Fonda Hopkins models
company values each day
at Montesquieu by listening to her 112 employees and
communicating with them.
“I communicate my work so
they know what I’m working on
and how I’m making the organization stronger and creating
more opportunities for them
and our clients,” the president
and CEO of the imported and
domestic wine distributor says.
“The more connected they are
to that, the easier it is for them
to do their jobs.”
Creating values and a vision
that everyone buys in to promotes teamwork and has helped
Montesquieu reach 2006 revenue of $24.7 million.
Smart Business spoke with
Hopkins about how to create a
vision and values that employees buy in to and how to spread
that to your clients.
Q. How do you set values
and a vision?
We find people we can trust
and whose aims and values are
similar to our own. You have to
do a lot of listening. Listen carefully to what is important to
people, and you’ll understand
what their goals are, what direction they’re interested in going
and how they’ve gone about
tackling goals in the past. It’s
easy to see if you’re doing more
listening than talking.
Give your full attention. It’s
demanding in our workdays.
Commit to giving your full attention to each one of the people
who you’re talking to at that
particular point in time.
As much as possible, you
don’t want to dictate the goals,
but you want people to be
working for something that they believe in and are committed to.
If you can align goals within
your organization, it makes
everything easier.
The more challenging the goal
the better because employees
will get behind it, and they will
want to make a difference and
impact that goal. If employees
own the goal and feel supported
and empowered, they’ll work
hard to achieve it.
Q. How do you encourage
and promote teamwork to
achieve those goals?
Make sure they’re always supported. Any challenges
that come up along the
way, any opposition
they’re having, give them
support and help them
learn to find the opportunities within those challenging situations. If they
can overcome those, it
makes them stronger and
more dedicated to future
achievements.
It’s important to recognize on a regular basis the
contributions that each
department or employee
is bringing. As often as
you can, make those
recognitions available
and show your appreciation. Let people within
the organization know
that every aspect of it is important and valued, and share that
as frequently as you can.
Q. What are the benefits of
employees working together
and being aligned with the
vision, values and goals?
You have less distractions,
there’s more focus in your work-place, and there’s a commitment
to one another and to the organization.
The benefits outweigh anything else. It’s important that
people are happy when they
come to work and [that] they’re
eager to come to work.
Q. If an employee is not
happy to come to work, how
do you refocus that person?
The question would have to
be posed, ‘What is it that they
are expecting, and what do they
want out of their career?’ It’s
back to the basics of aligning
goals.
Find something that the
employee wants to achieve or shoot for. … Once you clearly
understand what is motivating
and driving that employee, find
a way that you can work with
them mutually. It’s going to be
far less expensive for you to
find a way to re-engage that
employee than to start from
scratch and to retrain someone
all over again.
Q. You also mentioned the
importance of staying close
to clients and forming
relationships with them.
How do you do that?
A personal business approach
— talking with clients on a regular basis, getting as much feedback as you can and having a
lot of dialogue. It’s not just sharing information with clients, but
it’s getting the feedback, creating the dialogue and having
open lines of communication.
Educate. Educate them as
much as you can. The more
your clients and employees
know about your business, the
more they know about your
product and industry. The more
informed they are, the more
confident they are about their
decisions to work with you and
the choices that they’re making.
Q. How do you create
dialogue and open
communication with clients?
Visit salespeople as frequently
as you can, and make sure that
they understand that your goal
is to educate the clients and
keep the clients happy with the
product. Make sure they feel
supported, and the clients know
that it’s in your best interest that
they’re happy with the product
because that’s what keeps them
coming back.
HOW TO REACH: Montesquieu, (877) 705-5669 or www.thespiritofwine.com
