Some CEOs prefer to get a
monthly, weekly or even
a daily report on their company’s finances.
But not Avi Crane. As
founder, president and CEO of
Prime Produce International
LLC, Crane wants to know
where every penny is, and he
wants to know it hourly.
“It takes a diligence on the
part of the owner and his
team to make sure nothing
gets lost in the cracks,”
Crane says. “When you’re
growing that fast, you can
easily lose control of your
cost and profitability.”
This constant communication has been one of the keys
to success for the avocado
distributor, which hit 2007
revenue of $16.6 million, up
730 percent over 2005.
Smart Business spoke
with Crane about how to foster open communication to
keep your business running
smoothly.
Q. How do you promote an
open culture?
I try as much as possible
not to be at my desk when
I’m in a meeting. I try not to
use my desk as a shield. I
just try to be very approachable and talk to people.
I try not to take phone calls
when I’m in a meeting. I’ve
learned that from my own
experience. When you walk
into your boss’s office, it’s
always scary, whether people
admit that or not. When the
person takes a phone call, it
just makes it worse. So I try to
give the people the respect
they deserve.
When you are managing a
company, you want your employees to tell you about
problems. That’s invaluable.
You can’t even measure. It’s
when you’re not informed
about problems and you learn
about them way too late that
they’ve done the damage.
Q. How do you encourage
employees to work together?
Have all the departments not
actually be departments. We all
work together. I like all my
people to work together, understand they are a team and discuss things, and never try to
work one against the
other. I worked at a company where that was the
corporate culture to have
every department working against the next
department.
The more you bring
your people together,
whether it’s just short
meetings or discussions,
the more comfortable
people feel with each
other.
