Health & Medical
A motivating environment
How Tony Koblish builds culture at Orthovita Inc.
By Brian Horn
Smart Business Philadelphia | January 2008
When asked about his company’s
culture, Tony Koblish is quick to
point to his driven employees who are thriving in a growing environment.
“Everyone is highly motivated,” says
the president and CEO of Orthovita Inc.,
a spine/orthopedic surgical biomaterials
company that posted 2006 revenue of
$46.8 million. “We are in a development
stage company that is rapidly growing.
We’re working toward an exciting
set of goals and rapid growth. It’s
definitely the type of high-energy,
young, spirited company that people are highly motivated and
working hard, and everybody
feels like they have a stake in the
future and contribute.”
Smart Business spoke with
Koblish about how he creates a
corporate culture that helps
everyone succeed.
Q: How do you build a culture that
motivates employees and encourages success?
I think it comes down to the
internal feelings. All of the putting greens and all that kind of
stuff is nice to have, and you
can do some of that stuff. We
happen not to do any of that.
What we would rather do is
have social events for the
employees. Go to a Flyers game,
for example. Send employees
that have earned it to an Eagles
game. Things like that, that are
more team-building and group
activities.
But, at the end of the day, the employees
have to feel that they are part of a serious
organization that is driven and is driven
to succeed, and I think everybody gets
that feeling, especially when the success
starts to come and the message works.
Q: How has going to Eagles and Flyers
games helped the company?
We have very high expectations. And
it’s important to be able to create
rewards because we do have such high
expectations, and the pressure can be
tremendous.
We like to put people together in
a fun, social setting. Everyone loves
Philadelphia sports. We’ve had great success in renting a box seat at the Flyers
and bringing the employees together.
They can eat some food, have a couple of
beers and watch the game. It creates a
good, positive social atmosphere, and I
think it is a release for the pressure of our
high expectations, day in and day out.
And often, we have them bring a
spouse or one of their kids, and it sort of
brings people closer together. It’s important. We don’t do it all the time. It’s not
like we are doing it every week. We’ll do
it once or twice a year.
Q: How do you deal with underperformers?
If you have somebody who is very weak
on the team, the people that are working
side by side with them tend to know that
this person is weak, and it creates more
pressure and stress for everyone else to
pick up the slack. If you are very consistent in measuring people’s performance, and
if they don’t measure up and you terminate or get rid of the weaker player, there
is a lot more respect for the organization
from the people that are doing the work
when you bring in somebody new who
can contribute.
Employees can get demoralized if they
all get paid the same or they all get the
same bonus, and five people are killing
themselves and performing at a high
level and that sixth person is just
being pulled along or not working
very hard. If you reward those
who work and weed out the bottom 10 or the bottom that don’t
perform, as long as you do it in a
consistent, nonarbitrary, fair way,
I think that strengthens the organization over time in a big way.
Q: How do you know during an interview if a prospective employee is just
telling you what you want to hear?
A lot of times, you don’t. You have
to do your research, and you have
to do your due diligence. You can
spend as much time as you want
with the employee, and for a high-level position, we will certainly have
them interview with many, many
people within the company.
We will spend time with them
socially over dinner multiple times.
We’ll try to get the best view of this
person that we can. But, at the end of
the day, a lot of times when your
employee starts, you don’t really
know what you have until you get into
it down the line.
In some instances, in some positions,
particularly in our sales force, we implement a psychological profile, testing
called the Predictive Index, where we
try to hire characteristics and traits we
know will be successful for a particular
type of position. So, we are able to create a database of all the characteristics
and traits of the type of person that has
been successful in this particular type of
job before, and we can match the interviewee’s profile against what we know
to be successful.
HOW TO REACH: Orthovita Inc., (610) 640-1775 or
www.orthovitaportal.com
