Tom Doll is proud to run the business his mother started nearly 30 years ago with his stepsister, Sheri Witte. But just because he is the president and co-owner of Superior Staffing Inc. doesn’t mean he has the desire to be the one who makes all the decisions.
“When people come to me with the daily issues and are looking for me to solve them, I work so hard at not giving them answers,” Doll says. “But instead of just turning them away, sometimes I will ask, ‘What would you do? Tell me what you would do.’ That has helped.”
Superior has placed more than 50,000 employees across Northeast Ohio.
Smart Business spoke with Doll about the steps he has taken to prepare his people at the 20-employee employment firm for a time when he isn’t around to answer their questions.
Q. What’s the key to establishing collaboration?
Are you working in your business or are you working on your business? The tendency is to work in your business. You are the key rainmaker and the one who makes things happen. If there is a big client, you go out and see the client. Things revolve around you as the owner. You have built all the relationships and everybody else just follows what you say.
You are supposed to build a business, but is the value just with the owner? It is the people who build a business around the owner. I have plenty of key people, experienced people, mature and bright people, who do 80 percent of the relationship building in the firm.
What do you want to do? That is a huge decision. I communicated it with my people right upfront. I told them the whole theory that I want to work on the business. I can take the lead roles and start to build something, but it is yours to run.
If you are not giving your people any opportunity to grow, you are not going to attract top talent. It won’t work for you to be the one making all the decisions.
That is the only way I could do it. ‘I trust what you guys decide. You guys go ahead and do this.’ It is so easy to get involved in these little decisions: What about this pricing situation? What about this customer? What do we do? You need to trust your people.