A blank sheet of paper can
be transformed into an
endless array of possibilities, but Rick Pleczko has found
that starting with a clean slate
is not the most effective way to
flesh out a corporate vision.
“Most people are infinitely
more productive when they
are critics than when they are
creatives,” Pleczko says. “If
you give them some rough
ideas, they can tell you what’s
good and bad about them and
give you some alternatives
very quickly.”
By always seeking to engage
his employees in his efforts to
grow BBS Technologies Inc.,
the president and CEO oversees a culture in which everyone feels part of the team. By
getting all of his 150 employees
involved, Pleczko has led the
computer infrastructure service
provider to $17 million in revenue for 2007.
Smart Business spoke with
Pleczko about how to take a
vision from the drawing board
to reality.
Q. How do you get your
vision straight in your own
head?
The first time you’ll write a
lot of stuff and you’ll think
about it. Then what you need
to do is sleep on it. You might
have two or three sessions on
this before you come out nodding your head. You can use an
outside facilitator to help you.
The team we have here are
very forthcoming with ideas
and opinionated. If you don’t
have that team, it helps to
have a facilitator that will
draw that out of you.
People talk to each other
extremely freely in the company. There isn’t a hierarchy or
chain of command, per se. I
have product managers and
engineers walk into my office
and chat with me about things,
and vice versa.
I wander down there if I
have an idea that might be
cool and validate it with them.
People are used to a process
where we communicate what
needs to happen. We have
quarterly kickoff meetings
where we review what happened last quarter and recap
what we need to do next quarter.
Q. Where do you start in formalizing your vision?
Clarity of vision and
purpose is important.
Every year, when we go
through our annual planning, we basically set
out our overall business
goals — this is what we
want to achieve in terms
of revenue growth and
profitability growth.
Then we sit down and
say, ‘If we’re going to
achieve that, what are
the top seven initiatives
that we have to roll out
for the company?’
We look at our whole
business and say, ‘In
order to meet those targets, we need to do
these seven things very
well. What are the objectives
that we have to achieve with
that initiative? What are the
tactics that we have to do for
that initiative?’
Each of those objectives is a
tangible goal that can be measured. We put together a presentation that outlines the overall strategy of the company
and gives context to these
seven initiatives.
