Ernie L. Danner asks a lot of questions.
Whether he’s trying to find out what customers really want, what employees are going through to meet those needs or how he can poise the company to make both sides happy, he’s going to ask plenty of other people what they think before landing at an answer.
“Most of the time it is just asking 4 million questions in 4 million ways so that you try to get it out of them,” says Danner, president and CEO of both Exterran Holdings Inc. and Exterran Partners LP.
Danner sees his role as the path-setter for the company, which has 10,000 employees providing oil and gas infrastructure products across more than 30 countries. Ultimately, his goal is to set a vision that will guide the company toward growth. But he can’t do it alone.
It takes a lot of input from employees and customers to set a vision in the right direction and, later, to gauge whether employees are on board with it.
“First, you’ve got to make a lot of visits to employees in the fields,” says Danner, who became CEO in June 2009 after serving as president and chief operating officer since October 2008. “You’ve got to get out of your office and you’ve got to go. The second is you provide the employees ways of getting you feedback. So I’m going out and asking. I give them a place to talk to me.”
By involving others in the vision he sets, Danner strives to make it a collective goal that everyone plays a part in achieving. He rallied employees together to increase 2006 revenue of $1.6 billion to $2.9 billion in 2009.
“To be a good leader, you really do just have to set the path for the organization that you’re leading. And to effectively set the path, you have to set the vision for the future,” Danner says. “And if you can combine that vision with great people, you can have success.”