Q. How do you check
progress toward everyone’s
goals?
Every department reports on
their progress every Monday
morning against the goals for
the quarter and the year. It
tells you where we’re going,
and it gives you a chance to
reiterate your vision. On a regular basis, I have one of our
employees do a presentation
on one aspect of our business
and how our vision has affected that.
Lastly, we have customers
come in for best practices. They
come in quarterly and talk to
our whole group about what
Quest is doing right that helps
them and why it’s important.
We select people who give
feedback. It’s not because
they’re our biggest customers
but they are people who are
going to be honest with us.
Q. How do you handle that
feedback?
You have to be able to quantify, ‘Can we do it? Is it within
our skill sets to do it; is it within our infrastructure to be able
to accomplish it?’
If we can, we start putting a
strategy around how we implement it and what do we expect
at the finish. Then we find the
person who is probably the
most passionate about that project and put them in charge of it.
We had a customer request
for a product that we had to
go design, find the raw materials for, find a manufacturing
partner that could make it for
us, and make sure that they
can meet our quality standards
and meet our timetable.
When we took that project
on, I was first to say, ‘I don’t
think this is within our specifications of ability.’ But we had
somebody who was really passionate about doing this project. … Now, five years later, we
have two manufacturing partners who make it for us, and it
has become close to 15 percent of our total revenue.
If the upper management
doesn’t believe they have the
skill sets and nobody steps up,
you have to be honest with the
customer. You can’t be everything to everybody.
You may lose a customer
over that, but I’d rather keep a
good record with our customer performance and lose
them than have a bad record
and never get them back.
HOW TO REACH: Quest Environmental & Safety Products Inc., (317) 594-4500 or www.questsafety.com
