Dan Movens will remove
hurdles for his employees, but he is also willing to
give them a lot of leeway to
solve problems themselves. The
CEO of Caraco Pharmaceutical
Laboratories Ltd. empowers his
employees to be experts in their
areas and will let them go as far
as he can, as long as it doesn’t
hurt the business. But when he
sees one of his 500 employees
going in the wrong direction, he
will step in to help solve the
problem. And while he says
some people would call him a
micromanager first and a
hands-off leader second, it’s a
style that’s worked for Movens
as he has led Caraco to revenue of about $117 million for
fiscal 2007.
Smart Business spoke with
Movens about how to set
examples and expectations.
Be approachable to employees. It’s an open-door policy, and we
are in it together. I mean, we are
basically together to mentor
each other because there might
be something I might learn from
someone else — there’s life
experiences every day.
I basically wave them (in),
literally. ‘Come on in, and let’s
talk this through.’ My personal
focus is, one, execution and
taking down barriers and hurdles, and I think the expected
outcome is that we are going
to work together to solve this
problem.
And also, having the employees that I work with [also]
have an open door with me to
walk in and give a view on
how I think something could
be different.
The company is made up of all
levels of employee, and you try
to remove the ‘we’ and ‘they.’
And the only way you can
remove the ‘we’ and ‘they’ is to
become part of the ‘they.’ So,
you really have to be part of the
organization. Check your ego at
the door so to speak, and be
part of what each person is trying to accomplish.
Basically, go out to the staff
and have a town-hall meeting
about what the company has
done, what the company plans
to do, how they’ve met their
goals and expectations and trying to be part of how they think
on a day-to-day basis so I can
take the smallest issue and
solve it.
By handling that, by being
grounded, if I’m approachable,
I’m going to find out the littlest
thing that’s wrong with the company and I can move it forward.
Get rid of the suit.
I grew up within the framework of being an employee first,
and my biggest goal is, if I could
have an impact on the business, if I could actually influence in a
positive way the outcome of the
business, that was my only goal.
Set expectations. We set goals. Of
course, we have an annual
budget process, and in that,
you define projects you are
going to get accomplished and
sales objectives and market
share objectives and how we
are going to improve everything.
We have a meeting with the
operating heads every two
weeks, where we sit down and
talk through issues that are
stopping us from obtaining our
goals and work through the
problems on a routine basis.
Tactically, handling your issues
routinely is something that we
do fairly well as a company, and
basically, bringing all the department heads together so they can
see how they impact one another.
I think that many people are
trained to be compartment
thinkers, and they really understand they are very good at their
own department and, in fact, I
would qualify them as an expert
in their own department. But, I
don’t know if they necessarily
see how they impact each other
and how their area services the
company and the ultimate
impact of their decisions on the
other departments that help the
company run.
So, I think that some of those
hard lines, or silos, if you will,
are taken down in those meetings, and I think that they see
how they can actually influence
the outcome.
Communicate your message to
everyone to avoid confusion. You
have a company such as ours
that’s growing at 45 percent,
currently. Last year, we weren’t
the same company. You would-n’t manage the company in
quite the same manner as you
are managing it this year. Last
year, you were a $117 million
company. This year, you’re over
$150 million. Two years ago,
you were only $80 million. So,
you definitely have to change
and adjust and continue to
manage the business much in
the same framework, but it’s
always changing.
Human nature is people aren’t
used to change, so you have to
get a little closer to the organization in order to always get that
comfort zone back because you
are always changing.
No one can ever believe you
are going to have everybody on
board. Unfortunately, I am a big
believer that there is going to be
a few naysayers in every group.
Every meeting might be
thought of differently, or someone thinks the meeting is going
a different way. So, you always
have to reach back for clarity. If
you continue to follow up on
what you say and never let people down and, again, go back to
those expectations, there are
less and less of those naysayers
because pretty soon, people are
basically getting on the bus with
you, rather than just believing
that you’re just doomed to failure.
You continue to fight that with
a progressive action.
HOW TO REACH: Caraco Pharmaceutical Laboratories Ltd., (800) 818-4555 or www.caraco.com