Put your people first. One of the
things employees always want
is more communication. So I
devised a venue in which to
improve upon communication
called ‘Broadtalk.’ Every
Wednesday, we have a half-hour presentation by one of
the senior VPs, executive VPs,
and then myself and my direct
reports. Everyone in the company is invited to attend, and
the individual who is presenting is really looking to achieve
two things in that half-hour
period of time.
One, they have to talk about
themselves, their background,
some personal facts about
them. Then they have to
express to the group what
their responsibilities are and
what they do. This has been a
wonderful success for us.
Measure the progress. The best
way to measure success of
communication is in a couple
of different ways. One, I’ve
observed my clients explaining
our value proposition in an
elevator pitch mode to other
prospective clients.
When your customers can
recite your value proposition
to other potential customers
— something that it’s really my
job to do — that tells me we’re
doing things in a fairly concise
manner.
The other thing is building the
culture. When I started the company, culture was something I
was particularly interested in.
Today, of the 53 vice presidents
and above, over half have been
with the company since the first
two years of the organization.
Start-ups have exceedingly
high turnover, we’ve had fairly
low turnover, and I think that
metric is an indication that the
culture has been communicated effectively. The business
strategy we have today is the
exact same business strategy
we had eight years ago when
we started the company. It’s
based on three things, and I
think most of our employees
can in a roundabout way
recite that strategy and that
culture.
Actions are stronger than
words. I was really thrilled that
a gentleman, who has been promoted four or five times, as he
was doing a presentation for a
fairly large group of employees,
on one of his slides had a quote
from David Ricker, something I
had said maybe eight years ago.
I know I’ve said it many times,
but the quote was ‘Do what is
right for the customer, and the
revenue will come.’
That is a message I have routinely said to people, and I was
really proud that this individual
started to recite my quotes. He
is now echoing the same really
broad message that is core to
the success of our business.
We’re also repeating the message when we’re making business decisions. We sort of fall
back on what our beliefs are
and make our decisions based
on our convictions. That’s
what resonates with people.
There were times when we
could have made business decisions that made the quarter better financially but might have
been destructive to the relationship with a client. Every day
when we’re making decisions as
a group, we need to be collectively repeating what we’ve
talked about and putting it into
actions, not just words.
HOW TO REACH: Broadlane Inc., (972) 813-7500 or www.broadlane.com
