Set your vision
When Weiss arrived at Author Solutions, he saw a company that simply wasn’t moving fast enough. He did not see the level of urgency to get things done that would be needed to achieve the growth that he had envisioned.
So his vision was simply to remake the company in order to move faster.
“I’m accustomed to technology culture, which is a fast-paced, very customer-focused kind of environment with a need to get things done very quickly,” Weiss says.
“I kept asking questions like, ‘Why does it take five months for us to get a title from submission to complete? Why can’t we do it in 60 days?’ And now I’m saying, ‘Why can’t we do it in 45 days?’ I was pushing us to say, ‘Why don’t we try to do some things a little differently?’ We’ve been doing it this way for four years and it gives us reasonable growth, but it doesn’t give us hyper growth.”
Weiss wanted his employees to see that they could be a part of a blossoming industry. But he needed to get them to see it the way he did and get them to understand what it would take to achieve his lofty goals.
“You have to keep it simple, but it has to be meaningful,” Weiss says.
“It has to have real value to all the participants along the way to be able to do it. That’s really the first step. If you don’t get the vision strategy of how you are going to execute against that vision right, you might be lost forever or you’ll be lost for a long time and you’ll have a confused organization. You’ll be working 24-7 trying to change each and every one of them.”
That doesn’t mean that you won’t be throwing them any surprises. Technology would be a big part of increasing capacity at Author Solutions and technological changes can be scary for some people.
“A lot of people shy away from the technology aspects of their business, because it’s not something that they know,” Weiss says. “But if people don’t take into account what technology can do for them, technology will do things to them that they don’t expect and aren’t prepared for. We used technology as an enabler in transforming our business.”
The company changed its production process and completely redid its technology platform.
“We asked people to do things that they had never thought they were capable of doing,” Weiss says. “They looked at me like I had three heads sometimes. I said, ‘Trust me, guys. I know this looks hard. I know this looks crazy. I know how uncomfortable it feels right now, but it is going to work.’ A couple of nights, I said, ‘I hope.’ But you have to be decisive and you have to have compassion when you’re pushing people to do things that they never thought they were capable of doing.”
That compassion and support for your people when enacting significant changes is a crucial part of the process.
“You have to encourage people,” Weiss says. “They have to know that you’ve got their back. They have to know that you have confidence in them to do it. They need to understand they are not going to lose their job if they make a mistake. You want people to feel a part of this change. That’s why you have to keep painting that vision for them.
“Once you’ve established that vision and you’ve brought the team, in my case, the management team around me and one level below, under the tent to see what that vision is and then put in the individual changes that are required, it’s a matter of going out and making sure you communicate effectively on why you are doing it.”
