Business Services

All together now

By Kristy J. O'Hara

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Alex Gallo
CEO, Alexander Gallo Holdings LLC

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Alex Gallo has always been a fan of the Ritz Carlton Hotel chain; it amazes him how, no matter which one he stays at, the service is always wonderful.

He began asking himself how it maintains that consistency throughout its locales and how he could do the same at Alexander Gallo Holdings LLC, his court reporting and litigation support services company.

“Anybody who’s ever done an acquisition of a company can relate to the ‘us vs. them,’” Gallo says. “There’s got to be something to bring it together, and maybe somebody doesn’t realize what it is, but it’s culture. I cannot imagine anything as important.”

Since founding his company a decade ago, the president and CEO has seen his business grow to more than 60 offices through 14 acquisitions. With more than 1,000 employees scattered from coast to coast, he constantly draws on inspiration from the Ritz to help him unify his people and create one corporate culture.

Smart Business spoke with Gallo about how to unify people from different backgrounds to create one new culture.

Create a plan.
Hire a very good consultant. Anyone at the senior level who spends time with the people in the field and understands the business could have sat there and said, ‘Hey, here are the top 10 things,’ and you’d be right on. The advice really is spending time from the bottom up with the people in the field who are making the decisions and running the company and keeping it together.

We had consultants come in. It started with interviews with about 150 employees and clients from across the country from the bottom up. They had a general theme of questions they were driving toward, and they assimilated the information and went through it and said, ‘OK, here’s the top 10, 15 hot points, here are the concerns, here’s the direction.’ Some of it is stuff you would generally see — integrity, honesty — but it really rubs in to some of the principles and issues as a company that you would have when you’re bringing together different cultures, the ‘us vs. them,’ and how do you get past that.

Then, from there, it was exploring who we are. What’s the common thread among all of us that drives us that needs to be present for you to wake up and dedicate yourself to what’s required? It’s a guiding principle. It’s the rules by which you operate.

Roll it out.
It shouldn’t be the senior-level management team only kind of spouting off — you absolutely must involve the people and get the buy-in. You’re trying to get people behind a common goal and common vision going a common direction.

It’s easy for people to say, ‘Follow me and run,’ but how many people are sitting there nodding off?

We formulated it into words and print, and then we rolled it out in regional meetings to the company. For something like that, we kept the energy level high. It was about a three-hour meeting, and I spoke about 15 to 20 minutes. We have 14 guiding principles, and you had a different person for each speaking to it and saying what’s the meaning of it.

It wasn’t Alex Gallo saying, ‘Hey, here’s who we are — now act like this.’ It was the people speaking about who they were and who the company was and what makes them do what they do.

When it’s a peer that you respect and they’re talking about, ‘Here’s what this means to me,’ all of a sudden people tend to think, ‘Yeah, I like Suzie. She does live this every day. This is a great thing,’ and people start getting behind it.

There was a realization that this wasn’t a top-down approach. There was that understanding, so it builds momentum as the people saw that we were serious about what we were doing.