At Tollgrade Communications Inc., leadership comes from virtually every corner of the company, and Mark Peterson is fine with that.
Peterson, president and CEO of the $65 million company, says that if Tollgrade is to succeed, leadership can’t be his job alone. He
challenges everyone in the organization to take the wheel, as he puts it, and to take risks to make sure Tollgrade offers its customers
the best solutions for network testing and management that it can. Peterson spoke with Smart Business about the best way to handle
employee recognition, how consensus leadership is different than democracy and why leadership isn’t just bossing people around.
Foster leadership at every level. I feel strongly
about leadership because this is ultimately
what drives the success of the organization, because everyone inside the company
has a sense of leadership. It’s not just me as
the CEO leading everybody else.
This is an organization where people
report to me, and they have people report
to them, and then you get to a level where
people don’t report to anyone. But many of
these principles should still apply in how
they’re doing their job because leadership
is not just bossing someone around, telling
them what to do. We rolled this out to our
people; this is what we decided on. We had
input and feedback from the organization
so it didn’t just look like we were dictating
Mark Peterson’s view of leadership.
People in focus groups said, ‘Yes, that is
the model we believe in, that is the credo
we want to live by.’
Expect others to take the wheel. If we need to
get something done, if somebody needs to
go to Saudi Arabia to get something done,
nobody wants to go to Saudi Arabia right
now; it’s dangerous. But somebody says,
‘You know what, I’ll go. It needs to be done,
and I’ll do it.’ That’s leadership.
Everybody turns and looks at that person
and says, ‘They’re stepping up. Maybe next
time something comes up, I’ll step up.’
They don’t have to be told what to do.
People that are leaders are not necessarily managers in an organization. They don’t
need to be told what to do. They know
what has to be done to get something right.
Collaborate in decision-making. My style is not
dictatorial. I don’t go to my organization
with a box of jacks and say, ‘Let’s assemble
them by size or color. I go to my organization with a view of what needs to get done,
but then it’s collaborative because I don’t
know enough about each facet of the business that I have the precise answer.
I ultimately make the decision, but if I’ve
gone through the consensus, I have more
confidence in my decision because I know
I’ve got the expert opinions of people who
are going to be impacted by the decision; how they’re going to handle it. Again,
you’re not going to get everyone to agree.
Some people are going to be too risk-averse, and if your decision has any element of risk in it, they won’t agree with it.
So, you try to get that person comfortable
with it, explain and rationalize why we’re
doing it, explain the data points toward a
go, rather than a no-go decision.
Don’t stifle the messenger. When somebody
sees something that’s going wrong in this
organization, I don’t want them to wait
until it breaks. I want them to be able to
come forward and say, ‘I think we’re going
down the wrong path with this, and you
probably don’t know about this’ to the person that they work for and say, ‘We need to
get this fixed. I’ll take responsibility. I’ll
deliver the difficult message.’
I’d rather have the difficult message delivered when we can do something about it
than have someone say, ‘It’s not my job, I’m
not going to worry about it. If something
goes wrong, my area’s clean.’ That won’t
work in a company this size. If our business stinks, everybody’s going to know it.
There’s no place to hide.
Keep the financials in front of the organization. I
want everyone in the organization to
understand what we’re trying to achieve,
not only from a strategic point of view but also from a financial point of view.
Everybody in our company knows that
I’ve told our investors we’re going to do at
least 50 cents this year. I should be able to
walk down the hall and stop somebody and
say, ‘What do you think we’re going to do
this year?’ So, part of the way I do my job
in terms of managing the financials of the
company is making sure every individual
understands what our financial goals are.
I start with my leadership team. We
review those goals every week, and we
review our status toward those goals, and
if we’re not on track, why are we not on
track, what problems do we have to solve?
Then they work that out with their individual team members.
Let the organization decide who gets rewarded.
The way we would design employee
awards is that the executives, sometimes
one executive, would think about what he
observed and say, ‘I want to give him an
award. I like what he did.’
If you do that, then it’s your company, it’s
not their company. So, the way we do it
now is we have volunteers who come in on
a quarterly basis, they take submissions
from other employees in the company, people who have observed what their colleagues have done.
It’s a roundtable of 10 people, a different
group every time. They go through all the
submissions. So if I’m working with Bob
and he did something great, I’m going to
say, ‘Man, that’s good. Next quarter, I’m
going to submit him for recognition.’ When
I give the awards out that were nominated
by our employee group, I don’t just say,
‘The award goes to Bill Johnson for great
customer service.’ I go into detail what Bill
did, what he did right, where he expressed
our core values and the leadership, and
say, ‘For those reasons, we want to recognize him because Bill stood up and did the
right thing at the right time without being
asked, and because of that, we were successful.’
HOW TO REACH: Tollgrade Communications Inc.,
www.tollgrade.com