Fast Lane

Thinking things through

Randy Wilhelm: Co-founder and CEO, Thinkronize Inc.

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After an employee survey showed that some of his 65 employees at

Thinkronize Inc. wanted more communication, Randy Wilhelm looked to the past to fix the problem. When the company — a digital deliverer of K-12 educational content — was smaller, Wilhelm would order pizza for his employees, and they would talk about what was happening at the company.

But as Thinkronize grew, the co-founder and CEO got away from that method of communication. However, when the survey showed that move had been a mistake, the pizza deliveries returned.

“My statement to the group, to my leader team, was, ‘For us, right or wrong, pizza is comfort food,’” says Wilhelm, who led the company to fiscal 2007 revenue of about $10 million.

Smart Business spoke with Wilhelm about how to paint your vision and how to communicate it so that everyone understands.

Q. What are the keys to being a good leader?

The way I define whether you’re a good leader is whether people are following.

It’s really creating an environment where people are drawn to it almost magnetically. Then they’re drawn to where you are going. For me, what it really comes down to are a couple of factors.

We’ll call it vision and communication. In order to be able to lead effectively, you’ve got to be able to communicate where you’re going. I’m talking about painting a vision that the team can see themselves participating in because if they can’t see themselves inside that environment, they’re going to be reticent to go there.

When you’re painting, we just remind them that it might look big, and it might look difficult, yet it’s very attainable. When I am talking about vision to people, I am always painting the picture and drawing mental images for them of what it’s going to look like when we get there.

That helps people draw themselves toward following that vision. For me, good leaders are really good communicators.

Help people see themselves in that place and help people understand that as you go along that path toward getting to that vision, you are going to have rocky roads and sometimes you are going to have to deliver bad news. If I can share to them the ‘why’ that’s behind the ‘what’ — the ‘what’ is the bad news. But, if I share the ‘why’ behind that and help them see how they fit into that, they can remain productive and comfortable.

Q. How to you paint that vision so that all of your employees understand it?

Vision has to be something that is visible and real. We’ve boiled our vision down to some core four- or five-word phrases, and we have them up in the office so everyone can see them. They see them when we walk through the doors, first thing in the morning, and it just reminds them of why we are here.

We do hold quarterly meetings for the team, where we go off-site, and any question can be asked of the leadership. All the information is shared, good news and bad news. We are a very open organization with our data.

Now, they don’t know everything, that’s obvious.

But, being open and having them feel part of the process is really critical. I think the good leaders and leader teams really just use those messages to motivate people to achieve things.

(The vision) needs to be repeated often and regularly. These are no-brainers. It has to be communicated regularly through a variety of different vehicles. If you, as a leader, are living that yourself and are consistent with that, people are drawn to that by your integrity to that vision. So it creates a magnetic draw because it’s always there.

Q. What is a pitfall to avoid in business?

I think the thing that hurts organizations or the thing that hurts leaders is when you don’t have people’s trust, and you can lose people’s trust a variety of ways. For instance, a way that you can lose credibility very quickly is when an employee comes to you and says, ‘I need to have a conversation with you about so and so, but you can’t tell them that I talked to you about it.’

In essence, I, as a leader, have been neutered and marginalized by that employee.

So, you’ve got to know that that’s not the kind of environment that we have here. I can’t accept that. If you want to tell me something, know that, if it’s important, it’s going to be communicated to the right people.

If you don’t want to tell me, don’t. But you don’t give someone the right to marginalize your leadership — and people do this all the time. It’s a way that they gain a little power.

HOW TO REACH: Thinkronize Inc., (513) 731-4090 or www.thinkronize.com