Fast Lane
A piece of the pie
How to get alignment with your employees
By Matt McClellan
Smart Business Atlanta | February 2009
Page 1 of 2
Mike Orcutt
founder and CEO, Cowabunga Inc.
Although he’s been selling Domino’s pizza for
35 years, Mike Orcutt still defers to his 1,200 employees before making decisions
about his company.
“If the folks who are right
there talking to the customers
haven’t bought in to it and don’t
think it’s a great idea, it’s not
going to work,” he says. “It
doesn’t have a prayer. Our customers aren’t going to outthink
the people servicing them.”
Orcutt’s franchising company,
Cowabunga Inc., owns and
operates 79 Domino’s locations
throughout Georgia, Alabama
and South Carolina.
Smart Business spoke with
Orcutt about how to align your
employees’ goals with the goals
of your company.
Q. How do you keep employees engaged?
We try to develop a process
where everybody’s got some
skin in the game. Essentially,
everybody has a job that numbers are attached to. There is a
constant self-evaluation going
on with these people, and they
really start to manage themselves a whole lot better.
When they prop themselves up
and compare themselves to
somebody else who is performing or not performing, it creates
an environment where everybody is learning from each other.
Q. How do you attach goals
to metrics?
We’re very open about goals
and our income statement and
our sales with everyone. Basically, our competitors are going
to find out what we’re doing
anyway if they want to. The big
thing is make sure everybody is
engaged in making sure those
numbers are going in the right
direction.
You do that, first of all, by
being open and honest and letting people know what these
goals, profit goals, employment
goals and all these numbers are.
What’s not measured is never
managed. So we keep score of
just about everything we can.
We run scorecards and bonuses
and all those things, but what
seems to work the best for us is
just recognition for people. Saying, ‘Hey, you’re
on track.’ Let people
know what the value is of
moving those numbers in
the right direction.
In any case, people
aren’t going to get a raise
if we’re not making more
money. When we are
making more money and
improving as a company,
the odds are really good
that you’re going to get a
raise, either through your
bonus or salary.
When things aren’t
going well, like this environment is a little tougher
and we have to work a little harder, a little longer
hours to get done what
we want to get done, everybody
is in there doing that, too.
So they’re in there in the good
times and the bad times, but we
are constantly measuring the
level of improvement and what
our effort is. We want to get better on a daily basis.
