Inc. staff

CEO's Notebook

 

CEO's Notebook

Report from the 1997 Inc. 500 Conference
So you weren't invited to this year's Inc. 500 conference, in Philadelphia? Don't take it personally. The invitation-only conference honors companies that have made Inc.'s annual list of the fastest-growing privately held U.S. companies. What did you miss? Plenty of hobnobbing and lots of celebration. But when you get that many smart businesspeople together, you're sure to pick up new insights as well. Here's a sampling of the collective wisdom and whimsy of this year's speakers and attendees.

BENCHMARK
One big happy family
This year we asked Inc. 500 conference attendees about their priorities and people-management skills. The vast majority felt they treated employees fairly. So who's getting the short end of the stick? Seems as if it's the families of entrepreneurs. Forty-eight percent of the CEOs surveyed admitted to putting their companies ahead of their families. --Stephanie Gruner

DO YOU AGREE? STRONGLY AGREE STRONGLY DISAGREE
Source: Survey of 180 of the attendees of the 1997 Inc. 500 Conference. Figures may not add up to 100% because of rounding.
5 4 3 2 1
I am fair to all my employees. 69% 27% 4% 0% 0%
My employees love me. 4% 33% 47% 14% 1%
I drive my employees crazy. 6% 15% 27% 31% 21%
I tend to put my company ahead of my family. 17% 31% 20% 16% 13%
I would cut short a meeting with my best customer to get home to celebrate my wedding anniversary. 22% 21% 0% 23% 15%

What can I do to increase employee participation?
Maybe the problem is your communication style. Ralph Stayer, CEO and owner of Johnsonville Foods, a sausage manufacturer in Kohler, Wis., was trying to encourage employees to take more initiative. So he began listening to himself talk--literally. He started tape-recording his staff meetings. When he listened to the tapes, Stayer heard himself saying distinctly unempowering things, along the lines of "What do you think? Here's what I think." Painful as it was to play back his own words, Stayer says the tape recordings helped him understand and change his management style. --Susan Greco

It gets stressful here. Any suggestions for blowing off steam?

Laura Henderson, president of Prospect Associates, in Rockville, Md., uses toys. That's right: toys. Each staff member regularly contributes inexpensive items, like squeaky toys and fairy wands, to a centrally located bin. Stressed-out staffers at the $14-million consulting company can help themselves or award a plaything to a harried colleague. (Items generally return to the box.) Henderson finds that even she needs to dip into the bin periodically. "One day I was feeling a bit off," she says. "So I found a gold-glittered top hat and a big gold scarf and wore them for the entire day. I know I felt better, and I think other people felt better, too." --Christopher Caggiano

How can I turn the governor into an advertising prop?
One character we'll not soon forget is Jeremy Kraus, one of five young entrepreneurs whom Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge honored at a special awards ceremony. Dapper and articulate beyond his 21 years, Kraus is the founder of Jer-emy's Cookies & Creams, a Philadelphia start-up that makes novelty ice cream. The four other honorees were happy enough just to have their pictures taken with the governor. Not Kraus. When his moment on center stage came, he whipped out several Jeremy's Cookies & Creams baseball caps. The governor gamely donned one. The photo was snapped. Kraus exited in triumph--presumably with a handsome new addition to his marketing materials. --Jerry Useem

How can I avoid layoffs during our slow season?
Lancaster Laboratories, an analytical-services company in Lancaster, Pa., has developed an alternative to seasonal layoffs. Lancaster has an environmental division that is slow from January through March, when winter conditions make it tough to take water and soil samples. Instead of laying off workers, the company has a formal arrangement with a local temp agency to provide about a dozen affected employees with work in the off months. The employees work for the agency but stay on Lancaster's payroll and keep their benefits. Lancaster, which has roughly $35 million in sales, gets back most of the costs from the temp agency. "It's worth it because of the cost of training new people," says Carol Hess, Lancaster's executive vice-president of administrative services. "In 36 years, we've never laid anyone off for lack of work." - -Susan Greco

Help! I can't keep up with my business reading.
Want to learn how to get through a book a week while running your business? Listen to what conference speaker Lanny Goodman advises. "You've got to expose yourself to ideas. Nothing's more important," observes Goodman, the owner of consulting company Management Technologies, in Albuquerque. "But there are too many of them, right? So don't read, skim--and I mean fast. Trust that if you come across something that's relevant to you, you'll be sucked in and get the detail." --Stephanie Gruner

The Most-Admired Entrepreneurs
Attendees of this year's Inc. 500 Conference were asked to list the three active entrepreneurs whom they most admire. Not surprisingly, fellow Inc. 500 alumnus Bill Gates was by far the most popular choice among those surveyed. Here's who topped the list. (Mentioned, but not in the top five, were some usual suspects, like the now inactive Sam Walton and the hyperactive Michael Dell.) --Stephanie Gruner

Bill Gates 59%
Ted Turner 8%
Steve Jobs 5%
Ross Perot 4%
Wayne Huizenga 3%

Source: Survey of 180 attendees of the 1997 Inc. 500 Conference.

'I'm sorry. Do I know you?'
Ken Hendricks, president and CEO of ABC Supply, a building-supply company in Beloit, Wis., was concerned that his far-flung employees didn't all know one another. That's not surprising: the company now has 2,600 workers in 184 locations around the country. So Hendricks started printing an annual company yearbook, not unlike the leather-bound tomes high schools put out. At ABC Supply each volume includes department pictures, employee lists, and each office's goals for the upcoming year. Employees eagerly collect additional volumes, says Hendricks, and even sign one another's books. With employees scattered in offices throughout the nation, he says, "it's nice for them to have faces to put to the phone voices." The yearbooks initially cost the company around $40 a copy, but as Hendricks has printed more and more, the cost has dropped to about $22. Still a tidy sum, but Hendricks reports that "employees love them. It's an investment in the culture of the company." --Christopher Caggiano

Off the Record
Overheard at this year's Inc. 500 Conference . . .

"Ask yourself every day, 'Will what I'm doing today change the way we do business tomorrow?' If you can't answer yes at least 90% of the time, your company is headed for trouble."

"Customers don't really know what they want. They just buy millions of them when they see it."

"Ultimately, your company's internal culture is your only sustainable competitive advantage. Everything else is transitory."

"Being an entrepreneur is like setting your hair on fire and putting it out with a ball peen hammer. The fire's out, but you have to live with the lumps."

"The world is too big a place to do only one thing all your life."

"I'm willing to eat last, as long as I eat the most."

Resources

ABC SUPPLY, Ken Hendricks, One ABC Pkwy., Beloit, WI 53511; 608-362-7777 108

JEREMY'S COOKIES & CREAMS, Jeremy Kraus, 3741 Walnut St., Box 423, Philadelphia, PA 19104; 800-964-5265 108

LANCASTER LABORATORIES, Carol Hess, P.O. Box 12425, 2425 New Holland Pike, Lancaster, PA 17605-2425; 717-656-2300 108

MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGIES, Lanny Goodman, 5808 McLeod Rd. NE, Suite J, Albuquerque, NM 87109; 505-884-7300; lgoodman@managementtech.com 108

PROSPECT ASSOCIATES, Laura Henderson, 1801 Rockville Pike, Suite 500, Rockville, MD 20852; 301-468-6555 108