Buying in to change
Chances are the word innovation is buzzing around your business. As companies tried to stay afloat during the deepest part of the recession and now begin to tread water, finding new, innovative ways to go about business surfaced. And with that comes change.
“Change can be painful,” Wiandt says. “But innovation requires change.”
To make employees comfortable with change, you have to maintain a healthy dialogue, explain the reasoning behind the change and ask for feedback on ways to better processes.
Wiandt leads his 40 employees at the product supplier company by maintaining regular communication, asking his staff for their ideas and following through on the good ones.
“(It’s) having an open-door policy, inviting the communication, but then following up and acting on that,” Wiandt says. “A lot of employees are used to sharing their ideas and never seeing anything happen or change with those ideas. I think the biggest mistake that managers or presidents of companies can make is not act on the good ideas. People buy in to the company and the direction and the changes that are being made if they see that at the very top their ideas are being heard and considered and acted upon.”
How to reach: Madison Electric Products, (800) 631-7775 or http://www.meproducts.net/
