This is the first interview of the series with managers who have transformed organizations using the principles of management by responsibility.
Jody Colley has been the publisher of East Bay Express, an alternative weekly newspaper and website, for a little over one year. Prior to this position she was the ad director for the SF Bay Guardian.
It's an understatement to say that transforming a publishing company culture in the middle of the most disruptive markets in memory is challenging or difficult. It's seems damn near impossible. It's made especially difficult given the fact that the East Bay Express was owned by Village Voice Media before being purchased by the current owners who recruited Jody for the job. Good choice in my opinion as you'll see when you hear what she has to say.
She was shy about submitting a photo, but upon first impression she looks like Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer) on The Office with that sweet, honest, Midwest demeanor. She quickly reveals compassion, dedication, determination, intelligence, creativity and a keen understanding of human psychology. (She had no comment about Michael Scott or Jim Halpert.)
We spoke recently from her office in Emeryville, CA.
Q: What are the primary values that determine staff interrelationship behavior in your company today?
Jody: Respect. Every employee is considered a valuable asset to the company’s success, no matter their experience or status within the company’s hierarchy. Every position in the company is considered equally important; without each individual’s contribution, we could all potentially fail at meeting our goals.
Diversity. When hiring, I look for people who are different from the staff already in place, who break our current mold. As a small business, I want each of our employees to bring their unique backgrounds, experiences and personal interests to the company so we are aggregating everyone’s knowledge and skills. Diversity plays an essential role in our ability to represent our company in the best possible way to our consumers. Diversity also helps us overcome unexpected challenges, where we have personnel, regardless of their position or experience, with unique expertise to lead us through specific challenges.
Fear-Free Employment. I do not believe in using fear as a management tactic. Using fear as a cattle prod to achieve your objectives means, as a manager, that you’ve failed in all other options to motivate employees, or that the employee in question is not a good fit for your company. Also related to fear free employment, I firmly believe in promoting an environment where employees are given enough leeway to make mistakes. Obviously, they need to learn from those mistakes and avoid repeating them, but most of us learn or have our greatest successes come from initial failures.
Purpose and Power. I believe in equipping staff with both a sense of purpose (why are we doing this) and power (what’s my role in this). Employees should feel fully vested in the product, which will give them a sense of pride in their work as well as the work of others within the company. They need to own their role in the process. Once they do, they begin to manage themselves, and find greater reward and confidence in their work performance. And when they believe the company’s overall goals are truly beneficial to its consumers, they have a greater sense of pride in the work that they do.
Communication and Education. It is critical that you continue feeding the minds of your employees with new information. The more they learn about the company or your industry, the more productive and well rounded they are as employees. The more that employees understand your business goals and challenges, they more involved they become in helping you succeed. I am a firm believer in cross training, in understanding jobs within the company outside of one’s own responsibilities. Similarly, learning as much about your consumers’ worlds as you can makes you a stronger representative of the company. But education offers greater rewards than just increased productivity, it is also key to retention of employees, and advancement within your organization. It’s not enough for employees to know what to do, they need to understand why they are doing it. Armed with this information, employees will often find more efficient ways to improve the work process.
Q: Did those values exist initially when you began with the company?
Jody: For the most part, I didn't see evidence of these values when I began with the company.
Q: Describe the values that existed with the previous owners when you came in.
Making money was the only value that seemed to exist. Making money is essential to success, but if you do not have other corporate values in place, it can be a very short-sighted way to run a company. An employee’s only value might be a number that’s on a sales board. Hitting that number may ensure you keep your job, and may even reward you financially, but for many people that is not enough to make a long term commitment to an organization. And without other values, employees could be tempted or encouraged to cut corners, to make decisions that help them immediately, but hurt the company in the long run. It is not just employees that could suffer, relationships with your consumers could be put in jeopardy if your company’s priority is always what makes us the most money, today.
Evidence of the failures of the previous management’s tactics were obvious. Employee turnover was radically high (on average one person per week verses almost none now), and there were hardly any strong relationships built in the community.
Q: How did you know what values you wanted to see in your company?
Jody: I wish I could say it was getting a Management and Human Relations degree from a Nazarene University in the Heart Land that taught me sound business values, since that would justify the very expensive tuition I paid. However, I believe I am applying very human values, ones that instinctively seem right. Most people have a good moral compass which guides how they live their every day lives. The business world shouldn’t be any different. People shouldn’t have to step out of character when they show up at work each day.
Q: Did you sense that the staff wanted the same thing?
Jody: At first, I honestly was not sure. Because they had been previously exposed to a “fear” environment, I got very little feedback. They were either afraid to communicate with me at all or afraid to have a dissenting opinion. I forged ahead, knowing most people would eventually respond positively, and confident that those who did not were likely not best suited for our company in the long term. I also knew I had a lot of work to do to earn their trust, and to show them that the new ways of running the company were effective.
Q: How did you deal with the differences?
Jody: People needed to learn that the company was as much theirs as it was mine. If someone had a unique interest, like art, they could be involved in seeing our company reach out to the arts community. If they were interested in environmental responsibility, they could be involved in positioning our company in the Green community. I can only take leadership so far, but eventually I have to empower them and trust them. In return, they reciprocate the trust, and are more supportive of my efforts as I am of theirs.
Unfortunately there were a few employees who never successfully made the transition from the old ownership to the new ownership. They tended to only be focused on immediate rewards, did not operate well as a team member, and seemed disinterested in playing a larger role in the company. In fact, the team as a whole did not fully gel until these individuals parted ways with the company.
Q: How did you initiate the conversation about what you wanted to do to change things?
Jody: I first needed to learn a conversation was necessary. I had never worked in an environment like theirs, so I took for granted that people were already of the same thinking as me. Once I understood the magnitude of change that was needed, I incorporated “change” into every conversation, every meeting, and every decision I made.
For example, our company offered extraordinarily poor customer service. It would not have been uncommon for our clients to have experienced frustratingly high turnover in their assigned account executives (to the point where they had no idea who to call for help), incorrect billing on their accounts, errors in their advertising where the onerous was on them to catch, and dishonest representation of the product they were buying. In this case, the change needed was to instill sense of pride in our work and love of our customers. Anything short of that was a failure, and morally equivalent to stealing their money. I had to reinforce the new idea that we haven’t sold anything until the ad is successfully delivered, the client is happy, and we’ve received prompt payment. We also strive to produce the best quality product that we’re capable of, and once we do, we critique what we could have done better the next time. We measure success by whether or not we’ve secured a long-term relationship with a client.
Q: How was that received?
Jody: It was a relief to the employees, who were previously put in the uncomfortable position of constantly handling client complaints, or being instructed to be dishonest with their clients. Given a choice, people would much rather prefer to develop relationships with clients much like they do friends, based on trust and honesty.
Q: What was the second step after you began introducing new ways of thinking about culture?
Jody: It actually took a full year to change the corporate environment. Much of it was discovery on my end. When I would identify a behavior that concerned me, I would talk to the individual to understand what they were thinking. Often times I would get the answer, “I don’t know, that’s just the way we’ve always done it”. So, I learned that my job was to get people to really think about their decisions, why are they doing that, and what’s the long-term repercussions of that decision. It wasn’t enough to answer a simple question or quickly fix a problem, I wanted to make sure the employees truly understood what they were doing.
Q: What were the most challenging new things you introduced? (Challenging from the perspective of designing the ideas and articulating them to staff.)
Jody: It was (and still somewhat is) difficult going from a very departmentalized organization to one that is much more integrated. We have a small office within one large open space, where every department is within earshot of the other, but there was rarely any interaction, and certainly no understanding or cooperation, between departments. They had different managers, different meetings, and different goals. Each department was at odds with the other. I had to collapse that vertically aligned organizational structure, flatten it out, and shake it up.
Q: How much was the staff involved in creating new systems and ideas?
Jody: All I could do is create a new environment, but it was up to the staff to embrace it. It took a little time, but every month that passed, you could see old walls between departments start to vanish. We instituted monthly staff meetings, where people could share what was going on in their worlds. We started weekly management meetings, to do the same. We created joint outings, such as parties or BBQ’s, to bring the entire staff together in a relaxed (not forced) environment.
When problems arose, instead of blaming someone for messing up, they are asking what broke down in the process. We worked together to improve training or create new procedures to prevent it from reoccurring.
The results of this improved cross-department communication are very apparent. More than ever, we’re all working toward common goals, and our product seems cohesive and well executed on all levels on the company. There is relatively no “in fighting” in the organization, as we are all aware of each other’s limitations, and working together to overcome them.
Q: How do you gain their trust?
Jody: You have to be consistent, extremely fair, patient, communicative, open to adopting other people’s ideas, and honest. You have to show them you have both a good mind (qualified for the job at hand) and a good heart (strong character), by which you’re going to make the best decisions for the company at all times. You also have to trust them, in order to get trust in return.
We also created a very employee friendly work environment, giving our staff free gym membership, organic fruits and vegetables, bicycles, access to free tickets and other goodies. We also were diligent to make sure the there weren’t any weak links in the team. If there was someone not performing or not suited for their position, we removed them. It only takes one bad employee to ruin it for the rest, and create a less than ideal work environment.
We also incorporate the staff’s input into some of our biggest decisions. For example, right now, we’re soliciting input on a new company Mission Statement, as well as a new office location. When they see their ideas taken seriously and incorporated into how the company is operated, they start to have tremendous trust that the company takes them seriously as employees.
Q: What are some things you would have done differently?
Jody: I probably could have acted faster to remove some employees in the beginning months that were obviously not going to fit into the new corporate culture (and ultimately they all eventually left the company on their own after coming to the same conclusion).
Q: What progress have you seen in the first year?
Jody: We have laid an amazing foundation from which to grow. There isn’t one employee on staff that isn’t very good at their jobs, very committed to the company, and excited about any opportunity to improve and learn. We went from having tremendous turnover to rarely having any, which means we can be improving upon our skills rather than just expending our energy on training new hires. Clients have noticed an incredible improvement in our product and in their relationship with our company. They have a sense of confidence in doing business with us again. With this foundation, we should expect exponential improvements over time.
Q: Where has there been less progress than you expected?
Jody: I like to say that we are the “biggest little company there is”. It’s an exaggeration, but it means for a small company with just over a year of new ownership/structure, we’ve accomplished some pretty amazing things. I really couldn’t say that there is an area where we haven’t progressed as fast as hoped. That’s not to say there aren’t areas of improvement, because there always will be.
Q: What’s the next step for you?
Jody: Now that we have a solid foundation from which to build, I need to keep the education going. I plan on doing a lot of staff training over the next year. We have lined up guest speakers from various industries, advertising agencies, online sales training, and much more.
Though we have begun the process of getting involved with various business groups in our territory, we still have much work to do in this area. All of our employees should be actively involved with a targeted business or community group within the next year. Not only is that a good way for us to connect to the community, but it also helps us gain experience beyond what we can learn in house.
We need to make sure our corporation is on the right track. We are going Green, and are looking into energy efficiencies like running on solar power. And we want to build upon our commitment to our community, being a good corporate citizen and giving back in any way we can.
And we want to make lots of money.
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