Consumer Products
Owning up to it
How Alfred N. Basilicato turned Numonics Corp. around by showing that it’s OK to admit mistakes
By Brian Horn
Smart Business Philadelphia | December 2007
When Alfred N. Basilicato took
over at Numonics Corp. in the
early 1990s, the company was in trouble. To help turn things around at
the peripherals manufacturer, Basilicato
established his vision, then communicated it to his employees and empowered
them to act on it.
“You can have meetings and say, ‘This
is what we are going to do,’ but it has to
be articulated clearly,” says the
chairman and CEO of Numonics,
which employs about 50 people.
“It’s amazing what average people
can do when they are put in an
environment where they are valued, encouraged and where they
are challenged.”
After you’ve established that culture, you have to lead by example,
Basilicato says, because employees need to see you are dedicated
to your mission.
Smart Business spoke with
Basilicato about how he got
employees to buy in to his vision
to turn Numonics around.
Q:How did you get employees to buy
in to your vision for the company?
I hired a third-party firm to do
an employee survey. I didn’t
really know where all the problems were, and how are you
going to find out?
Managing by walking around
is great, and I do that, but, at that
point, we had almost 100 people. How do you find out where
all the issues are?
I read all the reports, and I was able to
get a handle on what lots of the problems
were that I would have taken virtually a
lifetime to figure out. Then, I began to
address them one at a time.
I articulated a vision for the company. I
said, ‘OK, here are all the issues. These
are not my issues, these are yours.’ I put
them up [on] a big board at a company
meeting and said, ‘This is what you said
was wrong with this company. Let’s
work on fixing those together and, in the
meantime, here is where I am going to take you, here’s what we are going to do
to turn this business around.’
The company was unprofitable, we had
a lot of debt, and just creating financial
stability was a major issue. We had a
couple million dollars to pay off when
we bought the company because we had
to pay the bank off. So, that was a big,
big deal.
I hired professionals to come in and
help me identify what the issues were
from the employees’ point of view, and
then I created a vision for the direction
of the company based on new products
and new markets.
Q: How do you establish an environment
where employees are willing to let down
their guard and be honest with you?
It starts at the top. Whoever is running
the business has to make it clear to everybody that this is not a company
that will be run by fear.
We are here to collaborate, and if we
have an issue or problem, we need to
solve it together. That’s a message the
CEO, or whoever is running the company, has to deliver, first of all to their staff
managers, and I think you have to deliver that yourself right on down to the
receptionist and the guy who packs the
boxes going out the door. They have to
hear that from you.
Then, you have to live it and
have to make sure the supervisors and the managers in place
all understand that, that is a philosophy you believe in, and you
will not stand for anybody stepping out of that line.
Q: How do you convince people it’s
OK to ask for help?
In the previous regime that was
here, no one would ever ask for
help because they didn’t want to
admit they didn’t know how to do
something.
So, I came in and said, ‘We have
20 years’ background in sales and
marketing and finance. I don’t have
any problem picking up a phone
and calling a marketing consulting
firm to come in and look at my marketing plan and help me understand
what I’ve done right or what I’ve
done wrong. So, if we have an engineering problem, you need to get
help. You can’t solve it all by yourself.’
You instill in your people the point
that it’s OK to say, ‘I don’t know,’ and it’s
OK to ask for help. As a matter of fact,
the only thing that’s not OK is not to do
that. That should filter down to everybody. It’s part of an education process
that I think we did really well here. When
teams get together and they have a problem and they can’t figure it out, their attitude today is, ‘Well listen, what resource
can we go to?’
HOW TO REACH: Numonics Corp., (800) 523-6716 or
www.numonics.com
