Build a group of leadership resources. I go to a leadership conference every year in New York City, and the person that puts it on came up with this acronym, DDMS — dysfunctional decision-making syndrome. His comment to all the CEOs was [that] you need to make decisions, you need to attack the issues and not to be careless, but sitting back and not addressing an issue is detrimental to your business. You need to put your group together, and you need to attack and evolve as quickly as you can.
The first thing is the CEO leadership team. They’re my resources, and we’re all peers when we’re in there. We meet six times per year, and it really helps us, me, to deal with the issues.
There are about eight of us on it, and just having the two-way trust allows you to sit there and effectively battle the issues and come out with a resolution. You have to trust someone enough that you can constructively say what you need to say and they can say the same thing back to you.
We have a board of directors that really focuses on the big decisions. What I needed was more of a boots-on-the-ground-type group, so our COO is on it and our CFO, so that takes care of pretty much all of our operations. Our founder is on it, and then our director of development. And then we have four markets that we’re in, and each one of those market leaders is on my team also.
Fully explain your direction. At a minimum, I do two town meetings a year, one in February (and) one in July, and they focus on the previous year’s performance and where we’re going in the future. With the economy being so tough the last 18 months, I do a lot of communications every month or so to let employees know how we’re combating the economy.
It gets back to being able to trust the help around you. … It’s just like being in front of a client; it’s important to be in front of the employees so they feel you’re connected with them.
Some of the cost-cutting measures that we’ve done have not affected the employees. We’ve not reduced health benefits or 401(k)s, salaries, so being able to not change their life while we’re going through this time. But it’s telling them things that are going to happen: We’re going to reduce our marketing, and we’re going to change things that may not impact them directly … but if they see it, they’re wondering if they are next. What’s really important is they’re keeping real busy bringing in work. As long as people are busy they feel secure. It’s when they’re sitting around thinking about, ‘Well, what am I working on now?’ that they get worried.
How to reach: Hull & Associates Inc., (614) 793-8777 or www.hullinc.com
