Q. Some people naturally make better leaders. Do you take that
into account when you
rotate and put different
people in charge?
What ends up happening is
that the guys that are the most
diverse, most experienced and
best leaders end up leading the
bigger projects. We might have
a project that’s $500,000 that will
tend to be one of those guys.
But then you’ll turn around and
have a $100,000 project that
someone else might lead, and
(the natural leader) will roll up
his sleeves and be helping out.
I feel like I have 50 years of
experience. That’s because
you’re doing stuff at such a rapid
pace so early, you’re really pushing your boundaries all the time.
You get exposed to so much.
Q. How do you hold employees accountable when they’re
leading a project?
You have to have some sort
of central, enterprisewide
tracking system. Everyone can
access it from anywhere: from
home, from a hotel room, from
wherever you are.
It’s not something that allows
us to micromanage someone.
They track themselves. In other
words, if someone is hanging
themselves and you’re giving
them too much rope, it becomes
obvious to everyone. It’s not,
‘You’re not being fair to me.
You’re not giving me big projects.’ You say, ‘No, it had
become obvious at this point
that maybe you can’t handle
those bigger projects, and
everyone’s on the same page.’
The measurement system is
so public that everyone will be
agreeing to it. It’s not unlike
someone batting third and realizing, ‘I’m only batting .225. I
should be moving down in the
order to bat eighth. I realize
that now.’
Q. How does such autonomy
benefit employees?
There’s the old saying, ‘Give
someone a lot of rope. They
can either do good things with
it or they can hang themselves.’ We inherently trust
that people are going to take
the ball and run with it and do
a good job. We have systems
in place to make sure that’s
happening, but then someone
doesn’t feel like they’re being
micromanaged.
When you trust someone,
people rise to the occasion to
live up to that trust. That’s
healthy.
A huge benefit is particularly
to the youngsters. There are
people with less experience.
They get a taste of running
something way before they
would ever even touch it at corporate America. When I was at
(another company), young guys
would come in and they would
work three, four, five years, and
they would be lucky if they
designed the case of a battery.
We’ve got guys here doing the
whole cell phone — not right
out of school, but pretty quickly
they’re doing stuff way beyond
their years.
HOW TO REACH: Product Development Technologies Inc., (312) 440-9404 or www.pdt.com