Tom Willis is sick of chasing the market.
For nearly two years, it has pulled him up and down and down and out. And, frankly, he’s tired of it. He’s sick of running a race that he’s not winning.
In the last 10 months, proper support and execution have helped him make strides to keep closer to market pace. But now he’s dropping the conservative approach.
It’s time to take the lead.
“I think the market is going to continue to improve,” he says. “At least that’s my hope the deeper we get into the year, so I don’t want to continuously be chasing it.”
The questions that Willis is asking — and you probably are, as well — are how do you understand the speed of the market in an uncertain economy, and how much risk do you take on that one move that will put you a step ahead? Unless your company was an anomaly, untouched by the economic downturn, looking at last year’s numbers probably isn’t going to be a good indication for forecasting.
Also, how do you get your employees to react to growth mode? For two years, Willis, president of Matco Tools, a division of Danaher Corp., has been talking to his 500 employees about budget cuts, layoffs and cautious business approaches. Now he’s reversing his message. He wants employees to use aggression and share ideas to grow the $300 million automotive equipment and tool company.
“The things I’m spending most of my time thinking about here is, how do we start to get ahead of this growth?” Willis says. “How do I get a lot of help around here thinking about that? Because I don’t have the best ideas I need everybody thinking about that, from forecasting, to taking risks, to what’s the downside, to what are the upside opportunities, to what’s really happening in the market. Those are all things in the next three to six months I think we’ll all be questioning.”
