Mike’s 2007 Speech to the Companies: Building Great Companies

Mike DuBose’s Companywide Meeting Presentation

Building Great Companies: the Vision

December 11, 2007

In 2006, we got everyone fired up about the future of our companies. This came off the heels of working with our independent consultant, Ken Allen, in the strategic planning process. Then, as one of you said, “We got all excited! But no strategic plans appeared, decisions slowed, and projects were delayed to a turtle’s pace—and we lost hope!”

I would like to make my presentation today in three parts. First, some of you are learning who I really am. I would like to give you a little more background. Then, I would like to talk about what the research says a great company and its leaders should look like, and finally, I want to talk about the vision I see for us in the future. I will leave the room, and a consultant will end the day by talking to you as a group. Then, we will go bowling! Tomorrow, you will meet with the consultant in focus groups (individually if you are a leader and the others in small groups).

I. Background

My story begins in Darlington, SC on a rural dirt road. My greatest memories were flying in airplanes with my grandfather, who owned an airport, each afternoon until I was about 12 years old.

My parents divorced when I was 12. Our home burnt to the ground shortly thereafter. We lost everything and were suddenly thrown into the ranks of the poor. We moved into a trailer and my bedroom became a 6-foot square. Mother was a single parent and a mill worker at Dixie Cup. Neither of my parents ever mentioned the word “college” when I was growing up, but fortunately, we moved into the “city” of Darlington (with a population of less than 5,000) and there I joined a peer group that was going to college.

My guidance counselor once told me—in all seriousness—that I would never amount to anything (yes, I had a ball in high school!). I was voted Most Wittiest as a senior superlative, proof that I had begun developing my sense of humor more than 40 years ago!

I worked as a meat cutter in high school and pretty much paid my way through college. At the time, tuition was $175 per semester, and gas was 16 cents a gallon! I was one of the highest paid workers at the store at the time, making a whopping $1 per hour.

My first year in college, I earned a .8 average (out of a 4.0) and had to beg a teacher to give me a D so I would not flunk out! However, then I met my wife and had nearly straight A’s for my last two years. I finished college in three years, graduating in 1971.

My father, who ran a liquor store, said I did not have the know-how to run a business. So after graduating college, I got my first professional job as a food stamp worker. It paid $6,000 per year, and my first office as a professional was a freshly painted jail cell at the York County Department of Public Welfare.

I went on to work for seven state agencies, two governors, and a non-profit. This experience was extremely valuable because I saw our world from many different angles.

In 1981, and with no experience as an entrepreneur, I opened six businesses. They were successful until 1985, when Texas Instruments suddenly decided to quit making home computers and I had to take them out of business. I had all my eggs in one basket and was not diversified.

Afterward, I was clinically depressed for two years. Yes, Mr. Positive and Mr. Optimistic fell into the pit. It was a terrible time. My family had dealt with plenty of tragedy and four of my relatives killed each other and themselves. My son Blake attended a reunion one time and said there were more rednecks in that one setting than he had ever seen! My father went to prison. I was the first child on both sides of the family to graduate from college.

I am sharing this with you because I really want you to know who I am. I had nothing given to me and had to work for everything I own. Nothing was easy, and it was a lot of hard work!

While much of my life has been filled with tragedy, I now consider these tragedies gifts from God, who allowed me to turn them into wonderful learning opportunities. All the pain became gold because I chose to benefit from the experience. It is all how you look at life, mistakes, and tragedy. Your past can become rich diamonds that will help you grow ….or baggage that forever haunts you! I chose to grow and learn.

I see life and running a business both as grand experiments. I have learned that the keys to success are to dream the impossible; think beyond your reach; have faith in God because there is tremendous power and peace there; surround yourself with people who are smarter, more experienced, and organized than you; lay out a roadmap of where we are going and how to get there with others’ input; and then let people do their jobs. There is no one secret to having a successful business. It is a constant experiment to find what works, and what works today may not work tomorrow. We saw this happen in our Training and Publications Division. Long-term success occurs when a lot of the right things come together at once. It is a series of small steps and victories.

A successful leader needs first to understand who he or she is. Jim Collins and other business experts say that an effective leader is humble, gets things done, executes well, has high amounts of energy, and is constantly coaching, mentoring, and leading. I have tried every form of leadership, some more successfully than others.

What I saw developing this past year, with its hierarchy, controls, and bureaucratic inefficiency, is not what I envisioned when new roles were implemented in January 2007. Based on my individual interviews with you, you felt the same way. From what I have heard and experienced, we are all frustrated at how our company and leadership operated, and I know that you want change.

Our consultant is conducting a needs assessment to determine where we have been and where we need to go. I encourage you to be frank and forthright with him. We are trying to figure out what our new company should look like in the future. I don’t have all the answers right now, but I do know that we will adhere to servant leadership, which means that leaders will:

Serve you and our customers.
Help employees to do their best.
Coach and mentor.
Encourage self-expression.
Build a community and family.
Create a positive and open culture where we all want to come to work each day.
View our staff as part of a family.
Treat employees as owners and partners.
Want to learn and be coached themselves.
Be humble and not know-it-alls or domineering.

While servant leadership will be our focus, you will also see a strong CEO in 2008. I accept all responsibility for the direction this company took this past year and I don’t want us blaming others for what has happened. I do not promise you anything in the future other than positive change occurring. How this change will occur will depend on you. If you want positive changes, then you are going to have to help me make them!

I am not a micromanager and do not like to control you. If you find me micromanaging, then you are not doing your job. I am what my leadership chart says I am: I love outlining goals, I want to give input in the early stages and before you pull the trigger, and then I want you to run with the ball. I love it when you stay a step ahead of me! When things go wrong (and they will), I want us to learn. I do not want to hear excuses or play the “blame game.”

I am very creative and thrive around people who like to dream and think outside the box. I used to drive Kim Inman, VP of our Columbia Conference Center, crazy trying to make the “perfect decision!” When she came up with an idea, I would throw five back at her. In our company over the last year, there was a lot of talk, but little action and a lot of procrastination. Sure, we are paying our bills, but people expressed a lot of dissatisfaction to me about the way we did things here.

I had to teach myself effective and timely decision-making by gathering the facts, soliciting input, and making prompt decisions.

If you really want to know how I operate, talk to Kim, Stephanie, and Lori. We have a great relationship because we get things done and communicate well. I ask that you judge me not by what people have said about me, but what you see. And don’t mind kicking me in the butt if you see me doing something wrong!

Don’t get spooked when I throw a dumb idea out on the table. I am very creative and need to think and talk about ideas as I seek different options. I will sometimes criticize my own work or idea. You will find that I will generally meet you halfway on decisions if you work with me in turn. However, I want you to speak your mind!

I don’t have all the answers and as Sam Walton said, “If I get it right 50% of the time, I am doing pretty good!”I am a strong believer that we have the opportunity to learn and grow from our mistakes, but the most important step is recognizing that we failed in the first place! The key to working with me is to keep me informed and let me know what you are doing, solicit my input—don’t see asking me for help as a weakness—and then let me know before you make a final decision.

My philosophy is to hope for the best and prepare for the worst. We must plan for failure and threats if we are to succeed. I have been running businesses and writing grants for nearly 30 years, but let me just be one of you as we move this company forward. Now, I will share some research about what our leadership and company should look like if we are truly committed to making this a great company.

II. Research: What is the Formula for Successful Companies?

If we are serious about developing a great company, then we need to understand the experts say it should be. This includes:

Getting the right people on board and then deciding where we want to go. We are at that point and time.
Maintaining an unwavering faith that we can and will prevail, regardless of the circumstances.
Disciplining ourselves to confront the most brutal facts about ourselves and our company.
Maintaining a culture of disciplined people. When you have disciplined staff, you don’t need hierarchy. The best people do not need to be tightly managed.
Leaders should have high energy levels, be humble and never seek credit, and not be concerned with their egos, power, and control. They should be constantly coaching and mentoring so they are working themselves out of a job, must have an incurable need to produce results, and, most importantly, they must EXECUTE!
Good is not good enough if you want long-range success.
Endless restructuring is not needed in a great company. As Stephanie Marshall, one of our Vice Presidents, told me, “We have been in transition far too long! We need to get things going!”
Good to great companies will make many mistakes, but they will make more good decisions than they do bad ones.
Great leaders are constantly asking, “WHY?” and allowing others to do the same, then they give them answers. They engage everyone in the debate to come up with the best solutions, then make prompt decisions. They seek to eliminate bottlenecks and slow decision-making processes and just get things done! When criticized, leaders listen and then look into the mirror. They focus more on growing and improving than rationalizing or excusing their actions. Blame is not a part of their vocabularies or thought processes.
When mistakes and errors occur, leaders conduct autopsies without blame. They bring mistakes out into the open and learn from them. They see mistakes as learning opportunities and gifts and then prevent the mistakes from happening again (Total Quality Management).
Great companies only pursue activities that they are the best at, are most profitable to them, and that they are passionate about (the Hedgehog Concept in Good to Great).
Great companies avoid bureaucracy and hierarchy, instead creating cultures of discipline. Leaders in these companies clearly outline the parameters within which employees can operate and allow them the freedom to blossom.
Great companies stop doing things that don’t work just as often as they try new things or continue doing what they already know to be successful.

I recently read an outstanding book by Marshall Goldsmith called What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. This applies to us because many ways we have successfully done business in the past will not work for us in the future. We need to pay our bills, but there is more to building a great company than just writing grants. That is why 75% of you said that you would not be with the company in five years!

I also read another book called Execution: The Art of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy. He points out (and we need to listen to this): the main reason companies fall short is a failure to execute. In companies that fail to execute, there is a lot of talk and planning and little or no action. Too many leaders fool themselves into thinking their companies are well-run and falsely believe they are very good leaders and managers, when in reality they are not. Ineffective leaders use the excuse, “Our strategy will take time to produce results!” Execution is the main difference between successful companies and their less successful competitors. Leaders who create execution cultures design strategies that are more roadmaps than rigid paths. Successful organizations are simply about getting things done. Execution is a systematic process of rigorously discussing hows and whats, questioning and debating, making prompt decisions, tenaciously following through, and ensuring accountability. It must be the key element of any great company’s culture.

The bottom line is that all of you have expressed a strong desire to change our form of leadership and the way we do things. You said you wanted us to communicate better, be more involved in the decision-making process, make more money, make faster decisions, and execute projects more efficiently.

We plan to do just that. We have made some strides, including:

Increasing annual carryover of leave from 60 to 80 hours a year.
Increasing salaries to near industry standards.
Professional development will be a key focus in 2008. I would like to form a committee to help provide input.
I would like to see us develop an advancement process where we do not have to follow the classical hierarchy. We need to examine how you can make more money or accept new roles. I need your input on this.
Profit sharing was not implemented, but I think you understand better now from our earlier presentation. Be patient. It will come.
Security is under control. We are planning to install security cameras, you have been trained to use mace, and we have a system now to help each other. We have installed a door that can only be opened by code at the top of the stairway and posted signs to warn away intruders.

Now, I want to go into the vision for the future. First, I promise you nothing. Our Vice Presidents have been coaching me to ensure that whatever I say, we do. So, when you return from the holidays, know that I can only promise you change. But you will have to help me decide what that change looks like and help ensure that we execute. For it will take all of us as one to raise this firm into what you want it to be.

III. My Vision for the Future

I will spell out where I want us to go, but I want to turn my vision into our vision. So, you should see this as the first of many steps to create that vision. Our consultant’s role is to help us assemble the vision and strategic plans and then implement them.

Leadership

We must expedite our decision-making process to execute better.
Leaders’ workloads will be reduced so they have the time to lead, coach, and mentor.
Leaders need to learn to delegate and trust, and staff needs to say, “I can help you!” It is a two-way street.
Leaders will solicit input, discuss issues with you, and then make prompt decisions. We need to learn that good decisions today are better than possibly perfect decisions tomorrow (as World War II General George Patton said). I want all of you to push us to make prompt decisions.
We need to track projects better and assign realistic target dates. Then, all of us should hold our feet to the fire.
Everyone in our organization should be treated like leaders, owners, and partners.
Division leaders will be allowed more freedom to run their divisions, with minimal interference. They will report directly to me.
Leaders need to give you ongoing feedback, coaching, and mentoring on a one-on-one basis and as groups. I would like to see each leader meet with each employee at least quarterly. I want all of you to push for this. Leaders need to develop processes that give them the time to coach, mentor, and perform.
I will meet with everyone monthly (in person or by conference call) to address any issues or questions you may have. The company as a whole will become more open to questions, comments, or challenges and you do not have to be afraid to say anything.
I would like to see each division have weekly meetings and/or conference calls where everyone checks in to discuss strategy and briefly go over what everyone is doing.
Leadership titles will be scrapped and leadership positions redefined. All future senior leaders will be on more of an equal footing. Bureaucracy and hierarchy will be eliminated. I will act as a strong CEO, but I will be just one of the senior leaders.
Based on discussions with TEG staff and my observations, I am promoting Joel to Vice President of TEG. Let’s congratulate him on a job well done! However, the title of Vice President will be short-lived because titles will be changing once our needs assessment has been completed. I have worked with our co-employer to explore different options as we restructure our company.
I want to build a strong leadership team so that if something happens to me, there will not be a president, but rather a management team that will run the company.

Fun

We will have more fun and celebrate our victories. The ELC Committee will have a budget of $3,000 in 2008 to be shared between Columbia and Atlanta. They will do as they please with very limited supervision from me.

Accountability

We need to build more accountability into everything we do with our customers and ourselves. The customer support model that Dan and his team are proposing will go a long way!
I want us to conduct a simple survey of our grant and evaluation customers no later than April 2008. From now on, we will conduct annual customer satisfaction surveys.
We need to complete our strategic planning by April 2008.
We need a clear road map of where we are going and how to get there. Yes, there are a lot of unknowns, but we need to plan based on what we do know.

Fringe Benefits

While many companies are cutting back on fringe benefits, ours will remain the same.

Being Proactive

We need to work harder at predicting problems before they occur. I am tired of hearing about the “ox in the ditch!”
We need to predict and deal with threats early on. We just cannot stick our heads in the sand and hope that everything will work out. We need to hope for the best but prepare for the worst.
The new customer support model may help us in reducing fires by pinpointing problems while they are still small.

Efficiency

We need to develop employee performance reviews that match job descriptions and are customized for each employee.
Our new copier will arrive on 1/11/08 and our old Docutech will leave on 1/30/08.
Individuals will be able to make their own travel plans. Lori will train you in the near future, and she will still make large group travel plans for things like conferences.
We will stop scheduling and then cancelling meetings.
We must learn from our mistakes and turn them into learning opportunities. Our culture must be one where members feel comfortable bringing mistakes out into the open and then conducting autopsies without blame. Once we learn from failures, however, we need to ensure that they do not happen again!
We want to create a culture in this company so that anyone can say anything they want without fear.
We will be opening a new office in Atlanta, Georgia.

New Opportunities

While we need to focus on activities that we do best, are passionate about, and are the most profitable, we are too dependent on the US Department of Education. We need to find new non-USDOE grants to pursue, even if they are smaller.
We want to venture into Tennessee and Florida as our next focus.

Better Communications

We will do a better job of asking for input and letting folks know what is going on in the company. That includes announcing grant awards as we learn about them.
If you are in a meeting and need a decision, do not hesitate to call me so that we can expedite the decision.
You will have full access to me and may ask me directly if you have any questions.
There will be less e-mail and more face-to-face communication.
You will have one set of policies.
We will eliminate bureaucracy wherever possible.
Off-site staff will be included on building-wide e-mails to keep them in the loop.

Being More Charitable

Once a quarter, staff will be able to dedicate one day to charity work in teams. I would like to have volunteers to help design the program.

Our Culture

From everything I have heard from a variety of different sources and methods, my understanding is that these are the words that you would like to describe our values: Ethical, honest, winning, open, humble, strong communications, sharing information, preferably face-to-face, team-focused, customer-driven, accessible, freedom from micromanagement, life-long learning, helping others, charitable, proactive, efficient, effective, entrepreneurial, some structure with lots of freedom, caring about one another, ongoing feedback on performance, good work ethics, lots of opportunities and challenges, high-quality work that we can be proud of, high but realistic standards, different, sensitive, and above all, you want to know WHY decisions are made!

Conclusion

Don’t say that you will sit back and wait for my actions. You need to be an equal part of the solution and must help to create those outcomes. If you want action, then make it happen!

My role is to get the train moving and then keep it going. Your job is to tell me where the train needs to go and then get on board! We need to create a company that is not dependent on any one person. It is important that we know where we are going and how to get there, and it is imperative that we set aside some time to plan (with everyone’s input). We need this planning to result in measurable objectives and target dates. The time for talk and making excuses is over. Now, let’s rock and roll!