Set common behaviors
Preziotti spends most of his time thinking about the business
at a high level. With 60 percent of its revenue coming in from
outside the United States, he’s often thinking in global terms.
But no matter the size of your business, you still need to
occasionally delve in to the details to make things happen and
to keep everyone on the same page — especially when you’re
trying to build a culture bridging employees who aren’t used to
working together.
“If you have an issue that is really complicated, you have to
be willing to spend the time to get the detail and understand it,”
Preziotti says.
One of the things Preziotti felt was critical to bringing the
company together was addressing the behavior of his employees. This isn’t behavior in the sense of good or bad but rather
behavior in terms of the way work gets done.
“The company has been good at giving people objectives and
having goals versus those objectives and putting together
development plans,” Preziotti says. “One of the things lacking
a little bit was behaviors. What are the behaviors that we want
our employees to have? We rated people on how well they met
their objectives and what people felt their development plans
and their needs were but not how they went about doing their
work.”
Preziotti is a big believer in 360-degree reviews, soliciting
feedback for individuals from people that work for them.
“If you want people to give candid feedback to an individual,
the inputs have to be anonymous,” Preziotti says. “If I’m working with a peer who I think is an idiot because of X, Y and Z,
more than likely, Joe is not going to write that about Jack if
Jack knows Joe wrote it. The whole idea about a 360 review is
to get at people’s blind spots.”
By addressing these issues and raising concerns that might
not come up in a public forum, you can get at some of the
underlying concerns that might be holding your culture back.
Whether it’s through an independent party or through a direct
supervisor, the point of the 360 review is to provide information and develop a plan to fix your flaws.
“Take a look at the feedback and say, ‘How do I change my
approach to incorporate that feedback to make me a better
employee or a better leader?’” Preziotti says.
Your role is to convince employees to take the reviews seriously.
“You just have to impress upon people that this is an important part of how we develop people,” Preziotti says. “Be
somewhat of a nag to the people who are supposed to be contributing to the process. If you get 360 feedback that doesn’t
have a lot of commentary on it, then maybe you need to
actively solicit it.”
And when an issue is raised that you feel has merit, you need
to take action.
“We move forward, and we communicate that we have taken
action on a suggestion that somebody has made,” Preziotti
says.
When employees come through for you and meet a challenge, you need to reward them.
“You have a set of objectives and your goal is to meet those
objectives,” Preziotti says. “Our goal as a company is to meet
the financial commitments that we make to the board and also
do the things that we’re supposed to be doing from a strategic
perspective that will set the business up to ultimately be more
successful in the long run. … If a team or individual has gone
above and beyond the call or achieved something special with
respect to a project or an individual effort, you find the way to
reward and recognize them.”
You’ll know your culture is working when people show the
ability to embrace conflict in a way that leads to a healthy
debate of issues and ultimately, better decisions.
“You will come out with a better answer, a better solution, a
better decision than on a team that doesn’t debate issues,”
Preziotti says. “On our team, it’s perfectly acceptable for any of
the team members to push back on me if they don’t agree with
the direction I’m going in. But once we make a decision as a
team, we’re a united front to the rest of the organization.”
In developing a unified culture, you have to set the example
for your employees.
“If you’re asking people to do certain things and behave in
certain ways and embrace a certain kind of culture, if you don’t
embrace that, why would they?” Preziotti says. “It’s an old
adage, but you have to lead by example.”
HOW TO REACH: Vertellus Specialties Inc., (317) 247-8141 or www.vertellus.com
