BuildDirect.com is a mid-market company that’s put together a great Growth Strategy over the past few years that’s taken them to over $150M in revenues. A student of “Mastering the Rockefeller Habits”, Jeff Booth, their CEO, has done an amazing job of developing and refining their Strategy using the tools from “Scaling Up” with his team, in particular the Seven Strata (Chapter 7 for those of you with the “Scaling Up” book) but has also created an empowered and engaged workforce in the process.
Here’s an excerpt on the article from Inc. Magazine Online.
Every leader talks about empowering employees, but few actually succeed. The reason so many leaders fall short is that truly empowering employees is hard. It doesn’t happen without intentional effort and careful planning. Most of all, you have to intentionally think through your actions.
An active member of the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO), Jeff Booth, co-founder of BuildDirect, has figured out how to create a supremely empowered team. BuildDirect is changing the way that customers access home-improvement products. Their online building-supply marketplace had revenue that topped $150 million last year, explosive growth, and a recent funding round that exceeded $50 million. Booth has his eye on an IPO in the future and is counting on the empowered 315 (and growing) BuildDirect employees to get them there.
Booth makes employee empowerment a prime directive and it shows. BuildDirect has twice won Aon Hewitt’s “Best Small & Medium Employers in Canada.” Voted on by employees through a comprehensive survey covering workplace satisfaction, a key aspect of measurement for this award is employee engagement. Booth gives his team multiple creative channels to express themselves, including monthly fireside chats, a fully designated and funded social committee, employee-led giving initiatives, and actual voting privileges in the company’s direction. You can learn from Booth’s unique empowerment process below.
And in case you SHOULD be working on your Strategy, and your Plan, but haven’t found the time recently, reach out and contact us!
We’ll help you set aside Strategic Thinking time, and help you to create Alignment and Accountability too!