Smart Leaders

Over the last few years, The Chilcote Co. has grown to just under $51 million in revenue, and President David Chilcote says if that is going to continue, changes needed to be made. So, he and his management team made every location’s computer systems uniform and upgraded software to get more customer and sales data, allowing them to quickly make informed decisions for the company’s brands, primarily products in the professional photography field. It hasn’t been an easy process, requiring a lot of communication with employees and empowering them to be actively involved in the changes. Smart Business spoke with Chilcote about how viewing his staff on a bell-shaped curve helps him get employee get buy-in.

Close the communication loop. The keys are being visible and active communication. We try to get to all the locations on a regular basis and stay in touch. A lot of strategies and policies and communication emanate here from Cleveland, and it’s important to have others in other geographic locations feel a part of the organization. And one of the easy ways is by being present physically in the other locations.

If I go down to Kentucky and don’t pay attention to our service people in Kentucky who are out on the phone every day with customers, then I’m doing them a disservice, and I’m doing our customers a disservice.

Obviously you can’t be everything to everyone. It starts with communication. Then the next step is trying to assess a process or a product and then closing the loop in terms of giving feedback to the people that open the communication initially, so they feel comfortable continuing to be open with their communication.

They may not like the result. They may have a customer who has a need for a specific product and wants this product in our line ... but if we don’t really see an overwhelming need for a particular product, then we have to close the loop and go back to the customer service representative and the customer and say, ‘We appreciate the feedback, but it’s not something we feel we can do cost-effectively at this time based on our research. We’ll keep it in the queue.’

The point is, communication is a two-way street, and it’s important to close the loop. Don’t just let communication hang out there without a response, or it will dry up.

Use the best to get buy-in. You need to prepare people [for change]. That’s an ongoing communication effort. A lot of our communication methodology stems from being an ESOP company.

Back in the early days, we put our ESOP in place, and were having some troubles in having people grasping the concept and taking responsibility for their jobs and futures. I won’t claim authorship for this — this person told me you have to view your people as a bell-shaped curve.

On the leading edge of that curve, you have people that get it — they understand what ESOP is all about, and they understand how important it is to do their jobs effectively and what it ultimately means to them for the company to be successful and what it means to their individual success long-term. Then you’ve got the top of the curve, and you’ve got all these people that are trying to understand it and trying to do their jobs and not completely sure what it’s all about and what it all means.

Then at the trailing end of the curve, you get the people that don’t get it, refuse to get it and don’t want to get it. It’s just their personality and their makeup.

Ultimately, people who don’t get it and don’t want to get it, you need to politely suggest that those people find other employment where they might be happier. More critical than that, don’t spend anytime on that trailing end of the bell-curve in terms of trying to convince those people.

Spend the bulk of your time, energy and effort on the leading edge of the curve. Enable them to become ambassadors and to pull that whole curve forward. All those people at the top of the bell-curve, they see the time, energy and effort that’s being expended on those leaders in the organization that get it, and naturally, it makes them want to move forward in the curve to get some time, energy and attention.

To the extent that you spend all your time, energy and attention on that trailing edge of the curve, the people at the top of the curve say, ‘Hey, look at all the attention these people are getting, maybe I need to go backward and fall backward in order to get time, energy and attention,’ and obviously that’s not the direction we want to take the organization. We want to take the organization forward.

Empower the best people. Listen to them and get them involved in a lot of different aspects of the organization — be it education efforts, if they have product ideas, if they’ve got equipment ideas — you get them involved in committees to help evaluate and study the viability of a new piece of equipment or a new product.

Empower them to make decisions that they think are in the best interest of the organization and in the best interest of them in terms of doing their jobs or managing their particular department, branchor division.

Give them the reins and say, ‘OK, you feel strongly about this. I’ll support you. Let’s go ahead and buy this piece of equipment, and let’s make it work.’

If it doesn’t work, don’t chastise somebody for making a decision. Chalk it up to experience, and try to understand what caused it not to work and how can we improve on that the next time.

The last thing I ever want to do is to criticize somebody for making a decision and trying to implement that decision because they are embracing change and trying to further the organization for the better. We’ve made plenty of decisions that haven’t worked out, and we’ll do so in the future.

Hopefully, each time we make a wrong decision, we’ll learn from it and be able to apply what we learn the next time we go through the process.

This article was published in the March 2007 issue of Smart Business Magazine