Open communication
As he set about realigning American Air Liquide and re-emphasizing innovation to the entire company, Dufour says communication was critical, and keeping his messages simple was a constant fight.
Dufour says it’s one of the toughest challenges a CEO can face day to day: communicating complex, wide-ranging concepts to many people
in a simple fashion.
“It’s the consistency and constant flow of communication that makes it effective,” he says. “If you look at 20 Air Liquide announcements,
about half of them will talk about something that is not necessarily a blockbuster item, but it is some sort of innovation.”
Dufour works with his corporate communications staff to make sure his communications reach the widest possible audience within the
company. Many times, when the communication centers on innovation, it’s difficult to do because the ideas are generated by engineers or scientists and are awash in professional lingo and industry jargon.
“I don’t know how many times I’ve returned announcements to our communications staff saying it’s too complicated. I need us to say it in
layman’s terms, not for a Ph.D. I want ‘Specialty Gases for Dummies.’ It’s very important because you aren’t trying to impress people by showing how smart you are. You are trying to get them to relate to what you are talking about.”
He says it’s also important to remember that, many times, what is obvious to the innovator or inventor is not so obvious to the rest of the
company.
“I remember we had an announcement about a gas product we had just produced,” Dufour says. “It was very difficult to understand what
this thing did in about four or five lines because the guy who first wrote the announcement wrote it from an inventor’s perspective. He was
explaining how it worked.
“Who cares how it works? People aren’t interested in that. People are interested in what it does. But for the inventor, it’s obvious what it
does. What isn’t obvious is how it works.”
It comes back to making sure your innovators are in touch with your customers and are understanding customers on their level and inventing things they need.
“Does it make the customer more competitive?” Dufour says. “Does it give you a better mousetrap for the market? That’s the key. It’s not
just the words you use in communication. It’s the concision. Being simple is absolutely essential.
“It’s a constant struggle to take a technical innovation and simplify it for the people who haven’t been a part of it. It’s very important but can
be very difficult.”
Dufour’s efforts have helped pull the zipper back up at American Air Liquide. Through a newfound emphasis on communication and innovation, he says the working relationship between Air Liquide’s American and European offices has improved.
“By creating teams across the ocean and creating working groups, we were able to merge the teeth and pull the zipper back up and get more
leverage out of the group in the U.S.,” he says.
In the end, Dufour says it’s about management walking the talk and following its words with consistent actions.
“It doesn’t matter what you say,” he says. “You’re successful as a manager when people see your actions. It’s important not only to say it in
big declarations, but when you take the time to review it, you also take the time to talk to your people. Then the word gets out, and people
see that (innovation) is really important to you.”
HOW TO REACH: American Air Liquide, www.us.airliquide.com
