hear about it quickly.
you have a problem, 98 percent
of the time you can trace the
source of that to either a mis-communication or a lack of
communication between the
two parties. To avoid those
problems and to have smooth
projects, you have to communicate internally and externally.
avoid sitting in the ivory tower,
letting your employees handle all the problems. When a problem exists that your employees
can’t handle, I want them to
bring it to me, and then we’ll
work toward a solution. To do
that, you have to listen to your
employees and allow them to
bring things to you and not be
fearful.
you run around screaming at
everybody and firing everybody,
that will get out pretty quickly
as your method of operation,
and that’s not a successful one.
civil level. When problems arise,
we learn from them, not only
individually but as a company,
and then we share those with
each other and use them as a
tool rather than a reason to get
rid of somebody.
communicate with folks, you’re
probably not going to be leading
a company. If you’re a good
communicator and you have an
employee who’s not communicating well, focus on that with
them and help them improve
upon it.
foster teamwork by having regular assemblies of your management team and fostering an idea-sharing environment, as opposed
to working individually and not
gaining knowledge from each
other. I always say that our business is constantly learning because it continually evolves.
Things change in business, particularly through technology; there’s always improvements
made, so you need to keep up
on those.
person to think they’ve learned
everything, including myself.
You foster that by getting together and giving everybody the
opportunity to speak up about
things they’ve learned, problems
they’ve had, and hope that you
gain as a company from that.
turn it positive. You don’t want
to have rose-colored glasses and
walk around saying everything
is wonderful when it’s not, but
when you’re faced with a negative situation, deal with it, and
then move back to a positive
mode of thinking.
in my younger years, and I
changed that around as I got
older. I was preparing myself
to take on a bigger role in our
organization, and I realized that I
was going to be faced with more
problems and challenges than I
had in my former position.
that gave me a wake-up call: The
business was the same, the company was the same, the only
thing that changed was me.
me to deal with things, and I try
to pass that on to my employees. Positive attitudes are contagious.
