Q. What are the pitfalls to
avoid during the planning phase?
Taking too much input internally can be a pitfall, especially
in the case where you’re going
through an acquisition. You may
have a good team, but a lot of
their thought processes are
based on their experience with
prior ownership, and it’s that
same leadership that obviously
put the company in a difficult
situation. They have good ideas,
but you have to take it with a
grain of salt.
There have been a couple of
situations where I have conceded planning issues to staff in an
effort to win some ownership
and buy-in from them knowing
that it was the wrong decision,
allowing it to go through, and
ultimately, it did prove to be a
wrong decision. You’ve got to be
careful with trading off good
decisions with the empowerment side of it.
Q. How do you deal with
resistance in a turnaround?
It has taken a lot of time
around the table almost debating, really going over and over
what the problem is, how we
can get from here to there,
understanding that we all have
different directions to get to the
same place.
Ultimately, what it comes
down to is saying, ‘I’m going to
take your feedback.’ I’m still
going to make the ultimate decision, but I take a lot of time
explaining my rationale and
logic. Even though they don’t
necessarily agree with the path,
they understand the rationale
and the logic behind it.
You need to be confident in
your ability to make good decisions — not cocky about it but
confident. If you’re not confident
in your ability to make decisions,
then you are going to run into
the situation where everybody
else is making decisions around
you, and it leads to chaos.
You’re more likely to keep a
good team of people that are
supporting the end goals of the
company in the same direction.
But the flip side of that is you’re
also not leading the company
into chaos by letting all of those
people direct the company in
different directions.
HOW TO REACH: MZI HealthCare LLC, (661) 310-9333 or www.mzihc.com