Business Services
Networking to the top
How to build a solid team
By Brian Horn
Smart Business Detroit | June 2008
Page 1 of 2
Tim Schriner
President and CEO, DANTOM Systems Inc.
Tim Schriner does the
reverse of micromanaging at DANTOM Systems Inc.
Instead of having his hands on
everything, he uses a collaborative leadership style as president and CEO of the print and
mail company. He stresses the
importance of hiring a solid
senior team, then trusts those
people to execute on the vision
he sets at DANTOM, which
posted 2007 revenue of
approximately $100 million and
employs more than 80 people.
To build a solid team, Schriner
uses the network he has built
over his 25-plus years in the
business. Schriner says it’s OK
to use resumes and head-hunters but having knowledge
of people through reference
before you even interview them
is beneficial in building an
organization. Your success rate
in hiring people you don’t know
is much smaller than hiring
employees that you have some
prior knowledge of, either
directly or through someone in
your network, he says.
Smart Business spoke with
Schriner about how you can
find the best employees
through networking and why it’s
a bad day when you don’t
acknowledge employee ideas.
Stay in touch with your network.It’s a dedicated time every
day, every week to be talking
to your network and staying
in touch. It’s easy to lose
touch, and it’s to your disadvantage to do that.
If I’m looking for a good
sales guy or a senior vice
president of sales, I may be
talking to my former senior
vice presidents because they
know how I work.
So it’s not necessarily that I
know them but there is a reference ability of someone
that I have trusted in my
past. That’s what I mean by
networking — having trusted
people out there that you
can call upon.
It’s a vast network, so I
trust my network. Resumes
are just so hard to evaluate
because everybody says they
do a great job. You’ve got to
have some reference ability,
and by and large, I would say
I’m in the 80 to 85 percent
hit range of hiring people
that are referenced from my
network as opposed to using
headhunters. And the good
ones, it’s still a 50-50 crap-shoot, if that high.
Build an environment where employees are comfortable coming to you.
You’ve got to make sure
ideas can flow up and even
create constructive criticism. Constructive criticism
is treated the same way as a
good idea, so that people
can feel comfortable in the
organization coming to you,
coming to anyone in the
company and saying, ‘This is
what I think we should be
doing.’
We reward our individuals
for ideas that are used to
benefit the company. There
is a financial/monetary reward. That’s one way we
got the whole thing started
here just to get the ball
rolling.
Part of what we do is go
through publicly and recognize people. Recognition is
key. Bring up, ‘Here’s what
Johnny did today, or Susie
did it. Here’s the idea they
were using, here’s how we’re
going to do it,’ and have
them stand up and get
applause.
Incentive is great, but the
recognition, I find, people
want the most. Once they
start feeling that their ideas
are being recognized and used
and they’re getting recognized
for it, that’s what really starts
the ball rolling. Once you start
creating that kind of an environment, it’s just natural. It happens every day.
When I walk through the
facility every day, people are
saying, ‘Hey, did you know
this?’ Ideas just start flowing,
and people feel comfortable
talking to anyone, whether
it’s myself, anyone in management, as opposed to just
doing what they do every
day and just staying within
themselves. You’ve really got
to create an environment
where people really see the
benefit. Honestly, the best
ideas come from the people
that are closest to our customers and execution of our
daily tasks.
I can’t tell you, in a year’s
time, in our monthly meetings, the increased amount of
ideas people are generating.
