You’re the Boss Blog: When Employees Wonder What’s Going On

Building the Team

Hiring, firing, and training in a new era.

“Bryan, we don’t know what’s going on anymore.”

Hazel, one of our best floral designers and one of the sweetest people I know, was sharing her frustration with me. She had joined H.Bloom to be part of a fast-growing start-up. But because we had grown so fast, and I wasn’t communicating effectively, she no longer felt part of the team.

It used to be easy. When we operated only in New York, the entire team – eight to 10 people – would gather on the comfortable couch and chairs that we had splurged on right after we started the company. We’d each grab a beer and have an informal debriefing of the company’s goings-on: what worked well and went wrong this week, our plans for next week, and things that we could do to improve the overall company. Each person knew exactly what was happening, and as a result, felt like an integral part of the team.

Then, we started to grow quickly, opening in Washington, Chicago, San Francisco and, most recently, Dallas. Last year, our headcount nearly doubled, growing to 75 employees from 40 by the end of 2012. While each person who has joined H.Bloom has done so to be part of a start-up, we could no longer sit around on the same couch and talk about the business.

I am sure Hazel’s frustration was representative of the feelings of many within the company, and I was disappointed in myself, because I was failing at one of a chief executive’s most important jobs: communication.

A couple of years ago, Fred Wilson, the well-known venture capitalist, wrote a post on his blog called “What a C.E.O. Does.” He said it was simple:

A C.E.O. does only three things. Sets the overall vision and strategy of the company and communicates it to all stakeholders. Recruits, hires and retains the very best talent for the company. Makes sure there is always enough cash in the bank.”

To keep up with our rapid expansion, I needed to step up my game in communication. So here’s what I did:

1. A weekly e-mail update. I started sending Bloom’s Bulletin to the entire company every Monday. The bulletin has four parts. First, there’s always an important topic that I discuss at length. In one e-mail, I talked about one of our restaurant customers in New York, one of the best restaurants in the world. The general manager there does an otherworldly job of motivating the entire staff to achieve an unparalleled level of  service. And just as this restaurant views every course as if it were the only course, we view every delivery as if it were the only delivery. Second, I choose a flower or plant of the week. This is an easy way to get the entire company up to speed on our product offerings. Third, I provide complete transparency on the financials of our business: revenue by market, gross margin, etc. Fourth and finally, I enumerate general happenings in the business: new hires, departures, recent media coverage, a new initiative, etc.
2. A monthly all-company meeting. I started hosting an all-company meeting through a conference call from a different city each month. This gives me an opportunity to communicate directly with everyone in the company at the same time, while also giving me a chance to be with a different market’s team each month. In the presentation, which usually lasts an hour or an hour and a half, I present the previous month’s financials and progress and talk about strategic initiatives. Then, I turn the call over to someone else on our management team to talk about sales, marketing, finance, technology, talent or operations.
3. A monthly local team meeting. I use the time immediately after the all-company meeting to chat with the team in that local market. It usually lasts 45 minutes to one hour and is a great forum for answering questions. The all-company meeting tends to be a one-way presentation, whereas this local team meeting is an opportunity to engage in real dialogue.
4. Office hours. Every month, my assistant sets up 20-minute sessions, using Google Docs, for me to interact with individual employees. They can sign up in an available slot, and then ask me questions directly, give feedback or pass along ideas. It’s a great way for me to have some one-on-one time with people, and it is where I receive the best feedback. It also provides me with a good sense of the overall morale within the company.

This communication strategy will continue to evolve and still needs to improve. At the end of 2012, our head of talent distributed an employee survey to determine what we needed to work on in 2013. We were excited to get 100 percent participation in the survey but concerned to find that communication was still an issue for our employees. We scored a 3.7 out of 5.

The challenge we are still struggling with is communicating from one market to another. We rolled out Yammer a year ago to foster this communication, and it works well for the day-to-day celebration of individual employee or market successes. However, it was not providing the forum within which one market could learn from another. So, we are now trying a regular video conference with all of the market managers, where they can ask questions of each other, but equally important, begin to build a relationship so they feel comfortable reaching out to one another directly whenever a question arises.

Eventually, when we are in 25 cities, the needs for communication will be different from what they are today, when we are in five. The only thing I know to do is to ask for feedback continuously from the team, and make changes when necessary.

I end my bulletin each week with the same sentence: “Please send me an e-mail or call me on my cellphone with questions, comments, feedback or suggestions.” I promised Hazel and the rest of the team that I would work very, very hard to communicate effectively. It’s my job.

Bryan Burkart is a founder of H.Bloom. You can follow him on Twitter.

Article source: http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/24/when-employees-wonder-whats-going-on/?partner=rss&emc=rss