Go flat
Kelly started his quest to keep Epicor
agile by making it into a flatter organization and improving communication.
When he took over, the company had
just made a major acquisition, and as a
result, several executives moved to
other roles within the company or left
Epicor altogether. He took that opportunity to flatten things out by simply not
filling those positions.
With fewer levels of management, communication at Epicor moved swiftly. The
switch to a flatter management structure
was intended to put Kelly a few steps
closer to the company’s customers and
bring everyone in the organization a few
steps closer together.
“The smoother and more quickly you
communicate, the quicker you can make
decisions and respond to market opportunities or challenges,” he says.
One of the roles Kelly eliminated was the
chief operating officer role. Previously, the
functional heads of Epicor’s departments
would report to the president and COO —
now they report directly to Kelly. He says
cutting that extra level of communication
helps the company stay agile by speeding
up the decision-making process.
“It’s much more real-time; there’s no filtering and no delay on that,” he says.
By eliminating the COO role and essentially taking on that responsibility in addition to his CEO duties, you could imagine
that Kelly’s time is in short supply. But he
says that there is plenty of time in the day
for his constant communications, if you
make the most of it.
“Yes, your staff meetings are important; yes,
having the team together is important,” he
says. “But it’s almost more important that
when I’m driving into the office in the morning and it’s early on the West Coast that I’m on
the phone to other parts of the company that
are already up and about.”
Kelly takes advantage of that commute
time for short conversations, used to touch
base with his top team members who are
scattered across different time zones. Taking
advantage of hidden time like that to stay up
to speed can help a lot in the long run.
“I listen to them tell me how they are
doing in their business, what challenges
they have, how they’re doing on their plans
or objectives,” he says. “You don’t want to
have such formal communication that they
feel the only time they talk is the formal setting. You need that same informal constant
flow of data: e-mails and those brief phone
call catch-ups. Get up to date with how
they’re doing.
“It’s the same with my customers. They
don’t have to be long, two-hour meetings,
but multiple, frequent touch points with
customers.”
Successful communication requires that
you be a good listener, not just a smooth
talker. Kelly allows his employees to freely
express their views but cautions that CEOs
must listen for more than one thing.
“You can listen to their words, and you
can listen to their actions,” he says. “If you
do both, it’s pretty hard not to conclude
whether somebody is on board or not.”
Kelly looks for the operating plans and
tactical plans his team devises and then
measures their performance by monitoring
how the customers are responding.
Basically, he looks to see if his executives’
actions are backing up their words. If they
have clearly set objectives, detailed plans
and their teams are responding well to
them, then they are on the right track.
