When the economy took a nosedive throughout 2008 and 2009, John Zettel found that his best-laid plans weren’t going to work anymore.
The CEO of AVI-SPL Inc. had a business that had been, for years, focused on outfitting businesses and other large-scale entities with audiovisual equipment. But as the economy began to take a turn for the worse in 2008, Zettel and his leadership team started to see signs that the company’s core businesses might not provide the most stable foundation to weather the oncoming storm. Adjustments had to be made, and they had to be made soon.
Zettel and his team decided to put more weight behind the company’s video initiatives, which they felt would create a better buffer against narrowing revenue streams.
“Our core business is audiovisual equipment, and being the largest in the country, we already felt like we were in the boardrooms selling traditional AV equipment, like projectors and voice systems,” Zettel says. “Being in the boardroom where people began to adopt video more and more, we felt we had a natural lead into upgrading boardrooms. So this new area with video technology wasn’t an area that was a far stretch for us.”
AVI-SPL enlisted the help of outside consultants to redefine the company’s direction and formulate a plan for implementation. But the decision to find a new direction came directly from the top tiers of the company.
The process reinforced a basic business lesson to Zettel: Stick with what it is your company does well, but don’t become so rigid that you can — or won’t — make changes within how you employ your core competencies. You maintain that type of flexibility by making sure your employees are actively involved in shaping the company’s future.
“If a company has been successful, it means they are doing something right,” Zettel says. “So they need to see if how they’re doing it is relevant in today’s marketplace and whether it will maintain relevancy in the future. If it isn’t or it won’t, if they feel they cannot continue to capture share, they need to begin to look at other products that will provide that relevancy.”
Here’s how Zettel guided his organization through the challenges of change.
