Create an expansion team. On that team, have a point person that will coordinate everything and communicate to the team everything that has to happen and the status of what needs to happen.
That tracking that that person needs to do needs to be from finding your facility down to the smallest detail of who is ordering the office supplies in order to make sure you get everything covered so you have a smooth opening — that’s the most important.
The point person makes sure that everyone who needs communicated with is getting communicated with on a regular basis because things will happen, things will come up. In order to keep everything coordinated together, there has to be a process to make sure that everyone knows what’s going on because one thing may affect something that someone else is responsible for.
You need to make sure you have the right people on that team that can ensure what needs to happen gets taken care of and that there’s good communication and collaboration among the team.
Then, good communication with me on what the status is and where we’re at if we run into an issue to make sure that I know that, as well.
The point person needs to be a very detailed-oriented person because they will need to track a lot of information. They also need to be someone who can take charge because they are going to be coordinating with a lot of different people, and needing to get updates from a lot of different people and sometimes they need to push different people to make sure everyone is staying on track.
Define expectations. You also need to define very clear ramp-up expectations. As you either hire or promote whoever is going to be in charge of your new branch or your new area, just be very clear on what those expectations are so everyone is on the same page going into it. That’s one-on-one communication.
It puts everyone on the same page with what results we’re looking for. It allows everyone to work together to achieve those results and to make sure they’ve done what they need to do in order to support getting that result. And then it also allows for everyone to celebrate the successes as those results are achieved.
If they’re not achieved, everyone can also get on the same page with looking at what’s gone wrong, why are we off and what do we need to do to fix it? So it doesn’t come as a surprise.
Set a culture. You have to start with a strong culture initially because you really need to build on that.
The best way is if you’re promoting someone from within to go lead that expansion because that person is already immersed in that culture. Whoever the hands-on management in that new expansion might be, they’ve got the primary responsibility of making sure it’s consistent with the rest of the organization.
If it’s not a promotion from within and you’re hiring someone to lead that, you really need to immerse them in your culture.
What we do is we bring them into our corporate headquarters so they get familiar with both the people here, the environment, the culture, get an understanding of how they work, then we’ll send them out to different branches so that they can get that perspective also. It’s a great way for them to really talk to a lot of people and really understand the organization and what the culture is.
Then lastly you have to talk about it. You have to make it clear that your expectation is that they build the same culture, so you’ve got to be able to define it and make it part of what they’re responsible for.
How to reach: American Equity Mortgage Inc., (314) 878-9999 or www.americanequity.com