Jim Holbrook eavesdrops. Whether on airplanes or in aisles at local retail stores, he keeps a journal of what people do, why
they’re traveling, what they want and what they need. That’s because the answers are in the marketplace, says the CEO and
director of EMAK Worldwide Inc., a family of marketing agencies with 348 employees worldwide. Although his mantra is
admittedly borrowed from another CEO, Wal-Mart’s Sam Walton, it has brought impressive results to EMAK, which posted 2006
revenue of $181 million. Smart Business spoke with Holbrook about consistency, short-term memory loss and why it’s important
to weed out assholes when hiring.
Make employees feel that they are part of the
team. The last thing you want to do is show
up and feel like you’re not making a difference, that you’re just a cog, that you’re just
pushing stuff around, that your role doesn’t
really matter. Getting everybody to feel like
they’re on the team is critical. Delegate the
work so that they feel like they’re making a
difference.
We put our business plan on one page,
and everybody gets a copy of it. It’s very
clear what our objective is, what we’re trying to do and what the key priorities are for
the year. Everybody gets a copy of it so
they can refer back and say, ‘OK, I’m working on this project, and I see how it fits in,’
or, ‘I’m working on this project, and I don’t
really see how it fits in. I’d better ask somebody if I’m heading in the right direction.’
The ideal work environment is a place
where people drive fast to work in the
morning and drive slow home at night. I’ve
worked at companies where they have
massage therapists come in or there’s a
barista making special espressos. That can
be artificial and superficial. Employees
know when they’re being bamboozled. It’s
got to be a genuine effort.
If people are happy, stimulated, and feel
like they’re productive and part of the solution, then the results will be better.
Avoid assholes. There’s a book out now [by
Robert I. Sutton] called ‘The No Asshole
Rule.’ Hire people that are good people,
that have a positive outlook on life, that are
optimistic and that are outgoing. It makes
work life a lot better.
Look for people that are curious. The
people that come into interviews and ask
me lots of questions, generally, I know are
well-briefed, interested and trying to learn
something. Those are the kind of people
that are not assholes. The curious people
are the ones who really want to know what
it’s like and how does everything work.
Our interviewing process is multistep. We
don’t interview somebody on one day and
make them an offer. It takes several
rounds, meeting with several people. It’s an
inclusive process, so the person gets voted
on by the team.
I never recommend that we hire that person unless they ask me five or 10 questions,
at least, throughout an interview. The
curiosity factor — that is the real recipe for
success in business.
Know when to act. At some point, you’ve got
to say, ‘OK, I’ve heard enough. Like it or
not, we’ve got to do something. Let’s do
this.’ I think that’s the critical balance at the
CEO level — know when to intake and listen, and know when to decide and move
on.
My first boss at Procter & Gamble always
taught me to get to 80 percent. That’s good
enough. Once you have 80 percent of the
data, do something. Getting the last 20 percent is so painful, so expensive, takes so
much more time and has diminishing
returns. If you have to be 98 percent right
all the time or have 98 percent of the data
or facts, the organization will become more
stagnant
Remain in the present. We try all kinds of
things that don’t work. If we were batting 1.000, that would mean that we were playing in the wrong league.
One of the key factors is short-term memory loss. You don’t look back. My management group spends some time talking
about what we tried that didn’t work and
coming up with those conclusions. Playing
too much Monday morning quarterback is
not a good proposition.
CEO as judge and jury is a bad role: ‘I’m
going to wait for you to screw up, and I’m
going to criticize you.’ It makes the organization become risk-averse, and then the
CEO has to be the one coming up with all
the things because nobody else wants to
get criticized. A little bit of criticism, a little
bit of introspection and self-analysis is a
good thing.
It stretches the people. It shows the people that they can try things as long as it’s
prudent. The benefit really is making the
employees feel like they can push the
boundaries.
Stay consistent. We set strategies that are
enduring, not something that happens this
quarter, this month or even this year. It’s an
ongoing objective that we have to work
toward. Setting those objectives and coming
back to them consistently is what drives
alignment and then drives the results.
Re-evaluate not the goals as much as the
way to get to the goals. It’s not like, ‘These
don’t work. Let’s try something else.’ Try to
be very consistent, day to day, week to
week, month to month, even year to year.
It gives people the opportunity to understand and get on board.
A lot of organizations change their agenda all the time, and that just confuses
everybody: ‘Are we working on this? Were
we working on that? Well, now we have a
new agenda, so I’m not going to work that
hard on this because something else is
going to come down the pike.’
If people know what’s going on and have
visibility into what’s happening, then it
drives alignment. Alignment is the key to a
successful and empowered organization.
HOW TO REACH: EMAK Worldwide Inc., (323) 932-4300 or
www.emak.com