For Jeff Neuman, the greatest danger executives face
is falling in love with their >own ideas. Pouring resources
into an idea that isn’t realistic is
dangerous, but he neutralizes
that potential problem by
allowing his management team
to second-guess him.
“You’ve got to be willing to
cut bait,” says Neuman, president of Barnes Wendling CPAs
Inc., a $10 million accounting
firm. “Be honest with yourself
but also have people in place
to be a second stopping point.”
Smart Business spoke with
Neuman about how to take
risks on new ventures and
why getting your ideas shot
down isn’t always a bad thing.
Q. How do you determine
where to devote your
resources?
It’s an art; it’s not a science.
You figure out what arena
you’re going to play in.
If you’re going to be a niche
player — which most businesses are — you need to say,
‘OK, what is the marketplace
looking for? What is a need
that hasn’t been served?’ Then
you have to say, ‘OK, do I
need to go out and acquire
specialty services?’ Then you
go look for them.
And you have to add them
first — that’s the gamble. You
have to add the resources
first because the worst thing
in the world is to go out and
try something different, grab
some business, and you
can’t perform. Then, you’re
dead.
Q. How do you deal with the
fact that a new venture might
not work out?
Be honest with people when
you’re adding them on. Tell
them, ‘Look, this is a new venture. Here’s the upside, but,
obviously, there’s a downside.’
You have to explain that
upfront. Cleveland’s a small
town. You have to be fair
with people and tell them
what’s going on. Because if
you do something wrong to
somebody, they’re going to
get an opportunity to come
back.
Not everything works, and if
you’re honest with them
upfront and say, ‘This is
the risk we’re both taking,’ most people accept
that. Truthfully, not
everything we’ve done
has been successful.
Fortunately, more have
than have not.
Q. How do you communicate your vision to
your employees?
It’s important to throw
out a concept. But also,
you can get more buy-in
if you ask for their opinions. Here’s what we’re
planning, and here’s a
rough sketch of what
we believe we have to
do to achieve this. Let’s fine-tune this thing.
So you throw it out there for
comments, brainstorming, etc.
You get buy-in that way. Sometimes you get shot down, too.
Q. How does brainstorming
with employees about the
vision benefit the company?
They feel that they’re part of
it, that they’ve had their say
and, in many cases, a lot of
them have good ideas.
Once they’re part of it, then
it’s a team goal. It’s not my objective — it’s the entire
organization. That works. If it’s
just my problem and it fails,
then it’s just my stupid idea.
But if we all bought in to it, it
has a much greater chance at
succeeding.
Q. How else do you motivate
and empower employees?
One, you have to hire motivated people. There are lots of
educated people who aren’t
motivated.
Look for motivated people,
then give them the opportunity.
Give them parameters, but let
them go do the work. Don’t
look over their shoulder every
day.
You need credibility, consistency and a general positive
outlook. People have to
believe you, so when you have
an idea, you tell them what the
steps are to complete the idea,
then you tell them what the
benefits are going to be to
everybody at the end.
And if you’re asking people
to jump in the water, you’d
better be the first one in.
Q. How do you create an
environment that gives
employees a positive outlook?
The biggest piece of it is
creating a greater expectation amongst everybody that
there’s a different way to do
things; there’s a better way
to do things — show a continuous process of improvement.
It’s not that we’re doing
things bad, let’s just look for
ways to do things better. And
if we fail, let’s just pick ourselves up and move in a different direction. When you
try something new, not
everything always works.
Q. How do you let employees
know it’s OK to try new things?
Your actions have to show
that you don’t kill somebody
for trying something new. You
encourage them.
You do set financial limits
and benchmarks along the
way so they don’t go too far
down the road, but if it fails, it
fails. You can say you tried
something, and now you know
it doesn’t work.
If you cut someone’s legs out
from underneath them, they’re
never going to stick their neck
out again.
HOW TO REACH: Barnes Wendling CPAs Inc., (216) 566-9000 or www.barneswendling.com