A business is mobile. And like any vehicle that has to get from point A to point B, it needs good sight lines for the driver.
Peter Ross, co-founder and CEO of Senior Helpers, maintains his good sight lines through communications with employees and franchisees of the in-home assistance provider for senior citizens, which generated $65 million in 2009 revenue.
“Line of sight in any organization is very important,” Ross says. “You do that shared vision and line of sight by constantly communicating those messages throughout the organization.”
Ross says the key to keeping your basic operating principles in front of your employees is to keep yourself in front of your employees. You need to get out of the office and engage your people in formal and casual settings. When in-person communication won’t work, use other communication methods at your disposal to keep the vision and mission out there.
Smart Business spoke with Ross about how you can keep your employees focused by keeping your communication focused.
Display the message. Messaging on all communication needs to be something you value as important, whether it’s mission, vision, core vales, tagline or any of those kinds of things. Whether you’re communicating in writing or electronically or the old-fashioned mail, you need to keep continuing to remind folks what that is. But it’s really all about reaching out to people and not assuming. I worked for a lot of Fortune 500 companies before I started Senior Helpers, and I was always amazed that the CEOs would basically walk around and ask anybody, ‘What is your vision, what is your mission, what is the most important thing for your department?’ This could be the person emptying the trash cans, let alone an executive.
I’ve always thought that was very powerful and that was good feedback to the department heads and the organization that everyone is on the same page. In this organization, I’m not dealing with thousands of people like I used to do. It’s a group of people that are very focused. The challenging part of our organization is that we have 300 offices around the country owned and operated by franchise owners. Unlike the days when I had offices that were basically managed directly by myself, now I’m working with franchisees who own the businesses. So in this case, you do need to constantly communicate, solicit feedback and test for understanding to make sure that everyone is on board with the message.
It doesn’t help if you have a message that no one believes in to start with because no one is going to keep that core value and take it to heart. That’s why I always look for participatory input upfront, so that I’m jumping into a pool that has water in it. But it’s a never-ending story with different levels of communication and different levels of acceptance. Do they buy in to the message; do they buy in to the strategy?