Running a business based on family
values means surrounding your
organization with dedicated, enthusiastic and talented people who strive
toward mutual goals. It means interacting
and engaging with employees in such a
way that it’s not about simply knowing
their names; it’s about sustaining an
“open-door policy” that extends far
beyond the workplace. It’s about sitting
down and trying to help them cope with
their drinking problems or divorces. It’s
about attending their weddings or visiting
them in the hospital when they aren’t
well.
More than anything else, it’s about being
fortunate enough to ask yourself at the
end of the day, “Is the making of another
dollar more important than this particular
family’s well-being or that employee’s
best interest?” It’s the people who help
you along the way and the passion they
invest into their work and your company
that captures the difference between success and failure for any business.
Smart Business spoke with Steven
Leturno and Daniel Lisowski, co-founders of AIT Worldwide Logistics
headquartered in Itasca, Ill., to find out
more about the importance of family
values.
What are the competitive advantages of a
corporate identity that is saturated in and
defined by family values?
A business run with a family-focused
philosophy gives employees the leeway,
flexibility and creativity to be proactive in
putting their own personalities into
accomplishing their goals. Of course, certain disciplines and skill sets are required
for each job, but when you aren’t over-managing or micromanaging and when
you don’t stand over employees with a job
manual and expect them to perform the
robotics of the job functions contained
within the pages, you will be amazed to
discover the entrepreneurial spirit that
comes to life among employees.
When you run things that way, innovative job descriptions, entire departments,
imaginative projects and ambitious goals
are evolved and created. Instead of setting stiff requirements and restrictions,
job descriptions should be written in pencil — not pen.
Most people have something to contribute. But when you are simply basing it
off a three-line job description, who really knows if that person and that particular
job are compatible? You give it the best
guess you can, but until you assimilate
yourself into a corporate culture, you will
never know whether or not you’ve made
a good match.
Is there a downside to bringing family values
to a corporate culture in a modern-day work-place?
All business owners have identifiable
goals and measurable boundaries for
their employees. They hold people
accountable in terms of budgets, spending limits and so forth. When people don’t
stay within those parameters, they subject themselves to potentially severe consequences. A lot of times in corporate
America, employees are fired or let go
when they don’t meet the minimum
requirements of the job. In some publicly
traded mega corporations, you’re either
cutting it or you’re not.
But in a business founded on family
values, it’s black-and-white with a hearty
dose of compassion thrown in. Business
owners tend to be a lot less rigid in
terms of enforcing these consequences,
which ultimately works for them or
against them. They give people second
and third and fourth chances and ample
opportunities to improve their job performance. Sometimes it pays off, and
sometimes you’ve wasted time and
money on an employee who will never
meet expectations.
What can business owners implement to
support and/or reinforce these family values?
Offering incentives, such as tuition
reimbursements, in-house weight-loss
programs and smoking cessation programs, can certainly reinforce these values and the overall best interests of
employees and their families.
But it’s not so much about the policies
in place as it is the way you handle the
day-to-day business. A lot of businesses
separate their corporate locations from
their operations locations — the ‘blue-collar’ locations from the ‘white-collar’
locations.
But, in a business founded on family values, it’s important for business owners
not to lose touch with their roots. It’s crucial to remain immersed in their core
business and corporate culture and be
mindful and cognizant of the day-in and
day-out activities of the organization. The
further you remove yourself, the more
you forget the excitement and fast pace
of your business, and the more you put
yourself at risk of losing the insatiable
passion that brought you into the industry in the first place. As business owners,
the bottom line is this: We don’t have to
be there; we want to be there.
STEVEN LETURNO and DANIEL LISOWSKI are co-founders of AIT Worldwide Logistics headquartered in Itasca, Ill. Spanning
numerous nationwide locations and an ever-increasing network of international partnerships, the global transportation and logistics
provider delivers tailored solutions for a wide variety of vertical markets and industries. Reach them at www.aitworldwide.com or (800)
669-4AIT (4248).