Report on progress
Bish instigated a significant domino effect of changes across Kofax. But the key, through it all, is that he kept communicating.
“Throughout that whole process, you really need to optimize communications with all your constituencies — which would include, certainly, your employees, your board of directors, your shareholders, your channel partners and also your end-user customers,” Bish says. “Report back to them on a very regular basis about your progress in terms of effecting all that change and where you’re succeeding, where you’re facing some challenges, and changes that you’re going to make in light of that.”
Bish meets with employees at least quarterly. Well, technically, everyone at Kofax’s new operating headquarters in Irvine gathers in a room, then the rest of the company dials in. In other time zones, they can access the PowerPoint and a recording of the call via their intranet later.
Bish’s presentation is pretty simple and straightforward.
“You tell people what you’re going to do and when you’re going to do it,” he says. “As you execute on each of those initiatives or each of those actions, you report back that we hit one of the milestones so that they know what’s getting done and what isn’t.”
To better illustrate progress to employees, track it with some concrete numbers. Bish uses benchmarked metrics to show how Kofax is faring in the big picture of the marketplace.
“Set up some key performance indicators that you can track and measure against,” he says. “In our case, for example, it was referring to the industry analyst data or information about competitors: Are we growing faster or slower than our competition or the marketplace? Are we gaining market share as a result or losing market share? Are our revenues growing across various segments of our business or declining on a year-over-year basis?”
As he continued to keep employees in the loop of change, Bish began chiseling away at their skepticism. Now, they can focus fully on making the company successful — not worrying about their leader’s motives.
Bish built up the trust necessary to rebrand and rename DICOM as Kofax, restructure it around global business functions, realign and focus the sales resources, hire experienced senior executives, and relocate the operating headquarters across the globe — along with a flurry of other changes. Kofax reported revenue of $298.2 million for fiscal 2009, ending June 30. Industry analysts project fiscal 2010 revenue of about $330 million.
“The important thing is to communicate on a regular, consistent, open, honest and frank basis with the employees,” Bish says. “If you can establish that level of open dialogue and trust that comes as a result of that, it’s a much easier process to go through. If you do that over time, I think you build that level of trust and convince people that you’re really sincere in your motivations.”
How to reach: Kofax plc, (949) 727-1733 or http://www.kofax.com/
