When the idea came up almost 30 years ago at Exhibit Work Inc.’s inaugural Christmas party, Dominic Silvio was resistant.
“Here’s a small group of seven or eight of us sitting around a table and somebody said EWI instead of Exhibit Works,” says Silvio, the company’s chairman, founder and CEO. “And I admonished this person and said, ‘Hey, please don’t start that. I don’t want to be known as EWI.’”
But nearly 30 years later, Silvio and his 250 employees have made the initials official at the company, which posted $179 million in revenue in fiscal 2008. The name change to EWI Worldwide in August 2007 reflects the company’s global shift and is inclusive of all of the company’s live communication and event marketing services, not just exhibit design. But despite the changes, EWI’s communication-driven culture has stayed the same.
Smart Business spoke with Silvio about how to use your employees’ input for change while keeping them on track with everyday tasks.
Establish open communication. Rebranding situations are different. For some companies, it might be the culture that needs to change. For us, it was about evolving our business, diversifying, growing globally and ultimately serving our clients the full spectrum of live communications. So we were faced with the challenge of making organizational changes without losing sight of our core culture.
The culture we’ve managed to preserve has a lot to do with people, communication and trust. Give (people) a voice in the company. I have always had an open-door policy.
I encourage employees to stop me in the hall and ask questions, visit my office and share their ideas. It’s also important that they communicate with each other.
Keep your door open. Be available. Listen. Not everyone is comfortable sharing input with the CEO, so give options. Get your human resources department involved or have an employee responsible for internal communications. Create an open atmosphere and then some of it is up to the people.
