Engage employees. When we have a new technology, we’ll get people down into a big conference room and go over, ‘Here’s what we’re doing and here’s why we are doing it. This is the company strategy on this point.’ We do things called ‘lunch and learns’ with the employees where (we say), ‘We’re going to start running this process. Now you come in and we’re going explain it to you.’ We serve them a lunch so they kind of get comfortable with it.
We do a number of events with employees. Last year, we had a few great quarters, and we took everybody to a baseball game — so a lot of the interactions. I don’t sit in my office. I’m not a guy who sits in his office all the time. I like to wander the halls and see what is going on.
I always try to engage people, talk to them, give them the opportunity to give me their thoughts. We’ve had a number of times when a great suggestion has come from just a routine guy who’s just trying to do his job. I’ll walk in to somebody’s office, and they’ll be struggling with something, and they say, ‘Gosh, if I had two terminals in here, I could see this data better and do this better.’ We usually respond to that kind of stuff. Most people have multiple terminals on their desk. It’s not because I decided that. It’s because they said, ‘I could do my job more efficiently if I had it.’
Stay positive. There’s a few people here who see me in a pretty bad mood at times. But, generally, if I am out walking the halls, I’m upbeat and positive and willing to talk to somebody. I guess I’ve got a good memory in terms of people’s names, spouses’ names or children’s names. So, it’s nice that you know a little bit about them.
We do a number of employee events and you get to know the people. I’m sure at some stage, if we become a $200 million company, it will be tough to know. But when I go to our offices overseas, I spend some time, every visit, walking around, sitting down with people trying to understand what they are doing and how they feel about the company and telling them what the company is doing and telling them about, ‘Here is where we are trying to go. Here’s what we are doing, and here is why.’
How to reach: Geotrace Technologies Inc., (281) 497-8440 or www.geotrace.com
