Make quick decisions
So how do you avoid making mistakes when decisions are
being made so quickly?
“It’s just having the guts to actually do what, in most cases, is
the right thing,” Tognoni says. “We haven’t made a lot of mistakes. It’s not that we’re never going to make mistakes and
don’t make them. What most people do is they worry about
things they can’t do anything about. We don’t spend a lot of
time on that.”
For example, Tognoni says if there are two people being considered for one job and the wrong person is cut, he doesn’t
worry about it.
“Over time, we’ll figure it out and correct it,” Tognoni says.
“The mistakes associated with that aren’t usually terminal if
you have the experience in the industry and you know how a
company is going to react to the changes. You’re just typically
not going to make that big of a mistake.”
There is more danger in putting off difficult decisions to gather more and more data.
“It doesn’t matter what kind of decision it is,” Tognoni says.
“You have to make decisions quickly in business. That’s endemic to management, in my opinion. The faster you make decisions, the more productive a company is largely because people sit around twiddling their thumbs if people aren’t making a
decision, which means they are not getting anything done. In
turnarounds, it’s absolutely critical that you get in and make
decisions quickly.”
The other benefit to making decisions quickly is analogous to
the idea that it’s better to rip off a Band-Aid rather than slowly
pull it off.
“We typically do whatever changes we’re going to do immediately,” Tognoni says. “That’s it, one time and off we go. We
will err on the low side when we restructure a business so we
don’t have to be doing it a year later again. The essence of it is
we do it fast.”
The idea is that the company and its employees should not be
held in limbo for a long period of time.
“We make the decision quickly, and then we’re moving forward,” Tognoni says. “Over time, people understand that we
tend to make a pretty good decision the first time so there’s not
anything to be worried about afterward, and it’s a more stable
environment.”
Four and a half years later, the reboot of Consona has paid off.
The 650-employee company posted $150 million in revenue in
2007, a 64 percent increase over the figure for 2006.
And in the end, results are what it’s all about.
“You take the Boston Celtics,” Tognoni says. “Last year and
over the last 10 years, Boston Celtics fans have been whittling
down to a very few, and they’re upset, and they don’t like the
current management. Now, the same management who was
running the team three years ago is running the team this year,
and now, they are geniuses. Why are they geniuses? Results,
period. It’s not because they went out and gave some speech.”
HOW TO REACH: Consona Corp., (888) 8CONSONA or www.consona.com
