Ron St. Clair says there are similarities between politics and business: At the center of each, says the president and CEO of Thorntown-based Stalcop LP, has to be a belief in the sometimes messy process of democracy. St. Clair strives to get everyone involved in forming
the vision and direction of the $35 million manufacturer that specializes in metal forming. To do that, he solicits input from all of the
company’s approximately 300 employees based in the U.S. and Europe. It’s a time-consuming and sometimes tedious process —
something St. Clair likens to making sausage — but without it, he says you will find it extremely difficult to build your company effectively.
Smart Business spoke with St. Clair about why it’s important to get everyone involved and how to keep employees engaged.
Democracy can be messy, but pursue it
anyway. There is no easy democracy.
Take the town-hall meetings you’re seeing in the presidential race.
You have certain people who don’t
want to change anything, you have certain people who want to change something. Each one thinks their idea is the
best. What we have to do in this democratic process of where the company is
going, what we want to do, is you’re setting a clear direction, but how you get
there is really important.
To get the buy-in from everybody, you
have to take the time to really bring the
people together, and that’s what I call
sausage-making. It’s very easy for me, as
the CEO, to come in and say, ‘This is
what we’re going to do, steps one, two,
three, four, five, go do it.’ But if you don’t
get the democratic implementation, it
never gets done.
So from my perspective, I say, ‘Let’s
spend the time upfront, get the appropriate buy-in, make sure we’ve chosen the
right objectives,’ then once we’ve done
that, it’s easy for me to say, ‘Discussion
over, objective one belongs to this person,’
and they either perform or they don’t.
Once we’ve democratically determined
our collective objective, then I implement with a very autocratic focus. We’ve
elected, now it’s not democratic anymore, the specific objectives and
resources. So once we’ve democratically
chosen our direction, I autocratically
hold people accountable.
It’s a messy process, but you don’t get
anything done otherwise. You might
think you control the company, but nothing happens. If you don’t get people talking about these things and at least give
people the feeling that they are participating, unless they are the one assigned
the objective, they’ll only give begrudging support to it.
This approach lets people really
become involved in how we set the company, where it’s going to go, why it’s
important we go in certain directions. It
allows people to understand more about
the dynamics of the business versus, ‘Shut up, I told you to do it.’ Everyone
working here is a bright, articulate person, they just have different job skills,
and you want to know why you’re doing
something. It’s about more than just the
paycheck.
Map out a strategy. One of the key tools
we’ve used over the past several years is
called strategic mapping. This is something that was developed at Harvard, but
what we’ve done is applied it to a mid-sized company instead of a large corporation. The strategy map is a physical document that shows how we create value for
our customers and the actions we’re taking to lower costs and improve revenue.
If you don’t measure it, it doesn’t get
done. It’s very easy to use the nebulous,
‘We want to be the best company in the
world, we want to be a lovely company, we
want our employees to love us, our customers to love us.’ What does that mean?
Without having very specific measures
for financial, operational, customers and
internally for your people, you don’t
know whether you’re truly making
progress. It’s very easy to say we’re
working on these things, but you never
know if you’re going to accomplish them
or if you’re headed in the wrong direction. You have to have concrete measures or you’re not going to accomplish
anything.
It’s similar to FedEx when they first got
started. They absolutely guaranteed
your package would be there by 10 a.m.
Everything was focused on getting it
there by 10 a.m.
Set and review goals. We spend quite a bit
of time doing something called catalytic
coaching. It’s different from performance assessments. You sit down with
someone and tell them what you need
them to do for the company.
So for high-potential people, we’re using
a variety of tools that way, and the old
management-by-walking-around. We spend
a lot of time getting out with the people,
constantly communicating the objective
for the week, the objective for the month,
where are we with regard to revenue
growth, where we are on specific projects
and how they can help us in those areas.
We used to do annual performance
reviews, sit you down, find out what you
accomplished, assess a grade on a scale
of 1 to 10, then throw you back out the
door. It was really a nonvalue-added type
of performance review.
Through using the system of catalytic
coaching, it really gets you into a dialogue between the person you report to
and yourself. It gets away from trying to
say you’re a number grade to, ‘How are
you brining value to the organization,
and how is the organization helping you
achieve what you want to do?’
Through these quarterly sessions, you
learn about your performance. You don’t
find out that you were up to be fired and
nobody has every talked to you.
It provides a reason for this dialogue, but
it takes people quite a long time to get used
to dialogue. All managers I’ve ever run into
just have a hard time with dialogue.
They’re OK with superior-subordinate
interaction, but if you start entering into
dialogue and start discussing things, they
become uncomfortable.
By forcing them to use this type of tool,
you find that they are more apt to enter
into things jointly rather than dictatorially.
HOW TO REACH: Stalcop LP, www.stalcop.com or (765) 436-7926