The days of leaving the
office and your job behind each day at 5 p.m. may be long gone, but that
doesn’t mean work has to be
an anchor weighing you down.
Mike Simmons wants work
to be a place where employees can have fun, and he
has put a pool table and a
Nintendo Wii into the break
room at T2 Systems Inc. to
facilitate that. And the recreation room is not just for his
employees; T2 Systems’ co-founder, president and CEO
plays right along with them.
“I want to work in an environment where we can laugh
and have a good time,”
Simmons says. “People spend
too much time at work to do
the death march in here in the
morning and out at night.”
While Simmons and his 96 employees have fun, the provider
of parking management solutions continues to grow. T2
achieved 2006 revenue of
$10 million, growing at an
average annual rate of nearly
52 percent since 2003.
Smart Business spoke with
Simmons about how to be
more human with your
employees.
Q. How does having fun
contribute to a productive
work environment?
If you’re not laughing and
having a good time, then culturally, it’s a job. You come in
and do your thing, and you go
home. There are certainly
plenty of companies that
operate that way.
Our approach is to create a
fun environment. There are
still hard times and tough
projects. The more we can do to mitigate that, the better.
The relatively small investment that we make in those
fun kinds of things creates an
environment where people
want to work.
When you look at the cost
of hiring and retraining people because of turnover, the
investment we make in that
is very small.
Q. How do you support your
employees as the company
grows?
The greatest issue for
me is not recognizing
that we need to change.
I’m having to constantly
learn how I can do a
better job in my role and
better serve my constituents and my direct
reports in what they are
trying to accomplish.
It’s more about looking at myself and personal execution than it
is about recognizing
the need to continually
re-evaluate the way we
do things.
I have absolutely no
problem standing in
front of my direct
reports or in front of
the company and saying, ‘I don’t know the answer
to that, but let me work on
it, and I’ll get you an answer
by next meeting.’
But be careful. People
expect a steady hand at the
helm, and they want you to
know all the answers. If
you’re making up answers
and you’re not willing to
change and evolve and learn,
I’ve seen people fail taking
that perspective.
Q. How can you break down
barriers with employees?
My experience indicates
that when there is a void of
information, it will be filled.
We do our best to try to keep
the void as small as possible
and try to deliver as much
good information as we can.
We share as much information as any company as I’ve
ever been a part of or even
been familiar with. ‘This is
where we’re at. This is where
we’re going. This is the hot
project of the moment.’
The biggest challenge I face
is I hear a lot of people say, ‘Well, I know you’re busy; I
didn’t want to bother you
with that.’ It tends to be more
about their concern that they
are wasting my time talking to
me about those things.
I do my best to communicate
to those folks that that’s a big
chunk of my job. I don’t want
you to feel you can’t come to
me with a significant issue.
I’ll take that comment to the
next company meeting or
newsletter and let people
know, ‘Hey, I got this question,
and I thought it was a great
question. I’m assuming other
people have the question.’
Make an assumption that
more people have that question than just the one person
who asked it.
Q. How do you figure out
what’s best for your company?
My wife worked for
Southwest Airlines for many
years. I was just always fascinated with the culture and the
fun environment that they
were able to create. As we’re
doing our managing, it’s easy
to get caught up in the
spreadsheets and competitive
analysis and the operating
metrics.
‘Are we spending enough
money on tech support? Do
we have enough people in
accounting?’ You end up in a
situation of trying to make
yourself the same as every
other company.
What came out of my experience with Southwest and
what I tell people internally
was, ‘Ultimately, it’s not the
things we do the same as
everyone else; it’s the things
we do differently.
HOW TO REACH: T2 Systems Inc., (800) 434-1502 or www.t2systems.com
