Make the rounds
Alexander has thousands of employees spread across three states. The only way to really drive home any corporate message is to hit the road for one-on-one interaction with as many folks as possible.
He tries to spend about 40 to 50 days a year out in the field at more than 100 locations, meeting employees and communicating his vision.
“If you can get to as many big places, big shops, where there are multiple employees, we can get that message down through the organization, and that’s what’s key,” he says.
Alexander hits the major shops once a year, while visiting smaller line shops once every two years, eventually getting to everyone.
Because employees can sometimes be guarded when the boss is around, Alexander tries to make the visits as employee-friendly as possible. He doesn’t show up with prepared remarks or PowerPoint presentations. He shows up and talks to employees about safety, where the company is heading and how the company is going to reach its goals. Then, he opens it up for questions, which is especially important in tough economic times, because it gives employees a chance to get things off of their chests.
Oftentimes, Alexander gets questions that are site-specific, which are more appropriate for the local manager to handle. But, the questions and comments do give Alexander an overall sense of where the organization should be devoting more of its resources.
In addition, if you are out in the field enough and begin to build a relationship with your personnel, employees become more comfortable with you, and they can see your reaction when they tell you something.
“They can sense that things are changing,” he says. “Not that you can deal with everything. But that change allows them to feel more comfortable in terms of raising potential issues.”
Before Alexander goes on these visits, he will sit down with his communications team and they discuss what they’ve heard is on employees’ minds.
“If there are things we just don’t know about, they might ask me some questions just to get them in my head,” he says. “Basically, because they have a better feel for the organization on a day-to-day basis, they will pop some things to me that I ought to be thinking about.”
Recently, he’s faced questions about the restructuring, the economy and the overall state of the company.
Instead of dancing around the questions, he gives a straightforward answer, but he also admits when he doesn’t have the answers.
“Typically, when I go out in the field, I always have somebody from the communications group with me,” he says. “So, what they try to do then is accumulate that type of question so that we can either add it into an update or make sure we get the information back to the manager that can then communicate it to employees at that location.”
If it’s a broad enough type of question, Alexander might add it to the update that the company sends out to employees on a routine basis.
Having someone come with you who can keep track of questions and ideas will make the process much more effective.
“I was doing maybe two or three or four of these a day, and I couldn’t remember all the questions that are raised,” he says. “Unless somebody is keeping records that I can go back and evaluate afterwards, by the end of the day, I’m probably pretty tired. So, somebody is accumulating ‘OK, these are common issues or common threads that we’ve heard now in three or four different spots. Do we need to do something about it?’”
