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Gearing for change
How to change your company culture while keeping employees on track
By Brooke Bates
Smart Business Detroit | March 2009
Page 1 of 2
Dominic Silvio
chairman, founder and CEO, EWI Worldwide
When the idea came up
almost 30 years ago at
Exhibit Work Inc.’s inaugural
Christmas party, Dominic Silvio
was resistant.
“Here’s a small group of
seven or eight of us sitting
around a table and somebody
said EWI instead of Exhibit
Works,” says Silvio, the company’s chairman, founder and
CEO. “And I admonished this
person and said, ‘Hey, please
don’t start that. I don’t want to
be known as EWI.’”
But nearly 30 years later,
Silvio and his 250 employees
have made the initials official at
the company, which posted
$179 million in revenue in fiscal
2008. The name change to EWI
Worldwide in August 2007
reflects the company’s global
shift and is inclusive of all of
the company’s live communication and event marketing services, not just exhibit design. But
despite the changes, EWI’s
communication-driven culture
has stayed the same.
Smart Business spoke with
Silvio about how to use your
employees’ input for change
while keeping them on track
with everyday tasks.
Establish open communication.
Rebranding situations are different. For some companies, it
might be the culture that
needs to change. For us, it was
about evolving our business,
diversifying, growing globally
and ultimately serving our
clients the full spectrum of live
communications. So we were
faced with the challenge of
making organizational changes
without losing sight of our
core culture.
The culture we’ve managed
to preserve has a lot to do with
people, communication and
trust. Give (people) a voice in
the company. I have always
had an open-door policy.
I encourage employees to
stop me in the hall and ask
questions, visit my office and
share their ideas. It’s also
important that they communicate with each other.
Keep your door open. Be
available. Listen. Not everyone
is comfortable sharing input
with the CEO, so give options.
Get your human resources
department involved or have
an employee responsible for
internal communications.
Create an open atmosphere
and then some of it is up to
the people.
