One of the most challenging aspects
of being a CEO is often getting
everyone else to understand where it is you want to take the business, says
James J. Saccacio.
“As a leader and as a visionary, you’re
usually five steps ahead of everybody,”
says Saccacio, chairman and CEO of
RealtyTrac Inc. “You see the painting
already crystallized on the canvas while
everybody still is ust seeing components to it. You want to get it done right
away. You just have to be patient
and allow people to make mistakes so that they grow and they learn.”
By bringing employees along at
a pace they can handle, Saccacio
has led the online real estate company to $27.2 million in 2005 sales
and $37.5 million in 2006 sales
with more than 200 employees.
Smart Business spoke with
Saccacio about why he has never
experienced failure.
Q: What is the key to gaining
employees’ trust?
People have to feel the reality
of the dream and have to feel
that the leader will be able to
charge them up the hill if they
are willing to follow.
I’m going to lead you up a hill.
I’m not going to ask you to do
anything that I wouldn’t do.
You may not know how to do
it, but it’s OK to say, ‘I don’t
know,’ and to ask for help and
direction.
It’s an extremely difficult
thing to convince people to do. As a
leader, you have to be in tune with people and be able to read them. The way I
do it is by asking a series of questions. I
may ask the same question three or four
times to really see if people understand.
It’s not so much having people sit there
and say, ‘I don’t know,’ as much as it is
acknowledging that there are other alternatives to what they are doing.
Q: How do you deal with failure?
It doesn’t exist within my vocabulary.
I view those things as opportunities. They
are opportunities of lessons learned and
how to do things differently.
I always look to see the light from the
dark. I had to reflect back on life and say,
‘Has there ever been a time in my life
that I failed?’ And there hasn’t been one.
One might say, ‘Have you not challenged
yourself enough?’ Or does that passion
and perseverance always allow you to
redirect what you may call a failure,
which I call an opportunity to learn?
It clearly is an opportunity to grow.
There is a way of putting things in a negative light and a positive light. At the
end of the day, I think society beats
down people too much and doesn’t elevate them enough. Even as parents, it’s
like, ‘Don’t do that, don’t do that,’ versus, ‘Why don’t we try to do it this way?’
If you touch that the wrong way, you’re
going to break it. That’s a negative versus, ‘Let’s use this tool, this hammer,
correctly.’
Q: How do you communicate your vision to
others?
Reading their body language, knowing
what motivates them and what drives
them. You really need to understand
your people. No two people are alike.
You have to understand the drivers of
the individual. You may have one style,
but you may have five or six people that
report to you that have different styles,
and it’s very much like a marriage.
Communicating one way to one person
does not necessarily work for
another. As the CEO, you have to
be able to switch hats and know
who you’re dealing with.
Q: How do you reach consensus?
The core is understanding your
stakeholder. Your first stakeholder
is your customer. If you do what is
in the best interest of your customer, everything else falls underneath that and falls into alignment.
You take the personalities out by
focusing it on the customer.
Q: How can you get employees to
care?
As a CEO, really, we need to serve
others. When you have a serving
mentality, that really goes a long
way. Drilling down within the organization and finding out what people
need to make their environment and
the workplace better.
I don’t think putting in an employee
suggestion box works. Going down
and holding meetings in a group
forum allows people to speak, and
then allows the whole group to speak.
It’s the law of numbers. People feel
much more comfortable in those situations where they will speak up because
they know they’ll get affirmation from
others as to what’s needed.
The risk to that is you have to be willing
as an organization to respond. If you
don’t, you’ll never get that feedback again.
An organization that speaks out wanting
to have a serving culture needs to prepare
to really serve. It can’t be lip service.
HOW TO REACH: RealtyTrac Inc., www.realtytrac.com
