When Ted Abrams
joined the team at
Joffrey’s Coffee & Tea Co. in 2001, the Tampa company was in bad financial shape.
“When I came in, I eliminated the retail operations that
the company currently owned
and operated, except for the
kiosks at Disney World,” says
the co-owner, president and
CEO. “I changed our focus and
our core strategy from retail
and operating coffee shops to
wholesale.”
By encouraging quick communication among the management team, Abrams brought
Joffrey’s out of financial hardship. Today, the company has
115 employees and posted
2007 revenue of $10.7 million.
Smart Business spoke with
Abrams about how communicating with speed can facilitate
a successful turnaround.
Q. How should a leader
approach a turnaround?
Don’t be afraid to make
change within the organization; change is good. In any
turnaround situation, some
people are willing and able to
accept the change, and others
just can’t.
Everybody’s got to be on the
same path at all times, and
they’ve got to be able to buy in
to the vision and the strategy. If
not, then it’s not going to work.
Laying out the strategy has
to be done very quickly in the
beginning, and then it has to
be communicated on a continuous basis. You can’t just lay it
out one time and then walk
away from it.
There is a lot of micromanagement that has to be done,
but it’s being done in a communicative way that will create the buy-in from your management team, and at the
same time, it allows them to
gain confidence in you. You
take little baby steps along the
way and then very quickly
communicate the successes as
you come upon them because
your team will begin to see
that the strategy is working.
It gives further solidification
to the buy-in to your strategy
and vision for turning your
company around.
