Losing a third of your business usually means you’re
in for a bad year. For Kathy Adams, president and CEO of
MTI Whirlpools, it meant that it
was time to go get some new
business.
“When we realized we were
going to lose our sink business
to the home centers, we thought,
‘OK, we’re great at building tubs
and whirlpools and being innovative; how can we take advantage of that?’” Adams says.
But while MTI had been busy
churning out sinks, the company’s core business had languished. Adams decided to re-focus MTI on whirlpools and
hot tubs, a decision that led the
175-employee company to 2007
revenue of $28.5 million.
Smart Business spoke with
Adams about how to keep your
employees focused during difficult times and how to take
advantage of a trend.
Q. How do you prepare your
employees for a big change?
If bad economic times come,
it’s very important that you’ve
prepared in advance. What I try
to do is talk to the employees.
Ask them, ‘What do you do in
those times that are just crazy
busy? What are the dangers of
those crazy busy times? Maybe
you’re getting grumpy with your
fellow employees because
you’re overworked. How do you
deal with that? Also, what are
the dangers of the slow times?
What are some things we can
do in the slow times so we can
be prepared?’
We have a list of things we do
in slow periods and for crazy,
busy periods. Then we implement those plans.
For instance, even if our order entry department has no orders
to take, they can focus on going
to our competitors’ Web site and
learning more about our competitors or reading about trends in
other industries and seeing if we
can apply them to our industry.
So, keeping everybody
focused on something is just
absolutely necessary. Then they
get a good sense of what they’re
accomplishing.
Q. What is the danger of losing focus?
You’re lost if you lose
focus. Your employees
lose their sense of accomplishment. A lot of
Americans think that
work is a bad thing, when
really work is a blessing.
As a leader, you try to
see that young people get
some experience so they
get a sense of satisfaction
for a job well done. If
you’re able to achieve
that, then work doesn’t
really feel like work.
If they’re coming to
work and they really
don’t have anything to do,
then they’re not going to
get a sense of satisfaction. They’re going to
start hearing about recessions, they’re going to start
believing that their job is going
away — it’s just unhealthy.
So if you can keep them
focused on some worthwhile
work — sometimes it’s a challenge to come up with those
things, but we do.