In a business where every order is turned around in two hours, it
would be easy to simply react to problems. However, eBlueprint
CEO Andrew Ziegler challenges his 109-member staff to be proactive, not reactive. A commitment to that strategy has led the electronic blueprinting company to consistent revenue growth, from
$7.8 million in 2003 to $11.4 million in 2006.
spoke with Ziegler about the dangers of getting
out of your comfort zone and how to keep ego out of the way.
Q: How do you empower your employees?
Most of it is communication and finding out what their needs and
wants and goals are. When you empower them, you give them
tools and ideas to develop what their strengths are.
Not necessarily to focus on their weaknesses, but to help them get
stronger in areas where they are strong and to help them achieve, is
what I look at as my goal. I look to lead first and help them achieve
second. So I’ll come up with ideas to help them do what they want to
do.
Also, I like to keep emotion and ego out of the way. Focus on the
end results, and share credit whenever possible. That’s a good way
of empowering other people and letting other people take credit
where it’s deserved.
Q: How do you keep the ego out of the way?
For me, I realize things aren’t personal. Work’s not life or death.
Try to keep emotion out of it, keep the facts on the table and keep
working toward results to common good. It comes down to doing
the right thing. What’s the right thing? What’s in the best interest of
our customers? Do the right thing for all parties involved.
Q: What pitfalls should a growing company avoid?
In a quick-growing, small company, it’s real easy to get pulled out
of your comfort zone and start offering too much too quickly. You
want to stay focused on what got you where you were.
Keep building on your strengths, not something that isn’t a core
competency. You can take that on, but it can’t be the focus of growing your business. Keep doing what you do better, is a better
growth strategy rather than doing 50 million things good. Better
customer experiences are the best way to grow a business.
Q: Which risks are worth taking?
We’re not afraid to risk what we do well to get better. I use a Colin
Powell statement for that: We’ll develop an idea, and once you get
40 percent of the information, it’s not enough to make a good decision.
But if you wait until after you’ve got 70 percent of the information, you’ve waited too long. At a certain point you gather enough
information that you feel you’re going down the right road. Then,
you go with your gut.
Q: How do you get buy-in on your decisions?
Sometimes you don’t get the buy-in; sometimes you have to
force it. Sometimes, you have to make a decision people don’t
want you to make. You do everything you can do to make them
see the light, to see your way of thinking, but sometimes that’s
not the case. Then, you just have to tell them to trust you.
Sometimes you make a bad decision, and they were right.
You’ve got to give them the acknowledgement and re-look at
the decision later, but for the time being, they just have to live
with it and work through it.
We don’t have a strict set of guidelines. It is usually broad-based goals, and the means to get there is up to them.
Q: How does that affect your employees?
The end result is, you’re empowering them to take ownership
of that goal. If you just tell them a broad-based goal and they
take it a step further to define that goal, then they are the ones
driving the end results and they have ownership.
They are empowered to see it all the way through, and they get
all the accolades.
Q: How can a company grow?
Strive to do better every day. When you strive to get better
every day, you don’t look back with regrets on what happened
yesterday.
I don’t strive to achieve, it’s just something that happens
when you set the foundation and get your priorities straight.
Achievement is a byproduct of having everything in order to
move forward.
As far as managing growth, you manage what’s in front of
you. You try not to manage things, which are out of your control. You stay focused on what you can and cannot do. Most of
the time, those things straighten themselves out. You don’t
have to put your arms around this thing called growth. If you
have a couple of leaders and you manage the things you can
actually manage, growth takes care of itself.
HOW TO REACH: eBlueprint, www.eblueprint.com or (216) 281-1234
