Expand your credibility
Building credibility begins with basic trust, but if you want to dig
out of a hole like the one Abu-Ghazaleh was facing, you also need
to make a personal impact with every level of your company.
“I personally don’t have any problem meeting with the high-level
executives as well as the middle-level management as well as the
people in the field, which I do regularly,” he says. “I have to have
these relationships with the top people in the business as well as in
the field. An employee has to see your face and know that you exist.
You have to transmit confidence; this gives them a kind of association or identification. They identify with this company, they feel
they are part of this company, we are one team, and there’s not a big
boss sitting at the top not even close to the people in the field. These
are very important issues that one has to take in to consideration.”
The first part is taking the time to regularly be in front of your
people. If you have two locations, you can obviously do more of
this than if you have 200, but the point is you have to make the visits and meet with every level of employee.
“I do make visits every year, at least once, to visit these operations,
and I meet with the people in the back office or the field and do have
dialogue with them and look at the operation in the field,” Abu-Ghazaleh says.
Each visit isn’t just shaking hands. Restoring employee faith in leadership means that you have to show employees that you know your
stuff. Abu-Ghazaleh makes sure he has real conversations with people about what their group is doing and how it measures up with similar groups in the company. Creating that type of conversation comes
from doing your homework ahead of time. Abu-Ghazaleh has each
of his centers send a weekly report on where production is, how
that meets with its goals and what problems, if any, have slowed
production. You don’t have to get every detail of every day’s work,
he says, but you have to have a basis for where that group is headed.
“If there is a problem today, we have to correct it by tomorrow,”
he says. “Our business cannot wait six months. We are in a business where everything is perishable, and you have to make decisions on a daily basis.
“I’m not just reading reports. From my background, which is in
agriculture and farming, I do know more or less the obstacles, the
challenges and the solutions that can be found for our operation,
and that helps. When you know the business, it’s easier to speak
with people.”
Abu-Ghazaleh says the more you can make these types of visits,
the more you’ll have to take to the next meeting. In fact, if you can
have these engaging conversations with employees, you will build
up a knowledge that creates a benefit for both ends.
“It’s a mutual benefit,” he says. “It’s not only that (employees)
take something from me or from the COO, which we are often on
these trips together, but we learn from them. We learn that if we
see something wrong we can rectify it immediately, and the only
way you can really learn if the business is going right is by being
on the spot, by being in the field. And when I say field, it doesn’t
mean you have to be at a farm, it means you have to be at a distribution center or a factory. When you are there, with the knowledge
one builds, you can even read behind the lines, you can tell if
things are right and if something is not right.”
But if you’re looking to turn a company around, you can’t just go
through this process once. You have to stay on top of each unit’s
reports and continue to make visits. Building up confidence in the
short term will quickly be forgotten if employees no longer have a
touch point with you the instant the company starts to improve.
“You are not coming every six months to look at this report, you
are reading it every week, and you are watching the macro environment,” Abu-Ghazaleh says. “You have to be aware of what’s
going on around the world, what’s going on with the raw materials,
fuel, so many factors, and you have to put this picture all together
… so it takes time, it takes effort, but if that’s what it needs, then
that’s what you have to put in.”
It’s been more than a decade since Abu- Ghazaleh took on the
challenge of changing Fresh Del Monte’s story. But from a company with $300 million in bad debt, Fresh Del Monte has been able to
see solid fruits to its labor, pushing beyond $3.36 billion in sales in
2007, along with $179.8 million in net income. To Abu-Ghazaleh, a
majority of the company’s resurgence is about rekindled faith in
management.
“I think at least 50 percent comes from that because all the players adapt to that kind of mold and you have to build respect
between the top management and the middle management and the
lower management,” he says. “Big company, small company, middle-size company, news spreads around very quickly. If there is
something wrong, it spreads even faster. So it’s very important the
image and the attitude you portray to people at the end of the day.
In one word, ethics in everything in life, that is the most important
thing.”
HOW TO REACH: Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc., (800) 950-3683 or www.freshdelmonte.com
