Randy Wilhelm communicates at Thinkronize Inc


After an employee survey
showed that some of
his 65 employees at
Thinkronize Inc. wanted
more communication, Randy
Wilhelm looked to the past
to fix the problem. When the
company — a digital deliverer of K-12 educational content — was smaller, Wilhelm
would order pizza for his
employees, and they would
talk about what was happening at the company.
But as Thinkronize grew,
the co-founder and CEO got
away from that method of
communication. However,
when the survey showed that
move had been a mistake,
the pizza deliveries returned.
“My statement to the
group, to my leader team,
was, ‘For us, right or wrong,
pizza is comfort food,’” says
Wilhelm, who led the company to fiscal 2007 revenue of
about $10 million.
Smart Business spoke
with Wilhelm about how to
paint your vision and how to
communicate it so that
everyone understands.
Q. What are the keys to
being a good leader?

The way I define whether
you’re a good leader is
whether people are following.
It’s really creating an environment where people are
drawn to it almost magnetically. Then they’re drawn to
where you are going. For me,
what it really comes down to
are a couple of factors.
We’ll call it vision and communication. In order to be
able to lead effectively,
you’ve got to be able to communicate where you’re going. I’m talking about
painting a vision that the
team can see themselves participating in because if they
can’t see themselves inside
that environment, they’re
going to be reticent to go
there.
When you’re painting, we
just remind them that it
might look big, and it might
look difficult, yet it’s very
attainable. When I am talking
about vision to people, I am
always painting the picture
and drawing mental images
for them of what it’s
going to look like
when we get there.
That helps people
draw themselves
toward following that
vision. For me, good
leaders are really good
communicators.
Help people see
themselves in that
place and help people
understand that as you
go along that path
toward getting to that
vision, you are going to
have rocky roads and
sometimes you are
going to have to deliver bad news. If I can
share to them the ‘why’
that’s behind the ‘what’
— the ‘what’ is the bad
news. But, if I share the
‘why’ behind that and help
them see how they fit into
that, they can remain productive and comfortable.
Q. How to you paint that
vision so that all of your
employees understand it?

Vision has to be something
that is visible and real. We’ve
boiled our vision down to
some core four- or five-word
phrases, and we have them up in the office so everyone
can see them. They see them
when we walk through the
doors, first thing in the
morning, and it just reminds
them of why we are here.
We do hold quarterly meetings for the team, where we
go off-site, and any question
can be asked of the leadership. All the information is
shared, good news and bad
news. We are a very open
organization with our data.
Now, they don’t know
everything, that’s obvious.
But, being open and having
them feel part of the process
is really critical. I think the
good leaders and leader
teams really just use those messages to motivate people
to achieve things.
(The vision) needs to be
repeated often and regularly.
These are no-brainers. It has
to be communicated regularly through a variety of different vehicles. If you, as a
leader, are living that yourself and are consistent with
that, people are drawn to
that by your integrity to that
vision. So it creates a magnetic draw because it’s
always there.
Q. What is a pitfall to avoid
in business?

I think the thing that hurts
organizations or the thing
that hurts leaders is when
you don’t have people’s trust,
and you can lose people’s
trust a variety of ways. For
instance, a way that you can
lose credibility very quickly
is when an employee comes
to you and says, ‘I need to
have a conversation with you
about so and so, but you
can’t tell them that I talked
to you about it.’
In essence, I, as a leader,
have been neutered and
marginalized by that
employee.
So, you’ve got to know that
that’s not the kind of environment that we have here. I
can’t accept that. If you want
to tell me something, know
that, if it’s important, it’s
going to be communicated to
the right people.
If you don’t want to tell me,
don’t. But you don’t give
someone the right to marginalize your leadership — and
people do this all the time.
It’s a way that they gain a little power.
HOW TO REACH: Thinkronize Inc., (513) 731-4090 or www.thinkronize.com