Tom Hirons has learned a lot more teaching than he ever did as a student. Hirons, president, chief communications officer and CEO of
Hirons & Co. Communications Inc., teaches a course at Indiana University and the main thing he’s noticed is that teaching material
requires a certain mastery that you just don’t get when you’re studying it. Taking that philosophy to his advertising and public relations
company, Hirons realized that he could improve his staff by placing experienced employees in a teaching role for the younger work force.
The process has been a boon to both sets of employees and a big part of Hirons & Co.’s success with its 72 employees. Smart Business
spoke with Hirons about the advantages of a transparent company and why it’s important to mix experience levels.
Mix and match experience. We are at our
best when we have diversity in our work
force, in particular, a diversity of experience. So we pair individuals well into their
careers as mentors with new hires who are
starting their careers. We see two things
happen: good progress for those starting
their careers and cost-efficiency with the
performance of the blended group.
It helps in a couple of ways for the senior.
One is, as a teacher, you develop a mastery
of the subject matter in a way that you
never could or would as a student. The
demands to be prepared to lead and to
teach are really an extraordinary professional development opportunity, so we’re
seeing a level of mastery in subject matter
among our senior people because their
expectations of those they are mentoring is
so high.
The junior person is getting a good chance
to see where they can go in their career. The
difference between the two may only be five
years, but they develop so quickly in their
careers that they are seeing a peer with
intense experience and savvy, and for someone just coming out of college, that can be
both inspiring and very humbling.
Let employees know what’s going on. We
run a totally transparent company and give a
monthly report to all staff on all of our metrics — financial and performance. On a quarterly basis, we lay those metrics against our
five-year plan to show progress.
That allows individuals to self-manage their
performance against company goals. It’s really been interesting to watch because senior
employees with experience at other companies have blossomed under this open management system, where before they were
shut out as to the company goals. It’s been
extraordinarily empowering.
For our new people, who’ve never worked
anywhere else, it’s helping them understand
what’s going on and progress much faster in
their careers. It’s worked differently depending on where you are with your career, but
it’s all been very positive. For all the years
we held on to that information dearly, I
regret it.
Know whom you want to hire. From a hiring
perspective, if there is one thing that we look
out for, it’s a know-it-all, because there is so
much to know. We are quick to identify
know-it-alls and dismiss them. We are committed to lifelong learning, and if you are not
curious and inquisitive and dissatisfied with
your own knowledge, you can never keep up.
We’re very honest and hope that individuals
self-select. We tell people, both on our Web
site and in interviews, that there are much
easier places to work and this is not a fit for
everyone. We communicate the expectations. By being honest about our culture and
the level of performance that’s expected, it
really does allow individuals to figure out if
that’s a fit for them. They’re going to know
themselves better than we ever will.
So our recruiting is toxic. What we find is
that the individuals who are attracted to that
are extraordinary performers.
Give employees a chance to push each
other. We have individuals maintain portfolios, and those are critiqued by their peers,
and then peers are involved in the assignment of projects and the formation of teams.
This forces individuals to be entrepreneurial
within the organization, and it makes their
internal performance really matter because if
those slip, they’re quickly without work to do.
Now, our role as managers is to help those
individuals develop their talents and market
them internally and match them with others
who are going to be in high-performing teams. I don’t want to suggest that the culture is brutal or negative, it truly makes for a
culture of success.
We work with very motivated and very
bright people, and if they have had a negative
critique, generally we find they are way
ahead of us in finding out why that happened
and what they need to do about it. As management, typically our most successful tactic
is to let them verbalize that and see that they
work through an action plan to fix it.
Just letting them know that we care about
their success, and we take the time to support
them, is more effective than trying to solve it for
them. Then we make sure they get right back
on the horse by making a team assignment.
It’s critically important for the individual,
but it’s also a demand of the business. We
cannot carry individuals who are not valued
by clients or peers.
Listen to your employees; they have the
answer. Part of communication is the ability
and willingness to listen. It’s not just empowering to the individuals, it’s also empowering
to the organization. If you’re not willing to
listen to your own staff, communication
becomes one-sided with nothing but pronouncements from management.
There’s an issue of empowerment there,
but, more importantly, you’re dealing with
the presumption that management knows
what’s going on. The individuals who are on
the front line have a very different perspective and, frankly, much more of the critical
knowledge about production and customer
relationships, and they are willing to share
that if we just ask.
And asking not only informs management,
but in the spirit of a Socratic method of teaching, it forces engagement with the staff. By
asking the right questions, we do more to see
that the staff is focused on the right issues
than we ever would by telling them to focus
on those issues. Individuals are extraordinarily responsive to you taking time to understand their needs and their objectives professionally, and then they will want to achieve
your objectives professionally.
HOW TO REACH: Hirons & Co. Communications Inc., (317)
977-2206 or www.hirons.com