Welcome them in
While involving employees in some of the lighter projects will keep them thinking of good ideas, you need to be available to hear those ideas, and you also want the employees to know their ideas are being heard and are appreciated.
As ideas filter up, Santo and four direct reports pick two or three ideas they like and ask the creators of those ideas to make a presentation at the end of management meetings.
In front of the 23-member management team, a front-line employee could be asked to present his or her idea.
That can be nerve-wracking for a higher-ranking official, so imagine the guts it takes for a front-line employee to do it.
Santo tries to create a more relaxed meeting atmosphere by inviting the presenters up for the lunch part of the meeting.
“What we do is we have them come up and they eat with everybody,” he says. “It’s very low key. It’s almost always pizza.
“Then, right after that, there’s a lot of joking around during lunch and they feel very comfortable.”
Santo, or whoever thought the idea was worth presenting, will introduce the speaker and explain why the idea is a good one before letting the employee begin.
“Rather than me say it like it’s coming from me when it didn’t, it’s, ‘I wanted her to come up here and take credit for what is really a good idea,’” he says.
The meetings are normally done on Fridays, which is a casual dress day at Avantair. You want to take every opportunity to make the employee feel comfortable making the presentation. Having him or her dress up and present to a bunch of well-dressed executives is only going to make the employee sweat even more.
In fact, Santo used to enforce a dress code, but he found that it wasn’t helping the business.
“I came from a background in law, where I wore a suit every day,” he says. “I thought that you had to have that to show a level of professionalism in the company. I learned that is really a big mistake.
“No. 1, not everybody can afford the Armani suits. So, you as the CEO coming (to work) in your $1,000 suit and then forcing other people to go out and buy suits, which are not cheap, it sends the wrong message. Then two, it creates a very (stuffy) environment. It gets rid of that whole kind of fun, go-with-the-flow environment.”
Keeping that fun, active work environment up is going to be a challenge for Santo as the company continues to grow. As he looks at the more successful, relaxed companies like Google and Apple, he’s noticing one common theme between them.
“I’m finding that it has a lot to do with communication — communicating with all those employees and keeping that level of fun and that level of input the way it was before without getting bogged down,” he says.
Using that type of communication to create an environment where employees buy in to your message and the culture will help your company take flight to its apex.
“The company is doing really well now, but it doesn’t happen without everybody being behind the story,” he says. “It just doesn’t happen.”
How to reach: Avantair Inc., (727) 539-0071 or www.avantair.com