Lines Of Communication

An in-house TV station, the ultimate company newsletter, morning sing-alongs -- some CEOs will do just about anything to keep in touch with employees.

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It happened again and again," Linda Paresky remembers. "It still happens. Someone will say, 'My sister works for you,' and I won't know her. You realize then that you don't know everyone's name anymore, and you feel kind of terrible.It used to be a nice cozy family, and now it isn't."

Don't misunderstand. Paresky is not bemoaning her fate. Her company, Crimson Travel Service Inc., has done quite nicely since she and her husband, David, founded it some 21 years ago in Cambridge, Mass. From the two of them and one office, it has grown to more than 550 employees and 28 offices, while sales have risen from $750,000 in its first year to more than $150 million this year.

But, as we all know, growth has its price. What concerns Paresky, and many other founders of growing companies, is the gradual erosion of (in her words) the "web of connectedness" that binds a company together and allows it to prosper. Beyond that, they fear they are becoming too far removed from the day-to-day operation of the business. After all, if you don't know your employees, do you really know your company? Do you hear what you need to hear? More important, perhaps, do your employees hear what they need to hear?

The problem is hardly a new one. Even J. P. Morgan Sr. recognized it, and sought to address it by establishing an open-door policy at his bank. In theory, anyone could approach him; he sat behind glass walls in a back room. The trouble was that he sat there seldom and, when he did, it was in a concentration so deep God Himself would have had trouble getting his attention.

It would be nice to report that technology has created newer and better ways to deal with communications than Morgan's open door. It hasn't. Granted, you can open your door a little wider these days, and to more people, but you still have to be present and available. James Treybig of Tandem Computers Inc., for example, appears on a monthly television program broadcast over the company's in-house TV station; employees around the world watch the show and call in their questions and comments. In a similar vein, Tom Monaghan of Domino's Pizza Inc. maintains toll-free numbers for employees. He also has a monthly "call-in," during which he listens to suggestions and fields complaints for a couple of hours. What makes these systems work, however, is not the high-tech paraphernalia, but the men.

Moreover, you really don't need technology to communicate with employees, even if they are spread out across the land. Many chief executive officers have found ways to do it using techniques as old as the tin lunch pail. What works depends largely on them.

For Robert Darvin, of Scandinavian Design Inc., it's the suggestion box. He distributes special stationery to every employee at his 21-year-old retail furniture company -- the warehouse workers, the executives at corporate headquarters in Natick, Mass., the salespeople in the 70 stores throughout the northeastern United States and in Hawaii. The stationery is intended for one purpose: communicating with the boss. And everyone is expected to use it. "It's a way for people to vent their frustrations," explains Darvin, "say, for instance, if they aren't getting enough of some item that's in big demand. Of course, that's good news, too, in a way -- but you get the idea."

Darvin does not stop there. In an effort to move information the other way, Scandinavian Design has a pair of newsletters -- one bimonthly, the other quarterly. And, lest these fail to do the trick, Darvin spends a fair amount of his own time with employees. Last year, for example, he took about one-fourth of them to Europe. "It wasn't easy," he recalls. "I became a furniture-factory and furniture-design tour guide. But, my God, there were kids we took, kids from the warehouse, who had never been out of their hometown before. It was wonderful to be able to give them the experience."

Darvin's methods are tame, however, compared with those of Arthur E. Morrissette, president and founder of Interstate Van Lines Inc., a $30-million-a-year moving and storage company in Springfield, Va. True, Morrissette puts out a newsletter, called Under the Top Hat -- nothing unusual there. But his principal media are the training session and the sing-along.

The training session is a daily affair, running from 7:30 to 8:30 a.m., during which key managers address the movers and packers on different aspects of the business. The sing-along happens once every couple of weeks. All of the employees meet in the convention hall, under strict orders to mingle, so that they won't think of themselves as separate camps. It's a time to emphasize the team, Morrissette explains, and to recognize individual achievement with awards, cash prizes, and points toward evaluations. It's also a time for singing patriotic songs, not to mention the company anthem:

Work that you do

Is more than just a job.

It's important to keep

A smile on your face.

You are the one

The shipper comes to trust.

You are the image of Interstate.

It must be quite a scene -- more than 200 people sitting around at eight o'clock in the morning belting out those lyrics. But somehow Morrissette manages to pull it off. "We've got a lot of talent here that doesn't show up on the application form," he says. "Why, people leave the meeting humming our song." Evidently, they do more than hum: in 1985 Interstate Van Lines had the highest profit ratio in its industry.

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