Kim Allan Sharp, the
founder, president and
CEO of FocusMark Group LLC, has a saying he has
adhered to all his life: “Not
always right but never in
doubt.”
The statement reflects Sharp’s
view on how important it is for
a leader to not only make decisions but also to empower
employees to make decisions.
He says employees need to
know a leader has the decision-making ability to execute on
the vision of the company.
“If the leader or the CEO
doesn’t make the decision necessary to execute your vision,
obviously, everything bogs
down,” says Sharp, who led the
marketing agency to 2007 revenue of about $40 million.
Smart Business spoke with
Sharp about how he uses data
— and gut feelings — to make
decisions.
Q. How do you empower
employees to make decisions?
Many times, I’ll bring everybody — or the particular
employees — in, and we’ll talk
about what are the options,
and we’ll narrow down those
options to two or three options.
What I’m always about is, ‘I
can make this decision for you
right now, but here is what I
think, from a consensus standpoint, we agree [that these] are
the logical options that fall in
line with executing our vision.
It’s up to you to decide which
one of those routes to take.’
At the same time, understand
that you’re going to be held
accountable from a revenue
standpoint or from an employee morale standpoint, whatever
road you take. In many ways, I believe, if you can educate your
employees, they will help you
make those decisions, and, quite
frankly, usually they make the
decisions you’d make anyway.
Q. How do you educate your
employees to make those
decisions?
We’re very numbers-oriented,
so we look at it from a numbers
standpoint. That can be financial numbers, those could be
marketing numbers,
those could be numbers
regarding square footage
of a building.
We always have a way
of saying, ‘OK, let’s say
here’s what the numbers
tell us,’ and we’re a numbers-processed, engineering-type organization in everything we do.
What we then say is, ‘OK,
even though we know
these are what the numbers are, we all know,
even if you are a good
statistician, that about 20
percent of a good statistician is that gut feeling or
the subjective nuances
that you bring into your
final decision-making.’
So, we try to balance it.
Providing people with facts and
figures and then mixing that
with your good, old, ‘OK, this is
what my instincts tell me,’
that’s the best way to have a
powerful mix of information
that allows and empowers our
employees to make the right
decision.
