Change Management
The fantastic four
How Martin Hiller is taking The Hiller Group to the next level by using four guiding principles instead of a mission statement
By Brian Horn
Smart Business Tampa Bay | September 2008
Page 1 of 4
It may have happened about 15 years ago, but Martin Hiller
tells it like it happened yesterday.
He was on a plane with a man who was, at the time, a CEO of
a major grocery chain.
Hiller wanted to know why the CEO’s grocery store was better than other stores in which Hiller had shopped.
The CEO didn’t just give Hiller some stock answer; he illustrated it: “At that other store, that brand X you’re talking about,
they tell their employees that they’re going to paint by numbers. You’re going to put paint A in this box, B in this box, C in
this box.’”
The CEO explained that while that method would guarantee
you get a picture every time, it didn’t leave any room for greatness.
The CEO told Hiller: “You’re never going to get a masterpiece. At
our company, we believe in giving the team members the paint, the
brush, the easel and the platform to create masterpieces. We get a
lot of really bad pictures. But, it’s worth it for the couple of masterpieces.”
After hearing that, Hiller, now president of The Hiller Group Inc.,
a provider of branded general aviation fuels and specialty carbon
products, decided that’s how he wanted to lead his company. He
wanted to empower employees to make decision and create an
environment where employees are free to come forward with
ideas.
“It was like, yeah, that’s the kind of company I want to have,”
Hiller says. “I don’t want to have one that people feel like they’re
robots doing monotonous jobs where no one cares.”
As a result, he built a company with an open culture that was
mission- and vision-driven to maximize growth, and it worked well
through the years, including recently. Revenue increased from
$135.3 million in 2006 to $157.4 million in 2007.
But earlier this year, Hiller decided to make a change. Being mission- and vision-driven was working fine, but it was time to take
the company to the next level. So he changed The Hiller Group to
be driven by four guiding principles.
“I don’t think we were broke before,” he says. “I thought it was
working well. It was just wanting to raise the bar of expectations.
By having four easily understood and deployable concepts, if you
will, or guiding principles, it became one where everyone would
rally around it. There wasn’t tension, and concern and stress about,
‘Jeez, next time I’m down and Marty’s in my office, do I have to
repeat my mission statement?’”
