Mail Call

Managers at Paramount Flag Company spend time each morning reading the company's mail.

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JUNE 1989

Want to keep close tabs on just how your company's doing? You're probably delegating away one valuable source of information: the daily mail.

Don't underestimate it, say the folks at Paramount Flag Co., a $1.2-million San Francisco flag manufacturer. Each morning the seven managers gather and open each piece. "There's a definite pleasure in seeing what's in the envelope," says Chris-tophe Morin, Paramount's president. "If it's a purchase order, great. If it's a big bill from a supplier, we'll look at why it's so high. If someone's returning a $2 flag, everybody understands how important details are to the future of the company."

But isn't the managers' time really better spent on other matters? Nope, Morin says. "It only takes half an hour, 45 minutes at most. And we never have to have formal meetings, because we get together every day." The idea, by the way, came from Paramount's parent company, Doublet, a $30-million French manufacturer where executives still chip in every morning at mail time.

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