Build A Corporate Culture That Drives Revenue Growth

By The Business Solutions Network

This MSP saw staff performance, innovation, and revenue improve significantly after focusing on its corporate culture.

Incorporating a 360-degree review process has been a key to inspiring leadership and accountability within her company, says Jaime Pavel, COO at PavelComm.

Photo By Holland Studios

whether you are an Apple fanboy/fangirl or not, there’s a good chance you’ve read an article or book — or seen a movie — celebrating the late Steve Jobs’ success and wondered how you might adopt some of his thinking. After all, “Good artists copy; great artists steal,” Jobs once said, quoting Picasso. Actually, many IT solutions providers share more in common with Jobs than they may realize, especially when it comes to managing employees and their approach to customer service. In a 1997 interview with Business Week, Jobs said, “A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” In other words, don’t waste your time and energy conducting opinion polls and other market research — people don’t know what they want anyway. While this line of thinking proved successful with the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, solutions providers like PavelComm, which sells voice, IT, and cabling services, have found that listening to employees and customers and getting their feedback is the key to innovations and revenue growth.

Millennial Employee Challenges Reveal Need For Change
According to Jaime Pavel, COO at PavelComm, the impetus for change at her company started a couple of years ago after several managers raised concerns about the decline in employee morale. “We realized that a lot of the unhappiness was coming from our millennial workers, and our preconceived notions about how to fix the problem were not working,” she says. “After recognizing that these workers’ motivations were different from many of their older counterparts, we looked outside our organization for assistance.”

PavelComm’s research led to the discovery and use of AVA (Activity Vector Analysis), a personality test developed by experts in the behavioral sciences of personality, motivation, and psychometrics, which is the science of measuring mental capacities and processes. What Pavel says is most surprising about the test is that while consisting of just three questions and taking participants less than 20 minutes to complete, the insights it reveals are invaluable. “The first two questions ask, ‘How do you see yourself?’ and ‘How do you think others perceive you?’ and participants can choose from among 50 possible answers such as ‘humble’ or ‘arrogant,’” she says. “The third question asks participants to write a brief description about themselves. After employees complete the test, we can gain a better understanding of the types of jobs they are best-suited for, along with what motivates them.”

The AVA system was developed to reveal four specific areas of behavior: assertiveness, sociability, tranquility, and tractability. Based on this model, the assessment measures the participant’s “self-concept,” the behavior the person is projecting to be successful in the current role, and the expected behaviors of the individual based on the environmental conditions of the job for which the candidate is being considered. The assessment also measures the individual’s energy level (i.e., stamina), and the person’s level of conscious restraint.

Pavel says the AVA system also provides a measurement of the behavioral demands of specific positions in the workplace, which has been a big help in matching the employee candidates to the right jobs. “There is a lot of time and money that goes into getting employees certified on various technologies, plus the time it takes to learn customers’ personalities and business environments,” she says. “If you’re investing resources into people who are not mapped to do the job you need them to, it’s ultimately going to waste everyone’s time. Using the AVA system has been helpful at ensuring we only hire an individual who is a fit for a particular job role.”

While “getting the right people in the right seats on the bus” is an important part of the equation, it is equally important to know what motivates that person, says Pavel. “This is an area where the AVA system really differentiates itself from other personality tests,” she says. “With this test, we can quickly learn, for example, that this person won’t appreciate being given feedback in front of their peers. Or personal recognition is as valuable to that person as a raise would be to the next person.”

The feedback PavelComm has received from the AVA test has led to some noticeable business changes over the past couple of years, says Pavel. “We have learned that gourmet coffee is a big motivator for a lot of our employees. So, for special individual/group rewards, we treat the entire company to Starbucks. We’ve also brought in several kinds of coffees, allowed employees to sample and rate their favorite ones, and we replaced our previous coffee with the more popular selections. We also started incorporating quarterly anonymous surveys asking employees, ‘What would you love to see at PavelComm?’ The ideas we receive range from fun party ideas to process improvements.”

Over the past year and a half, Pavel says her company started implementing a 360-degree review process, too, which allows employees to review one another as well as their managers. “We believe too many companies don’t give employees a chance to speak up,” she says. “The 360-degree review inspires leadership and accountability as opposed to the more traditional management style of ‘boss and subordinate.’ Since adopting this newer model, we’ve seen managers become more in tune with other employees’ personalities and setting time aside to get to know them as individuals.”

Pavel says customers have benefitted from her company’s change in management style, too. “For the past several years, we’ve conducted brief surveys every time we close out a service ticket, asking for feedback on how the problem was resolved,” she says. “We used to get little feedback. But, after focusing on improving our employee morale, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in positive feedback from customers. Now, we regularly receive customer testimonials that go above and beyond mere numerical ratings. Overall, we are averaging 98 percent positive feedback on client surveys, which is way higher than we received in the past.”

Offer Personal, Flexible, Comprehensive Managed Services
In addition to becoming more in tune with its employees’ personalities and needs, PavelComm takes a similar approach to its customers, using quarterly business reviews and other feedback points to shape its offerings. Changes to its managed services program is just one example. “We don’t force our customers into a full managed services model with unlimited remote and on-site support,” says Pavel. “Some of our customers still prefer to prepay for blocks of support hours each month, and others may want us to fully manage their voice system but may opt to pay for time and materials on their IT network. Currently, less than half of our customers are on a fully managed services program, but the bottom line is that our customers are happy, and we’re achieving steady growth. Why mess with that?”

Although PavelComm’s decision to listen to employees’ and customers’ feedback may fly in the face of Steve Jobs’ Machiavellian approach to business, there’s good reason to believe PavelComm made the better choice. An article in Forbes, titled “Five Dangerous Lessons to Learn from Steve Jobs,” further corroborates this point. “Don’t allow Steve Jobs’ success to lure you into adopting (or accepting) his management style. That’s the route to alienating coworkers and stoking workplace discontent, without delivering any of Steve Jobs’ magical results. He was Steve Jobs, and you are not.”