I very often get asked how I can work from various places and still run a successful company. The answer is simple, its thanks to the Core and the way decisions are taken at Eging.
Of course I am never away from email too long, that is true, even if I am not in the office or on vacation I am very often working and available online, but still, it was always my goal to have an employee run company and I really feel that I have succeeded in this. Almost every important or strategic decision comes through the Core. I am a member of the Core and even though I have the power to take any decision I want, at these meetings, I am just another participant who argues his view like everyone else (I can hear some of you snickering and saying “yeah right” about now, but it’s true!). Sometimes my view wins, sometimes it doesn’t. We really run it like a democracy and I think this has been one of the keys to the success of Eging. For better or for worse, this is not a company, where I, as the CEO, take all the key decisions. At Eging the burden of managing the company is spread across the Core managers, making it far less of a burden for any one person.
The Core is basically another name for the senior managers of the company. Everyone in the company reports to the core managers in one way or another. The Core meeting is another name for a senior management meeting. Historically these meetings used to be pretty long and ineffective, but I am proud to say that we have really improved them. I think the most important change has been to delegate decision making responsibilities to other groups and teams. A couple years ago the Core used to deal with everything from fixing the toilet (ok, slight exaggeration here…), the color of a desk (true!) to the menu for the next company party (true!). We figured out that this wasn’t the most efficient way for the senior managers to be spending their time so we started setting up different teams and groups. We set up the Motivation Team to deal with company integration and parties, the Administration Group, to deal with all administrative issues connected to the building and basic functioning of our facilities and the Interior Design Group to deal with any aesthetic decisions connected to the workplace that need to be made.
In addition to delegating, we also improved the efficiency of our meetings by implementing our meeting excellence guidelines, which have now become a standard part of company life. I think in the past we often lacked discipline and these guidelines have really helped us to stay focused and get through meetings faster. In the past our meetings used to be at least 3 hours, sometimes longer, now we can often get done in 90 minutes or two hours maximum. That’s a big difference.
So what kinds of issues do we deal with now? We try to spend our time on the most strategic issues for the company. We regularly discuss finances, budgets and investment. We try to identify and discuss risks or threats or problems that the company faces and how to improve and avoid them. We are constantly working on getting better. We have recently started taking turns reading books and sharing what we learn. Meeting excellence was an example of this. Other topics we have studied are change management and leadership and we will continue to educate ourselves in order to make Eging a more successful and more profitable company and a better place to work.
I always tell employees that they can have a huge influence on the way the company is run. I think most people think I am just giving them some blah, blah, but I really believe its true. If the Core works in a very democratic way (and I believe it does), then if you follow that logic, that means your Core manager has a big impact on the decisions that are taken and on the future of the company as a whole. This in turn means that if you talk to your Core manager about what you think is important, what you think should be changed, then you to can have an impact on the direction of the company. I think this is a very powerful thing and I encourage you to take advantage of this.
