Lyle C. Blanden has found the best way to find out what employees want is simply to ask them. While on a retreat with his
management team at J.O. DeLotto and Sons Inc., the chairman and CEO split the group into four individual construction
companies, then he asked each company’s employees what they would not want to give up as members of these hypothetical
companies. Health insurance topped the list, and since then, Blanden has made sure health insurance has been a top priority at his
$50 million construction management and general contracting company, a benefit that has been key in retaining his 60 employees.
Smart Business spoke with Blanden about how to keep cliques from forming in your workplace and how to serve your clients
better by having a diverse staff.
Keep cliques from forming within your company.
That occurs when certain people work
around each other 24-7, and there is no
break from that. Then it is faction versus
faction. That’s why meetings with the different groups are important on a regular
basis to help that scenario.
You are going to have certain people that
like to go to lunch with certain people, but
when they can be encouraged to pull that
third person or fourth person into the
group, then do that.
The worst thing is people on the outside
don’t feel they can be included, so they
think the people are talking about them. It’s
a perception many times, and it starts
affecting the business that they aren’t
happy and want to move on to another
company. The whole thing is if you truly
had a friend in a company, even one on
one, that is the healthiest part.
As a leader, if you see three or four people not always interacting with other people
that are close around them, then you have to
find ways. Maybe it’s to move other team
members around. A lot of times, the cliques
will form because people think exactly
alike, and the healthy teams are ones that
have different talents and diverse thinking.
Form a diverse group. If you have a choice of
two people, one person that thinks like you
do and one person that thinks differently,
your first month will be the easiest with the
person that thinks like you. After that, the
reality is you don’t need somebody who
thinks like you. You need somebody who
complements you.
In any relationship, the opposites do
attract, and the opposites really complement each other. We’ve made a concerted
effort over the last 10 years to hire people
who bring something different to the team.
Your clients are not going to all think like
you do. One of the biggest things we’ve
built on is the diversity of construction. If
you put all your eggs in one basket, if all
you do is retail, and retail goes down, you
are going to lay people off.
As clients recommend you to other people and as their needs change, you need to
serve those clients. Different clients need
different personality types working with
them.
When you have a project that has a lot of
detail, you want to make sure you put your
detail people on that. Some projects need
great schedulers, so you need that personality that can see that picture and can deal
with the schedule.
A healthy company is one that has a good
matrix of diverse thinking and feels the
forum is open and that they can say anything in certain meetings and feel they are
not going to be put down for it.
Stay away from unreasonable people. If you are
getting into a relationship businesswise
where you don’t think alike or their expectations are extreme, I think it’s better to
walk away from that even if it is a key job.
It’s probably better to go with your gut.
One of the hardest things is when we get
a lot of negative energy. It is so hard to turn
that around to a positive.
When you are into that project that is negative, not only does that hurt you at that
point and time, but all of a sudden when
you come out of that, whether it’s a month
or six months, you all of a sudden don’t
have any work because you spent all that
negative time.
Don’t dwell on failure. Whenever you have a
failure, you need to grieve and learn your
lesson, and we need those times in our
lives because that is when we grow the
most. They make us stronger — if they
don’t break us.
The key is, every day, trying to find a
time to focus on something positive. If
you don’t, you are going to spend all the
time in the negative. The worst thing in a
failure is to stay in it too long. We need
to learn from it, and, however we can,
put it behind us; we need to do that or
seek support, whether it’s external or
internal.
Don’t hire the best person for the job; just hire
the best person. When the best person walks
through the door and you don’t have a job
for them, you hire them. You find a way to
have them fit in to the sequence.
It may be a little bit of an overhead for
a little bit of time, but with our longevity
of people, that’s not a bad overhead to
have. If you hire the best person available for a job, then you are probably not
hiring that longevity person that will stay
there.
When you interview and the right person
comes through the door, you need to be
open enough to not say, ‘I don’t have anything for you.’ Or, if they are a little diverse
and you don’t have that, then, ‘Gee, that’s
great thinking to be able to have. We’re
going to find a way to use you.’
HOW TO REACH: J.O. DeLotto and Sons Inc., (813) 935-2191
or www.delotto.com