Technology
Lending an ear
How Lief Morin grows Key Information Systems Inc. through constant communication
By John Nank
Smart Business Los Angeles | April 2007
Lief Morin, president of Key
Information Systems Inc., has no
aspirations of growing his company into the next Google. Instead, Morin’s
goals are defined in the context of satisfaction for both clients and employees.
“I am not interested in building a $10-billion-a-year, bureaucratic, gargantuan
enterprise,” Morin says. “That’s not the
type of company I wish to lead. I am
interested in having a healthy, growing
company on an annual basis that people
enjoy working at.”
Although Morin places less priority on
developing massive profits than he does
on developing a positive work environment, financial success has followed for
the information technology (IT) solutions
provider, with 2005 revenue of about $60
million.
Smart Business spoke with Morin
about why communication must be constant to be successful and why it
requires listening as well as talking.
Q: How would you describe your leadership style?
I’m very flexible, and I try to communicate with as many of folks that work [for
Key Information Systems] as I can, as often
as I can. We work very collaboratively.
I’ve used this analogy before; in many
ways, it’s like a sports team. The coach
doesn’t rule, but he helps and he enables. I
like to look at our style of management as
being enablement for the people who are
out selling or doing the implementations
for our clients.
I look for things that improve their abilities to do business and, at the same time,
maintain our ability to understand what’s
going on in this business on a day-to-day
basis. If that has to do with administrative
process, if it has to do with supporting a
client request, if it has to do with supporting an engineer’s technical requirements,
that is what I look for on a day-to-day basis
from an enablement perspective.
Sometimes it means talking to the management team to give them thoughts and
ideas on how to improve a situation or to
support them with direction or guidance in
a particular area in order to enable them to
provide that support, as well.
Q: What is the danger in allowing communication to break down?
That danger is always present, it’s always
possible and it’s happened here. If you don’t
communicate, if you don’t try to convey the
message, if you don’t try to foster communications within the company, you end up with
segments of the company that are doing one
thing and another segment doing another
thing, and people end up off the same page.
If you’re talking about a group of people
at a party, that’s going to be what it is. If
you’re talking about supporting a client
with their mission-critical IT systems, that’s
not so good.
Q: How can a leader maintain open communication?
The vast majority of the communications we do is done through informal
conversations that take place among the
members of the company on a day-today basis. We do have management
meetings on a monthly basis and we
have companywide discussions on a
quarterly basis, but to me, those are
merely checkpoints.
They are points to make sure that
we’re all communicating for sure at one
point in one room, but really where the
work gets done is on a day-to-day basis,
having that interpersonal communication and strategy happening all the time.
If you wait a whole month or a whole
quarter to have those dialogues, you
could be missing a lot in that time frame.
Q: What advice do you have for a new CEO
hoping to grow a business?
For the new CEO that is looking to not
just grow their business but help find
ways to lead, my advice is to listen. That
is a leader’s most important quality,
though not one that all people share.
It means not only to listen to the people who are management but to listen to
the people who are also working under
them because you’ll get many different
viewpoints in the different departments
and the different people in the company.
You also have to listen to what the
industry is doing, whatever industry it
happens to be, because those folks can also provide you valuable insight into
what’s going on and how you should
position for the long-term growth of the
company. That’s the No. 1 skill. We’re not
always perfect at it, but if you work at it
and do it most of the time, you’re going
to be more successful than others who
listen to nothing and row their own way.
The road is littered with the bodies of
companies of folks who didn’t listen.
You have to act on what you hear, as
appropriate, but if you don’t even know
then you can’t act. You have to take that
first step of listening.
HOW TO REACH: Key Information Systems Inc., (818) 992-8950 or www.keyinfo.com
