Bring everyone together
Just because different offices were doing things differently didn’t
mean they were all doing a bad job. In fact, when Warmington was
thinking about how to get everyone on the same page, employees
in Warmington’s Northern California office were working on a best
practices program, and one of the Southern California offices was
working on a similar project.
Developing a best practices program was a great idea. The problem was that the offices weren’t working together. Despite having
the best of intentions, they were working in silos, without considering that they were part of a larger company. This was the mentality that had caused the company to drift apart as it grew.
Warmington noticed similarities in the two offices’ programs but
noticed a few differences, as well. The Northern California office
had taken to calling its program “The Warmington Way.”
“They came up with the name,” Warmington says. “People would
ask them, ‘Why do you do it this way?’ and they’d say, ‘It’s just the
Warmington Way. That’s how we do it.’”
The name stuck. Warmington decided that the leaders of each of
the company’s divisions should get together to create one all-encompassing best practices and more program that would be
used by the entire company. The Warmington Way became shorthand for how the company does business — an umbrella that covers its mission, vision, values and culture.
The first step was setting up a meeting with all of his department
heads. After a day of conversation, Warmington typed up a summary
of the meeting and e-mailed it to everyone. He says putting your notes
from a meeting in writing is something executives should always do.
It will help ensure that your communication gets through clearly.
“Even though you say something, not everyone hears the same
thing,” Warmington says. “About one-third of the people said, ‘Well,
that’s not what we talked about,’ and two-thirds said, ‘That’s exactly
what we talked about.’”
If you’re trying to drive a companywide initiative, everyone needs
to be aware of what you’re driving at. Warmington made sure every
employee knew about The Warmington Way. At the beginning,
employees weren’t sure what it meant or why all the department
heads were meeting at the corporate office. But after the first meeting, the department heads were tasked with going back to their
offices and gathering input from their own teams. Warmington sent
out companywide e-mails to let everyone know what was happening and encouraging all of the employees to talk about their ideas
with their bosses.
“I say, ‘Take this out and go out and talk to your field guys; see what
they have to say,’” Warmington says. “So they took it out and spent a
couple weeks talking to the field people, the salespeople and the
office people, really all of their subordinates. Then we got together
again.”
