Communicate the plan
Once he and his team had created their vision for Mattson’s
future, they also had to communicate that to the employees, but
stating the vision is just the beginning.
“Visioning is a constant communication, so you never stop communicating,” Dutton says. “You say it multiple times. The old
adage, and you hear school teachers say, ‘You have to hear it three
times before you get it.’ I think in rolling out a vision, people have
to hear it 20 times in 20 different ways, so you’re constantly trying
to tie regular communication to the employees.”
One of the key ways to communicate a vision is to get people to
discuss it so it’s more inclusive and less lecturing.
“A lot of times, even things that sound simple, like setting the
next year’s revenue goals … if you put 15 people in a room and start
talking about it, that number of fears and uncertainties inside
every person are all different, so try to get those out,” Dutton says.
“Once they’re out, you can talk them through, and then procrastination to moving toward that new goal goes away, and people start
to move forward.”
Even when people resisted, Dutton tried to talk things through
with them.
“Over time, when people constantly don’t align to where a company is going, a lot of times they make their own decisions that
they don’t fit,” he says. “We don’t use, necessarily, authority over
dissension. It’s still collaboration through dissension that moves
the company forward.”
As he made progress toward the future, Dutton was also mindful
to share those victories with people.
“For example, if we win an account because our tool has the highest throughput for a customer, we can tie that back to one of our product principles, which is toward low-cost ownership,” he says. “It’s a
constant communication of the mission, and then taking the successes and tying them back into the mission so that people are constantly
internalizing it and moving forward.”
Dutton’s strategies have proven successful. With $267.3 million in
net sales and $27.6 million in income last year, the company is now
solidly positioned and earning money instead of bleeding it. While
successful, Dutton thinks back to a conversation from 2003 and
how much has changed since then.
“My wife, Donna, and I were talking, and I said, ‘So far, my claim
to fame or mark on this role is we’ve taken a company from 2,300
people to 600 people — not a great thing, not a thing you want to be
known for,’” Dutton says. “But, at the end of the day, those 600 people
have now built the company forward, where it’s continued to gain
share, it’s become a leader in two areas, and it’s now implementing
two other growth segments, and we’re expecting to double our revenue as we go forward over the next year and move into a whole other
realm of the company.”
HOW TO REACH: Mattson Technology Inc., www.mattson.com
