If you want to make an employee who earns $45,000 a year feel valued, hand him a check for $5,000 right before Christmas. President
and CEO Sean Feeney does this annually through Inovis Inc.’s profit-sharing program, and he says that’s the definition of making
employees feel good at the company, a supply chain communication solutions provider. With perks including profit-sharing, handwritten
notes from executives and iPods engraved with the company logo or an employee’s name, Feeney strives to reward people for their
achievements because he expects a lot from them. Smart Business spoke with Feeney about how he makes all of his 525 employees feel
valued by rewarding them the same way he rewards his salespeople.
Don’t hire rock-star personas. It is difficult
when you’re interviewing and hiring to
determine whether someone can work
within that environment, or if they’re just
going to be an arrogant ass. It comes down
to, can that person admit when they’re
wrong, can they see other points of view,
and are they open to that?
When I bring someone in to interview, I
ask the first-level people, ‘Did you talk to
this person? What were they like? Were
they polite? Did they treat everyone the
same, or did they have the rock-star persona?’
It’s amazing how many times you find out
when someone’s the arrogant ass; it comes
out in their dealings with the (administrative) assistants, the receptionists, the guy
who may pick them up in the car. You get
into that level, and you find out who’s real
and who’s putting on a fake show for you.
It has a twofold effect. I’ll ask the receptionist, ‘OK Pam, what did this person act like when they came in?’ One, she’s flattered that you would ask and that you value her opinion enough to have input.
Two, it shows those people that how they
treat everyone in the organization is critical. It’s one of those things that filters down the organization that you don’t even realize it does.
Take your time when hiring. I learn more
from the questions they ask. Do they listen
when you ask them a question, or are they
in such a rush to get to the answer and talk
about them that they don’t really understand what you’re asking for? A lot of it is, ‘Am I dying to get this person out of my
office?’ or, ‘Boy, I could spend another couple hours here talking with them.’
I try to see that person in two or three different situations. I love Waffle House because it’s the only place you can get
breakfast and get a show often. I’ll have
them go to breakfast with me at Waffle
House. Some people are like, ‘Oh man. I
can’t believe you even eat here.’
I’ll have them come to the office at a different time of day, and then I’ll have dinner with them at a very nice restaurant and see
how they handle themselves in all those situations and look for those small tells that get you somewhere.
They are difficult to detect, and in an
interview process, people are selling themselves, which should be the product they know best, so they ought to be in a position
to do that.
Reward people equally. A lot of companies
have an incentive trip for their salespeople,
but we have an incentive trip for the whole
company. Our top salespeople can qualify
to go, and then we have an equal number of
people that are nominated and selected by
their peers to go on that trip.
We make it peer-nominated because
those people know who’s doing the work
and who’s going above and beyond, so we
don’t get the person who everyone in the
company goes, ‘That person is just a kiss-ass, and they don’t get anything done.’
It shows that everybody in the company
is important, not just the salespeople, but
also, we get our salespeople spending four
days in a nice environment with our top
people in other areas of the organization.
We get a nice network effect of people talking to people they never talk to and understanding who our top performers and support are and making sure those people know each other.
Let people challenge you. There are a lot of
people that say, ‘Hey, I make those decisions, and everyone falls in line.’ I’d like to think that I’m not that sharp. I’d rather hire
people who are really sharp, and they’ll
argue with you and tell you what they really think.
Part of it is making sure you have a culture that people know it’s OK and it’s expected that they challenge thinking.
Once we make a decision, we want a unified approach to aggressively accomplishing that, but while we’re getting there,
show people that the free exchange of
ideas and disagreement is all a part of the
process.
One of the hardest things as a CEO is to
get what people really think and what’s
really going on — not what they think you
want to hear or what I call the sunshine
pump — everyone wants to tell the CEO
good news. Build a culture in which people
tell you the bad news and what’s really
going on and on a regular basis, not just
when they’re leaving the organization.
Make sure you tell them that’s what you
want. Reinforce that behavior. After you
have the discussion, send them a note or
an e-mail and say, ‘I didn’t like hearing
that, but that’s the kind of feedback we
need.’
Humbly admit your mistakes. While you
may be the CEO, nobody makes the right
decision all the time. Show your team and
your people that you’re vulnerable enough
that you can admit that, ‘Hey, I think this is
the wrong decision — let’s go in a different
direction.’
Figure out when you’ve made a bad decision and change it. That’s hard because the longer you’re in this job, the more people
are telling you, ‘You’re the greatest!
Everything’s great!’ You start thinking, ‘I am
pretty good.’ That’s invariably when you
make that bad decision, and you have to
figure out how quickly you can reverse that
and take that forward.
If you do that, your people have the confidence to say, ‘Look, we made this decision; I don’t think it was the right one.’
HOW TO REACH: Inovis Inc., (877) 4-INOVIS or
www.inovis.com
