Constant improvement is the
key to success, says Andrew Armstrong.
The president of AB Mauri
North America says that leaders
must maintain a laser focus on
continuous improvement while
growing their companies and
enriching the lives of their personnel.
“If you can accept that you,
personally, are never the finished article, and you can
always improve on both your own performance and your
team’s collective performance,
it provides a solid platform for
ongoing development of the
business,” says the head of the
yeast and bakery ingredient
products company.
AB Mauri North America —
whose subsidiaries are
Fleischmann’s Yeast and
Innovative Cereal Systems —
posted 2007 revenue of $180
million with 300 employees.
Smart Business spoke with
Armstrong about how to continuously improve your company
by communicating the corporate vision and welcoming feedback from your employees.
Provide the strategy as well as the
motivation. A successful leader is
able to engage in strategic thinking and provide direction for the
business as well as display an
overall skill for the different disciplines within the business.
In leading people, you’ve got
to be able to motivate. People
want to be able to see evidence
of the fact that there is some
passion and energy there and, at
the same time, there’s sound
judgment and some integrity.
Establish a corporate vision and
direction. The challenge for all
businesses is to build on what
they’ve got, whether it is
processes and procedures or
the value proposition one offers
to customers in terms of products and services.
We do three-year plans, updated every year, and as part of
that, you tend to look at the
business environment one operates in, both internally and externally. With that, one evaluates
the markets that one trades in
and the markets that you might
be dealing in going forward.
As part of that planning
process, you look to determine
where you’re trying to get to
through a combination of organic and acquisitive growth. You
also evaluate what you need to
do about people in terms of getting the right skills and capabilities in the business. We tend to
do that as an ongoing process.
