Fast Lane
Rising above
How to empower your employees so they'll exceed your expectations
By Kristy J. O'Hara
Smart Business Dallas | November 2008
Page 1 of 2
Chris Kraft
president and founder, Splash Media LP
Competing with Microsoft
might intimidate many
people, but Chris Kraft’s employees held their own
against the software giant at
Macworld, a conference for
the Mac community.
As founder and president
of Splash Media LP, a media
and technology company,
Kraft was called upon by a
sister company to help its
four employees run a product launch at the conference.
He asked for volunteers, and
12 of his 34 employees
stepped up, despite having
no knowledge of the company’s product. Once at the
event, they enticed people to
the booth with a MacBook
Air giveaway — just minutes
after Apple unveiled it.
The promotion attracted so
many visitors that only Microsoft
had more, and Kraft was elated.
Smart Business spoke with
Kraft about how to empower
employees to achieve huge
results.
Q. How do you empower
employees?
Let go. It’s tough. This is a
lesson that every leader has to
face at some point. Once you
let go, maybe they won’t do it
exactly like you’d do it, but
that’s not a bad thing. Sometimes that’s a good thing.
Having faith in the team that
you brought to the table takes
a little bit of getting used to for
most executives. Put that trust
and faith in your team, and let
them do their job.
Nine times out of 10, they’ll
blow you away. They’ll do it
better than you could have
yourself.
Q. How are you sure you’re
finding trustworthy employees?
You’re not. The best sales job
anybody ever does is in that
interview. We have a 90-day probationary period, so folks have
to really prove their mettle and
make sure that they are a fit.
We run at a pace here that is
typical of a start-up, but it’s
more of a sustained pace. Most
start-ups do the sprint, and then
once the sprint’s over and they
meet their funding objective or
launch their product, they go
into more of a jogger’s
pace. We’re on a sprinter’s pace all of the time.
That’s one of the traits
we look for in our employees when we’re hiring is, ‘Are we talking
about a sprinter, or are
we talking about a
marathoner?’ We’re looking for people that have
the sprint mentality but
understand that it’s going
to go on for 26 miles.
Q. How do you gauge
that characteristic?
Have you ever owned
your own business? Have
you ever made a payroll?
Have you ever been
responsible to eat what you kill?
Those are the folks that most
likely think like us. They don’t
do things by committee.
We have meetings to determine the deadlines and realistic expectations, but we let the
people determine the how
part. We don’t have meetings
where eight people determine
the how, and it’s satisfying. At
the end of the day, they sink or
swim by their own successes.
