When Mark Schwartz
hands you his business
card, you’re not going to find his title of CEO on it.
The same goes for his 100 employees at Product Development
Technologies Inc.
Those missing qualifiers aren’t
the result of a printer mishap.
Instead, they represent a deliberate departure from the title-chasing political undercurrents
that plague much of corporate
America.
“We have a check-your-ego-at-the-door, flat hierarchy here,”
Schwartz says.
That philosophy has paid off in
big results at the product development firm that Schwartz co-founded in 1995, as revenue has
jumped from $8 million in 2004
to more than $13 million in 2007.
Smart Business spoke with
Schwartz about how to promote
a flat structure by rotating roles
without sacrificing the talents of
natural-born leaders.
Q. How do you gain trust?
One way that people trust
you more is when you don’t
wear your title on a sleeve.
We don’t have titles on our
business cards.
You asked me what my official
title was, and I told you, but I
don’t have that on my business
card. We try to keep everything
on a level playing field.
Q. How do you maintain
a flat hierarchy when certain
employees are leading
projects?
The way you do that is to turn
over a lot of projects. You’re
going to find yourself the head
of one and the subordinate on
another. You quickly learn that what goes around comes
around just by the simple fact
that you’re going to get the
opportunity to lead, and you’re
going to have the opportunity to
be a team member. It just inherently builds in a structure of
fairness.
If you’re assigned this project,
you run it like a business. You
run it so it’s per the budget, per
the deliverables, per the quote.
You manage the customer relationship. You manage the
resources. You can be the head
of a project and have two years
of experience and be telling a
guy with 15 what to do.
You may have a team
that’s helping you, or you
may be doing the work
yourself. You’re not being
told what to do.
It’s great when the
employees feel a sense of
ownership in the company. It gives them a sense
of accomplishment and
puts a spring in their
step. It makes them
enjoy their job.