Ed Trevis wants to provide
consistency and long-term relationships to his customers. And to do that, the
president and CEO of
Corvalent Corp. has to start by
retaining employees at his
company, a designer and manufacturer of industrial mother-boards that posted 2006 revenue of $12 million.
“If you tell everyone in the
world you are going to supply
longevity and consistency and
you have such a high turnover
in your company, then it does-n’t match,” he says.
Trevis retains employees by
finding people who want to
grow and challenging them.
“Stability is created when
you create a situation where
you are part of the team and
you have been challenged by
learning,” he says.
Smart Business spoke with
Trevis about how to evaluate
employees and how to help
them grow with your company.
Q. How do you evaluate
employees?
We have tried several things
in the past with very little success. We used to have performance evaluations. Today,
we have adapted our own version of a system called
Catalytic Coaching, a career
development process developed by Gary Markle from
Energage.
We don’t necessarily look
only at the past performance,
but we focus (on) the future.
We are always looking at present and future performance.
Employees, in most cases,
really don’t care about what
happened in the last 10 to 12 months. The new process
allows them to recap their
past achievements and disappointments but doesn’t focus
on it. What has been recognized was recognized then.
To sit down with an employee
and say, ‘In the last 12 months,
you have been bad or good,’ is
not necessarily the focus of our
future career development
process. We are into designing a
process where an individual
looks at the future and does not
focus on the past.
We are not here to rate people. We are here to work
with people that want to
grow and develop themselves. So far, we have
seen better results.
Q. How do you look
to the future without
focusing on the past?
We take the past as
basically an experience
standpoint. We aren’t
necessarily telling the
individual in the past
what he has done but
actually concentrating
on the future. ‘These
are things we need to
get done in the future.
These are things we can
see you grow into.’
We help the individual identify
what the plan is for the future.
We don’t tell them what to do,
but we help them identify and
get back to what they think
would be the things they want
to do in the future to grow in
our company.
Q. Why did you change
your process of performance
evaluation?
People hate to be rated. It’s
not a theme that anybody
appreciates. I’ve seen many performance evaluations
that, if you had to ask an
employee an hour later after
the performance review
what would he remembers,
the only thing he’d remember is his raise. That is not
something that creates
accountability or excitement
or willingness to grow and
loyalty.
What we’ve found is that if
you work on a process with
an individual over several
sessions where you define
the individual’s ability,
define a path for growth and
let the individual come back
and tell you how he or she is
going to get that done, then
it creates accountability and
excitement and responsibility.
Part of the performance and
growth evaluation is defining
where we are going from here,
not what we have done.
Q. What is a pitfall to avoid
in business?
Most CEOs are made to be
the visionaries and give directions to the company. Most
CEOs make mistakes in their
career of not empowering people at the time they need to be
empowered. They micromanage or get into a situation that
they don’t delegate or hire the
right people.
Sometimes, you have to stop
and listen. That’s another
problem I see in CEOs. They
don’t quite listen as much as
they should listen. That’s a big
mistake.
You come quickly to a solution, based on your experiences, in every single part of
your company that you don’t
stop, listen and look for solutions. Many people walk into
your office with a problem,
and if every time they walk
into your office with a problem, you give them a solution,
then that becomes a behavior.
I realized, in the past, I forgot
to ask the question, ‘What
would you do?’
I always tell my direct
reports, ‘Tell your own people,
too. Before you come to my
office with a problem, think of
a solution.’
I like my direct reports to
have a conflict conversation
with me or between their
peers to analyze problems and
solutions. Don’t be afraid of
conflict. Argue a position and
discuss, but always keep honesty and common sense and
professionalism behind it.
HOW TO REACH: Corvalent Corp., (888) 776-7896 or www.corvalent.com