Support your leaders
When you’re embarking on a big change, it’s easy to want to have your hand in everything to make sure it’s being done the way you want it. But even as president or CEO, you’re still only one person.
“If you’re going to empower your managers, you have to make sure they have ultimate responsibility,” Terry says. “You can’t undermine their authority.”
You can’t be everywhere and watching everything. You have to let your managers do the job you hired them to do and told them you wanted them to do.
“If the test is always how would you do it, the organization is always going to be looking to a single person to make the decisions,” Terry says. “A successful and viable organization thrives because of the diversity of views, not because of the singularity of a view and an outlook. As long as we’re all in agreement on what the mission is, there’s many different paths to getting that done. If you’ve done the hiring right and they buy in to the mission, get out of their way.”
That doesn’t mean you give up all of your power and adopt a completely hands-off approach to leading your business.
“I could never say to those people to whom I report, ‘That’s our warehouse manager’s doing; it’s not my responsibility,’” Terry says. “It’s my responsibility. If the ‘what’ isn’t happening the way it needs to be, if we’re not living the mission, improving customer service and increasing demand for the product, I need to be engaged in it and say, ‘This isn’t working. How can I make this work? How can I help you make this work?’ I can’t abdicate, but I have to empower.”
It was early on in this process of change that Terry received proof his message was being heard. Two cases of beer had been left off a delivery truck and, therefore, would not make it to their destination, a rather remote location, on time.
“The account needed it and the driver supervisor, without being prompted, told the customer, ‘We’re sorry; we’ll have it there in two hours,’” Terry says. “That cost us a whole lot to take that product out there, but that was the right response. The response beforehand would have been, ‘Tell them we’ll be there the next delivery day.’ But it was our error and the customer wanted it. It was the reaction because they knew the mission was service.”
How to reach: Monarch Beverage Co. Inc., (317) 612-1300 or www.monarch-beverage.com