Jennie Fisher
“Change is constant, and you have to anticipate and accept it.” That’s how Jennie Fisher opened her roundtable discussion entitled Leading for Innovative Results at the Business Technology Association’s (BTA’s) Grand Slam event in Boston earlier this month. Fisher is the senior VP/general manager for the Office Equipment Group at GreatAmerica Financial Services Corp., and she invited senior managers from leading dealers to weigh in on the topic.
Company culture as a driving force for innovation was a central theme for the discussion. “Culture and innovation can be hard to define,” said Fisher. She added that it’s important that companies work on culture and leverage it in a way that encourages innovation, emphasizing communication and collaboration–creating an environment where employees feel free to share opinions and ideas.
Joe Berrigan
Fisher started by asking her panelists what words best describe their culture. “Family” was the one word that all shared, and that idea extended beyond staff to customers as well. The consensus was that if employees treated each other and their customers like family, everything else you want in a culture follows–passion, accountability, energy, and a fun atmosphere. “The words [we use to describe our business] show how we feel, that we like being there: have fun, passion, family first,” said Joe Berrigan, senior VP of business development at WPS.
When asked who is responsible for company culture, all the panelists agreed that senior management needed to lead, listen, and set an example. “We want to get feedback voluntarily,” said David Scibetta, owner, executive VP, and CIO at CopierFax Business Technologies. “You need to live and breathe our company culture so people come to you. I’m not looking to see if people are working. I’m looking to see how it feels.”
Berrigan says that it’s important for management to be open and good at communicating so everyone understands the goals and challenges the company faces. WPS, for example, has an open-book policy where management reviews company performance with all its staff and talks about meeting its KPIs. WPS also has “weekly huddles” where “everyone is visible and hearing the same message.”
Casey Lowery
“Culture is a living thing,” said Casey Lowery, director of sales at Applied Imaging. He said his father, the owner of Applied Imaging, owns the culture. “He’s set the stage.” Sometimes, that means making hard decisions about people. “We’ve deselected some people, but we’ve also attracted the right people [because of our culture],” he said. Lowery also emphasized the power of saying “thank you” to employees.
One way Applied Imaging says thanks is to take employees out for lunch to a nice restaurant for their anniversary. During that lunch, the employees can ask any question they want about the company or pitch their own ideas. “Some of our best ideas have come from there,” said Lowery.
David Scibetta
Working to constantly improve the company can also have a positive effect on culture and inspire innovation. Scibetta cited the example of “eating our own dogfood” and moving the company to the Forza platform. The company has also recently taken on new product lines such as the Muratec label printers and Konica Minolta robots. “Our culture is helping us move forward,” said Scibetta.
Berrigan said that the hiring process is crucial to maintaining company culture. WPS diligently vets candidates with strict interview process and testing. All the stakeholders discuss the interviews and results before a decision is made.”We’re confident that when we bring a person on, [he or she] aligns up as best as possible. We have very low turnover.”
