For Ronia F. Kruse, the key
to being a good leader is
having a vision and convincing others to buy in to your
vision.
That’s what Kruse tries to do
at OpTech LLC, which posted
2007 revenue of $9.7 million and
employs more than 80 people.
“I think that’s very important
in leadership to be able to rally
people around you and get
them motivated toward achieving a certain goal,” says the co-founder, president and CEO of
the technology consulting and
business services company.
Smart Business spoke with
Kruse about how to create a
vision and how to get employees to buy in to it.
Q. How do you create a
vision?
You really need to project
what is going to happen five to
10 years from now — to be able
to build a vision around that. In
our IT industry, our climate is
changing so a rapidly. To be able
to adapt to change and craft a
vision of where you want to
take your company and where
you want to be five to 10 years
from now is very important. I
think a lot of leaders of companies are less inclined to change.
To be a successful leader, you
need to envision what is happening around you and to adapt
to that change very quickly, and
then rally up the people to support your cause.
Q. How do you project five
to 10 years out?
For us it was, ‘What type of
industries do we want to service? What are some of the
industry leaders that are going
to remain industry leaders?’
Because, certainly, what we have
seen in this area, a lot of companies that have been able to grow
substantially servicing automotive companies have failed
because of what is happening in
the automotive industry.
Back in 1999, (we) kind of
saw the writing on the wall in
terms of what was happening in
the automotive industry and
what was happening here in
Michigan and changed, did a
180, and moved my company in
a different direction to service
industries that were more stable
— like the utility, the banking,
the government, insurance [industries] that
were less impacted by
what we are seeing in the
economy today.
As a result, we’ve been
able to grow substantially
in this down economy.
