In the trenches

Anthony Daus understands
that you might not want to work Friday nights. He doesn’t
necessarily want to either.

But if you’re pulling the late
shift at Geomatrix Consultants
Inc., the diversified technical
consulting and engineering firm
where Daus is president and
principal hydrogeologist, then
the odds are he’s at work with
you. That’s not just because
Daus wants to make sure that
the work is done; instead, he
believes that the best way to
motivate his approximately 475 employees is to show them
that Geomatrix is a flat organization where everyone’s work
and input count.

And he says that the principle
is pretty hard to argue with
when he and the company’s
other leaders are regularly
entrenched in the projects that
occasionally overlap into those
weekend hours. As a result, the
$110 million firm has built
some loyal employees —
turnover is less than 5 percent
a year — and engaged leaders.

Smart Business spoke with
Daus about how working Friday
nights can help forge great
relationships and why you
should turn off your BlackBerry
and listen.

Remember that you set the tone. If
you can lead by example, if
you can do what you’re asking
other people to do, they’re
going to have a lot more
respect for you.

Whether you are a general in
the army, a president in an
engineering consulting firm or
of a large manufacturing
organization, it’s important
that you are well grounded in
what your company does,
what its front-line business is.

I’m on a first-name basis
with everybody in the organization. Now, it’s only a 500-person organization, and I certainly don’t work with all of them,
but I work with a large number of them, and I try to be
very approachable. The great
crucible or where relationships are forged is in the
progress work, how we get
things done.

And it’s one thing to tell
someone to do it and another
to get there and help them get
it done. If people are working
late on a Friday night, I’ll be
here working with them. If
they have to come in on a
weekend, then I have to do
that. And I tell my principals
and partners they have to do
the same thing.

Lead the way for collaboration. To
a large degree, you’re just trying to get everyone to go in the
same direction, get them to
collaborate.

You really have to be able
to justify all of your decisions; it has to make sense to
them. There has to be one
guy who is ultimately in
charge of the final decision,
but you need the other partners to buy in to it. It has to
have a basis in good, sound
fundamental facts.

And even though I’m the president of the company,
there is a handful — maybe
six to eight people — that
really have a lot of sway with
individuals in the firm, so
you’ve got to get those people behind you so everyone
will buy in to it.

We find that if we focus on
the things that are necessary for
successful collaboration, then
the growth and profitability are
the outcome. We always do
better work when we get the
best people in the organization
engaged in working together
on a project.

Give employees a fair chance
before letting them go.
One of
the hard things that you have
to decide as a leader is at what
point have we given people
enough of a chance to be successful. Those are some of the
most gut-wrenching times,
when you have to do something and it’s going to change
someone’s life.

We give a lot of effort to
work through whatever issue
that they’ve got and let them
be a contributing person to the
organization. People want to
be treated with respect, and
that’s one of the most important things that we can do.

For most folks, I give them
about a year, but it gets to a
point where you sit down and
talk to them early on and say,
‘You know, I think we need to
do something different to make
you more successful because
it’s not working right now and
maybe we should try this.’

After you do that, you’re at a
point in your discussions
where you have to figure out
if the organization is the right
fit. It gets a lot easier if you
start the process early — if it
doesn’t look like it’s working
out and you talk through it
with them.

Usually then they kind of
know it, as well. It really needs
to be a one-on-one sit-down at
a neutral area, maybe a restaurant, to talk about their overall
performance and whether it’s
a good fit for the organization,
and then let them go out on
their own terms. So it’s rarely,
‘You’ve got two weeks; clean
out your desk.’

I give them the reasons and
say, ‘It may be more valuable
for you to go to another
organization.’

Take the time to really listen. Listen to the facts. It’s easy
to jump to a conclusion with
a limited number of facts,
and when you do that, more
often than not, you’re not
including something that’s
very important or not considering an important element
of that decision-making
process.

Take the time to talk to
(employees) and make them
feel like they’re the center of
attention at that point — so
you’re not trying to do three
or four things at the same
time you’re listening to them,
and not looking at your computer, playing with your
BlackBerry or something
annoying.

HOW TO REACH: Geomatrix Consultants Inc., (510) 663-4100 or www.geomatrix.com