Move forward
After you have performed the initial tasks of informing your employees of the challenges that lie ahead, you need to begin taking steps to generate momentum for your business.
If there is any silver lining to layoffs and attrition, it’s that the people left behind are often your top performers. At Pulte, Campbell seized the opportunity to give his remaining high achievers on staff more responsibility and additional training. The top players on Campbell’s team became more versatile within the company.
“By virtue of the fact that those individuals continue to be employed by the organization, it sends a very positive message to them, both directly and indirectly,” Campbell says. “It also allows us to cross-train them in a variety of roles and prepare them for other opportunities, both within our company and from a career standpoint. So what you’re trying to do is take what is overall a negative situation and turn it into a positive situation for a number of individuals.”
Unfortunately, if your company is dealing with cutbacks and downsizing, you might not have the money allocated in your budget to finance promotions and the accompanying bumps in pay. But you don’t have to offer promotions to offer your employees new opportunities.
“By asking them to take on additional responsibilities, you are able to train, teach and develop their skills on a deeper level, even in their existing role,” Campbell says. “It has been an eye-opening experience for me. If you continue to empower people and teach them a bit more about the business, why and how decisions are made, it’s really amazing how much they can contribute to the success of an organization.”
You can continue to empower your employees on a day-to-day basis by simply listening and making yourself available for feedback. You need to communicate what you know, but equally as important is your ability and willingness to remain open to what your employees are seeing, demonstrating with your actions that you want their input and opinions.
“People need to understand what you’re all about,” Campbell says. “That means having a lot of face-to-face interaction, doing a lot of listening and realizing that the listening aspect of communication is a huge skill for an executive-level person to be successful.
“You need to put yourself in a position where you understand the challenges your people are facing and what concerns they have. You can only be successful in getting that information if you set the tone with your own communication, which goes back to the need to be open and honest. You need to truly have an interest in what they have to say.”
If you’re going to empower and motivate your managers and employees to pull your business back from a challenging time, you need to have their trust. Trust is gained when you speak the truth, have your actions follow your words, listen to and consider feedback, and as a part of that, allow employees to speak their minds — even when they have critical things to say — without fear of retribution or retaliation.
“People need to be able to believe and trust you, and that means developing an understanding that what they say won’t be held against them,” Campbell says. “You need to establish a track record of behaving that way.”
And the only way you can establish that track record is over time, by remaining consistent with your words and actions.
Campbell says it boils down to one word: discipline.
“It does come down to discipline, and I’ll be the first to admit that I always need to have more discipline than I currently have,” he says. “It’s a matter of being consistent with what you’re trying to accomplish each week, taking some time to pull a game plan together for myself, which includes frequent meetings with my management team. And it’s also making sure that you get out into the field and continue to engage people on a face-to-face basis, doing it as best as you can.”
As 2010 has progressed, Campbell’s division still finds itself mired in a difficult situation. Though the economy has shown signs of short-term recovery, Pulte’s central Florida region is still weighed down by the real estate environment in Florida — a state that was, in many ways, ground zero for the federal mortgage crisis and its subsequent spillover into the new housing market.
It’s something that Campbell and his team have to endure from a new business standpoint. Culturally, however, the division remains strong, due to the foundational principles of the nationwide Pulte organization and the willingness of Campbell’s team to communicate with one another.
But Campbell recognizes that there is always room to grow, which is why he continues to focus on the same basic principles of communication, no matter how many times his staff has heard it.
“There is not a magic formula in any of this,” he says. “It’s a building block kind of process where you need to communicate, interact with people and constantly make sure that you’re engaging employees so that they can feel empowered to make solid decisions. It takes time to position an organization like that, and we always have a ways to go as we continue to improve.”
How to reach: Pulte Homes, www.pulte.com or (813) 265-3343
