Great expectations

When Greg Boyd’s ERG—Enterprise
Resource Group merged with MIS
Group in 2006, he became president of the rapidly growing combined
group, going from 55 employees to 163.
With that kind of growth, it’s easy to
become overwhelmed and frustrated, but
Boyd has successfully managed the growth
at the $17 million software and information
technology services provider.

Smart Business spoke with Boyd about
how he uses communication to eliminate surprises and how he gets buyin at a company in flux.

Q: How do you successfully lead
changes in an organization?

Change really revolves around
people, process and technology. It’s
setting the right expectations. Set
the communication in place so
everybody is on the same page to
understand that. As long as they
know what’s coming without surprises, I think you can manage
change a lot better. It’s the surprises that people don’t like.

Some things happen that are
unexpected, and obviously, you
can’t control everything, but try to
set those expectations as far
ahead of time as you can, and
prepare people that these things
are happening. In our case, we
did four acquisitions last year, so
it’s a matter of communicating
with the organization, ‘Look,
these things are happening.

These things are going to happen in the future. It’s part of who
we are as a company. It’s part of our growth
strategy that there will be acquisitions, so
that means there will be new people coming and there will be processes that are
changing as a result of that.’

There’s always some chaos involved with
change, so setting that expectation upfront
is critical so that people aren’t just blind-sided by what’s going on. If you weren’t
sharing those things ahead of time, then all
of a sudden, out of the blue, you come in
and say, ‘We just picked up 100 more people, and this is what’s going to happen to
your job tomorrow.’ That catches people
more off guard than being able to say, ‘This is coming; this is what’s happening.’ You
can kind of be prepared for it, attitudewise,
to deal with it.

Q: You mentioned that processes change,
as well. How do you deal with those
changes?

Each year, it’s like you’re a new company.
That can frustrate people that aren’t
expecting that, but when you’re an organization of 10 versus an organization of 50
versus an organization of 200, there’s just
different systems and different processes
that have to be in place to accommodate
scaling an organization to the next level.

Sometimes, those things are almost harder because people are like, ‘This is how I do
my job; this is how the system works,’ but
when you have system changes going on
continually to support the efforts and
methodologies of the companies, those are
hard things. All these changes are happening, and it’s affecting everyone, and trying
to keep the airplane flying with the wings on fire. You’re trying to change the wings
but keep the plane in the air so it doesn’t
crash.

Q: How do you get buy-in for those
changes and make sure people really
understand them?

Communicate calmly and often. Communication and expectations are two big
things to be focused on. It’s just setting the
expectations so they know what’s coming,
and if you’re going to miss deadlines or dates, make sure you communicate those so people at least
have an idea what’s going on.

One of the things we started working on is, what are the top three
things we should be working on?
That starts at the top and works all
the way through the organization, so
everyone can stay focused on those
things. Sometimes those priorities
change depending on the direction
we’re going. Sometimes crises do
come up, and you have to change
those priorities in the process.

There has to be communication all
the way down to the employee level
on a regular basis. Coaching is a big
part of that and having metrics for
everybody and objectives so they
know what to expect — How am I
being measured on my performance,
and how am I performing? And being
able to talk about those things on a regular basis.

That’s the time — when you’re having
those discussions and you’re talking
about the vision, and how does what
I’m doing as an employee really impact
the vision overall and this is what my
contribution is to the organization. Once
they make that tie-in, it goes from just
being ‘in one ear, out the other’ to, ‘I’m really making a difference in the company.’

Ultimately, it gets down to communicating those things and having that collaboration and dialogue all the way down to the
team level so people know their expectations and, ‘Have I met those expectations,
what are my future expectations going to
be, and how am I making a difference in
the company?’

HOW TO REACH: MIS Group, www.misgroupusa.com (800)
454-0993