Human Resources
Growing pains
How George Bushong pushed his employees to the limit in order to grow Administrative Concepts Corp.
By Brian Horn
Smart Business Tampa Bay | December 2007
When a major workers’ compensation insurance provider pulled
out of Florida, George Bushong made some shrewd moves to protect his professional employer organization, Administrative
Concepts Corp., from going out of business
In fact, the moves paid off so well, they created a whole different
kind of problem — astronomical growth.
Because so many PEOs closed in Florida after the loss of workers’ compensation insurance, ACC gained customers from the
companies that shut down.
From 2001 to 2002, ACC grew from $54 million to $104 million in
revenue, then climbed to $128 million in 2003 and $176 million in
2004.
“That put a tremendous amount of pressure on us internally,”
says Bushong, who serves as chairman. “We were in chaos for a
couple of months. We had a tremendous amount of growth in a
just a short period of time. Quite frankly, we didn’t handle it well.
“We did the best we could, and we tried to keep the service level
as high as we could keep it, but we were falling short in a number
of areas. There was a wealth of people that had worked in leasing
companies who were now out of business, and we were able to
pick up some of those people and it started to ease the pain.”
Now at more than $300 million, Bushong says the company’s
growth would have stalled long ago without delegating responsibilities and building a culture of communication.
Here’s how Bushong distributed power and used an open culture
to manage his high-growth company.
Let go
In order to grow the company to $100 million, Bushong knew he
would have to delegate some of his responsibilities.
“That becomes obvious as you reach that level,” he says. “You
cannot possibly be hands-on in every area of the company like
my wife [Sarah Peel, who serves as president] and I were the
first three or four years.”
Bushong said there wasn’t an exact moment when he realized he
needed to delegate more, but he started to notice he and two other
vital employees became overwhelmed with the daily operations
and began to see the need for help.
“There was the three of us all shell-shocked working 12 to 14
hours a day, and we were desperately looking for people to fill
some of these positions,” he says.
Bushong said he knew whom he could trust to delegate to
through trial and error. He would delegate a number of responsibilities and see how much the person could handle. Those that
could handle a heavy workload showed they bought in to the company’s growth strategy, allowing the employee to move up the
ranks.
“You have to allow people to do as much as they can do,” he says.
“I think that the perfect scenario is, if you are overwhelmed, is to
overwhelm somebody else, and then sort out what you have to
take away from them to make it bearable.
“That scenario can create a little bit of confusion for a few weeks,
but it also gives a person a good idea of what they can do if they
have to. It gives you an idea of just how far that person can go and
what it is going to take to get them to the next step.”
While Bushong believes in pushing great workers to the limit
to see what they are made of, it’s important that you keep an eye on them to know when they’ve become overwhelmed.
“Really good people will overwhelm themselves if you turn them
loose on a job because they want to do as much as they can to
keep pushing themselves,” he says.
“I happen to be from Kentucky, so I know about horses. A thor-oughbred — the reason it is a thoroughbred is because it will literally run itself to death. If those tracks were 10 miles instead of
one and a quarter, all horses would be dead by the time the race
is over.
“The thoroughbred human being will also run itself to the edge.
It is up to a manager to be able to pull it back before the heart
attack or nervous breakdown. But also, let a person expend themselves to the point where they realize what they can do.”
Bushong allowed the maximum amount of leeway he could
when it came to employee mistakes during growth, realizing errors
might occur on a more consistent basis when a person’s workload
increased from newly delegated responsibilities. In addition, it’s
hard to find experienced employees in his industry.
“If somebody has been with you a couple of years, we would go
way over the line, be it personal problems, absenteeism, whatever the problem might be, we would go way, way over the line,” he
says. “But, there was a line that it just could not continue. But we
were not quick to get rid of people, nor are we today.”
Bushong says if he didn’t delegate responsibilities, the company
would have stalled way short of its potential.
“We would have been stuck at $50 million or $60 million and,
every time we grew above that, if I was still doing everything
myself, we would lose customers off the end because of the service model,” he says. “It certainly wouldn’t be anything like it was
today. I don’t think we would have gone much past where we were
at $50 million or $60 million dollars.”
Walk, talk and listen
Because Bushong pushed employees to their limits, it was important he established a culture where workers could communicate if
they became overwhelmed.
“The people that failed here were the people who wouldn’t ask
for help,” he says. “They became overwhelmed and tried to hide
the overwhelmed mistake and would not ask for help. It gets to the
point where a person just walks out the door, and they don’t want
to talk to you again because they don’t want to face you with some
of the mistakes they have been making. There was always the
opportunity to say, ‘I need help.’”
To build a culture where employees communicate with management, you need to keep in touch with employees by walking
around and asking questions.
“I am, by nature, a communicator,” he says. “Some managers are
not. If a person is not, it is difficult to breed the kind of culture we
have here. It is painful for some people to just stop and say, ‘Hello’
to an employee they don’t know well. You get friends in the company, but a lot of times the management is so aloof that the people,
the ground troops if you will, that make the business run are so
intimidated it is hard to develop any kind of rapport.
“I’ve also made myself available and was willing to hire any kind
of help that was needed. I was willing to take work off people and
place it other places. But it was up to the employee to communicate.”
To maximize the benefits of communication, you can’t simply be
seen around the office asking questions, but you must actually listen to the answers.
“Our office for years and years was casual,” he says. “I still like to
think it is, and I still know everyone in the building. I am not above
walking back to our payroll department and seeing a girl that looks
like she is wired up and asking her, ‘You look like you are overwhelmed, are you having a bad day?’ It may be something personal, and they will talk to you about that, and that’s fine. Or, it may be
something that has to do with work and something we want to
hear. It’s all about communication.”
Proving to employees you are listening will also establish a flexible company that can drive change as well as help retain employees by allowing them to advance in the organization.
For example, if an employee in the payroll department wanted to move into the finance department because he or she felt
his or her skills were a better fit there, then the employee
knows, because of the culture, that it is an option.
“People here understood we were quick to listen to them
about moving,” he says. “There has been a lot of shuffling.
People here are comfortable with the idea that could happen
and people need to broach it if they are interested, or we would
broach it if we thought the skill set would fit someplace better.”
Bushong says any time you have communication, it is going
to benefit growth. “Everything that builds morale and makes
people feel comfortable in that company contributes to
growth,” he says. “More importantly, it contributes to a company I like to be in. I love to walk through this company and
say ‘hi’ to every person in it.”
The open communication and the company’s environment
have set Bushong up for the future. He recently hired Teresa
Dick as CEO, which he called his single greatest act of delegation. Bushong says the two will have their differences, but he
is going to get out of the way and let her do her job. Dick says
she sees great potential for growth because of the foundation
already in place at the company.
“The culture that George and Sarah built where there was
open communication, and everyone did believe they had to be
a voice to make us successful is just a reality,” Dick says. “What
I wanted to do when I first came in was to fine-tune what
George and Sarah put in place. Everyone was motivated, had a
heightened sense of excitement and wanted the company to
grow, but there was a need for structure, as far as consistency,
processes and policies to look long term.
“We have the intent to grow, but we needed to take a deep
breath and make sure the foundation was very firm so that,
when we start with the aggressive growth that we want, as we
grow into new markets, we are ready for the growth. That’s
where a lot of PEOs have made the mistake — they want to
grow too fast and haven’t stopped to make sure they can.”
While ACC may be taking a breath, Bushong says he sees
plenty of growth ahead using the basic tools and methods that
drove the company to where it is today.
“This is a billion-dollar company waiting to happen, and we
have a five-year plan to do that,” he says.
HOW TO REACH: Administrative Concepts Corp., (941) 744-1317 or www.accpeo.com
