Real Estate and Construction
Planning ahead
How to get employees to buy into your plan
By Matt McClellan
Smart Business St. Louis | October 2008
Page 1 of 2
Michael Zambrana
founder, president and CEO, Pangea Group
You won’t ever see Michael
Zambrana flying by the
seat of his pants.
For the founder, president and
CEO of Pangea Inc., an environmental remediation and construction company that does
business as Pangea Group,
effective leadership always
starts with a plan.
“Obviously, developing a plan
gets people focused,” he says.
“Then, communicating that
plan, getting buy-in and checking progress is the key.”
Zambrana’s strategy has
worked, as Pangea grew from
revenue of $3 million in 1999
to revenue of $35.8 million in
2004 before intentionally leveling out its growth to remain in
that revenue range.
Smart Business spoke with
Zambrana about how to sort
through all the input you
receive from your employees
to form a plan and how to
break into new markets.
Q. How do you get employees to buy in to your plan?
Basically, if they’re part of creating it, that significantly
enhances buy-in. So make sure
they are part of the process.
If they weren’t part of the creation, then allowing them time
to absorb the plan and comment
to the plan and accept the plan
after review is the other way to
get buy-in. That works whether
you’re planning a company plan
or a project plan. It has to be
clear enough that somebody
from the outside would be able
to make sense of the details.
Q. How do you decide
whether to get employee input
before or after the plan has
been conceptualized?
When you’re going through
the process, you observe people
and their ability to contribute to
the process. Soon, there are
innovative ideas that come out
of certain people, and when you
get that kind of contribution,
they are invited back. Some
people are not.
Performance speaks very
loud. Someone who can turn in
a plan and perform that plan
quietly, obviously gets greater
consideration than someone
who has a fabulous plan but it’s
probably unachievable.
It has to fit within the capabilities of the company. We have to
have the resources to execute it,
and the market has to be there
for it.
