Bring people together
One of the reasons Clark could lead people through the change was because he had already united them as a company, so he then just had to unite them around the new cause.
“When you’re engaged with a group of people, a group of leaders, and you have to lead through change, you have to keep the bigger picture in mind,” Clark says.
You have to remind people why they’re here.
“If they know what their goals are, if they know how we’re going to measure them, how we’re going to pay them, boy, you can engage a team really quickly if you just do those things time and time again,” Clark says.
But it’s not enough to unite people around the cause mentally, you also have to physically bring people together to create opportunities for success.
“I think my tips for how other leaders might create that type of environment is be enormously inclusive,” Clark says. “You’ve got to get away from the same five or six people that you work directly with every day. You have to bring in a large group of people.”
Several times a month, Clark has big group meetings with employees and it’s a chance to let people know what’s going on and recognize people. For example, earlier this year, one of his employees was the No. 1 performer in 2009 for the Western PNC markets, which is a huge deal in the organization.
“To use a baseball analogy, she was 30 games in first place ahead of the second place team,” Clark says. “She really had a great, great year.”
So they talked her up in one of these meetings and sent e-mails out asking people to congratulate her, and soon after, the e-mails started flying around Cleveland recognizing her and sharing in her success.
“When you bring these big groups together, it’s an opportunity to celebrate success,” he says. “If anyone can’t have fun celebrating success, they really have to think about their priorities.”
He also has recognition breakfasts for groups of employees, where they can talk about what they and their co-workers have done to help customers. The meetings not only inspire employees, but they also bring together people who may not work together regularly or know each other that well.
He also arranges small lunch meetings with certain employees that have no purpose other than to introduce employees to each other. For example, he may arrange a lunch with four employees who don’t know each other because they can help each other make the company better — if they get to know each other.
“We set up some meetings for people who don’t work together every day so they can be together and get to know one another and build that trust and build that personal relationship that makes them more effective when they work as a team,” Clark says.
Another way he brings people together is by bridging product developers with salespeople.
“You’ve got to bring them together so you can have a sharing of what the product’s all about and have a sharing of what features that product has that would benefit the customer and, ultimately, how to sell it,” he says. “If you spend a couple hours doing that and there’s 20 people in the room and you get 20 to 40 additional sales that you would not have had otherwise, that’s a great two hours coming together, and it’s that simple.”
Clark also has what they call “Impact” meetings with 20 to 45 leaders in the company every other Thursday. The whole purpose of these meetings is helping people see how what they do can impact someone else to make them successful.
“How can I do something that will impact you and make you successful because we have this thing around here where we only win as a team when every individual wins, so we have to help each other win,” Clark says.
If you have a meeting like that, then you have to have some structure to it.
“Try to have an agenda that hits all the important points and everyone understands that they should contribute if they have something to contribute, and if they don’t, just listening is an important contribution,” he says. “It’s fast-paced. It’s like a scene out of a ‘West Wing’ episode — fast-paced, fun environment.”
He tries to keep those meetings to just an hour.
“After an hour, people are really busy, so if you’re going to bring them together, you’ve got to bring them together, and they’ve got to leave thinking, ‘I got a lot out of that,’’ he says. “We try to pack a lot into an hour or so. … If you sch
ed
ule it right and everyone’s respectful, you can get a lot done in that hour.”