Know how fast to move. I’ve made changes within a week of joining a company, but realistically, the first 90 days are crucial. I don’t think it’s logical to come into a situation and just make changes right out of the gate.
Even though you might have the answer and know where you need to take the company, a company of a certain size is only able to process change to a given degree, and you have to be sensitive to that. There will be times when maybe I acted too swiftly. In the end, we were able to catch up, but it can foster a couple weeks of helter-skelter there.
Assess the situation for a while, but if that assessment period takes too long, you tend to fall back into the culture that was there previously. Take action and set the tone of what the vision and what the culture is going to be.
That’s the delicate balance and that’s where effective leadership comes in. In areas you’re more comfortable with, you can probably push a little harder. Areas you’re not, you need to lean on your folks a little more.
Spend time with people. You’ve got to have the right team. As a CEO, probably 70 to 75 percent of your time is spent on people and the team that you have, and you really got to have fine-tuned people skills and knowing if the people on your team are going to fit within your culture or not.
It’s an awful lot of people assessment. Although experience is obviously important, I tend to look for more general qualities. First of all, is desire and passion to be at the company and believing in the vision. That has to be at the top of the list. Wanting to build a company and having the sense of urgency would be just as important. People need to want to make things happen and want to be engaged and not just getting a paycheck or waiting for a transaction to happen.
[They] need to feel comfortable in an accountable culture. We will have measurable goals and everybody will know what those goals are. Some people are comfortable with that visibility and clarity. Some people aren’t.
I would say also the ability for an employee to focus. That probably sounds simple, but we need to have the ability to sort through all of the mundane tasks every day and stay prioritized on what’s important and will drive the company. That’s a skill set that gets overlooked quite a lot.
Set up accountability systems. Lastly, it’s building a culture that’s going to drive success. That’s a culture that needs to be fun, accountable, but it has to be a culture that rewards success.
I’m a believer in a compensation philosophy that has both corporate as well as individual goals. Everybody in the company should be focused on what the corporate goals are for the quarter or for the year as well as the individual goals. We’ll have an all-employee meeting once a quarter. We’ll share everything as far as the financial performance of the company, all of the major goals we’re looking to achieve, and we’re very transparent with sharing that information. That’s something that the company didn’t use to do.
By doing that, you get an awful lot of buy-in, and they feel they know what’s going on with the company, and they feel comfortable being able to communicate up through all levels of management. People know, on a corporate level, every quarter, what our goals are, and then at the end of the year, we measure how they’re doing personally.
How to reach: Accumetrics Inc., (888) 919-9333 or www.accumetrics.com