Aggregates Manager Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/94387
AGGMAN OF THE YEAR 2012 more interesting is the company's mission to leverage the strength of its people. In the midst of fast-paced growth, Luck said he focused so much effort on the financial side of the business that he forgot the lesson handed down from his grandfather to his father and from his father to him: people are important, not only to the value of a business, but also to its financial success. "We had lost sight of these fundamental beliefs," Luck says. Another side effect to rapid corporate growth was a leadership team, comprised of 12 executives, that wasn't working very well together. "We were setting fantastic goals and hitting new records on the financial side," Luck recalls. "But we were not working as well as we could as a team." To realign its mission and values, the company turned to San Antonio-based Holt Development Services. Through the implementation of values based leadership, the execu- tive team learned to work more effectively and produc- tively. Values based leadership is a methodology that challenges organizations to develop a mis- sion, set of values, and leadership point of view, and then identify the goals of the culture and its embedded processes, models, tools, and rituals. "We really learned about leadership and unlocking the per- formance of people; that's really at the core of what we believe," Luck says. "Yes, we need to have also were trained in values based leadership. Through the process, four core values — leadership, integrity, commitment, and creativity — were identified. "Underneath each of those words, which are commonplace words and ones you would expect to find on the wall of any corporate boardroom, we've gone through great pains to describe the outcome statement and behaviors of each of those," Luck says. "The values set the expectation for how we conduct the business." The mission statement was also written: We will ignite human potential through values based leadership and positively impact the lives of others around the world. "Our employees started to tell us this was the most ef- fective block of work they'd ever been exposed to in the 90-year history of our company," Luck says. "We had wives and husbands who would call us and say, 'What you're doing with the values based leadership training is having a huge impact on our life and on our children.' Customers began to notice a difference, and they began to remark on it." Putting leadership into action efficient screens and productive mobile equipment, but most of the industry has access to all the same equipment. What I don't believe we do is access the potential of the people who are on our payrolls today to the level they can be unlocked." Developing internal potential To tap into the potential of its personnel, Luck says the company's leadership team began by working on them- selves first. "Looking in the mirror and looking at yourself and your leadership is probably one of the most humbling experiences I've ever had in my life," he says, noting that he also sought out the opinion of others and asked what they liked and didn't like about his leadership. He used what he learned to hone his skills and modeled his growing self- awareness for others. The executive team met quarterly for two-day sessions during the first 18 months it implemented values based leadership. They began to align the corporate mission and work together more effectively. Soon, the rest of the Luck team could see a difference. Throughout a two-year time- frame, other executives, managers, and front-line associates to assess what was important to the people on the other end of the transaction. Luck Companies enjoyed a num- ber of early successes through the implementation of values based leadership, including completing acquisitions when competitors did not. The key, Luck says, was using the training and tools to impact not only their own behavior, but "This work continued to snowball. We've increased the amount of funding every year. We've increased the amount of training every year. And then, the recession came," Luck notes. "Some of our doubting associates said, 'Wait until the economy gets bad. They'll stop doing this values based leadership in a minute.'" But that prediction never came to pass. Instead, Luck says, the company used its values and mission more than ever. For the first time in its history, Luck Companies — like many businesses — had a reduction in force (RIF), which impacted18 percent of its work force. "We said that every one of our decisions and how we work with our asso- ciates has to reflect, at the highest level, the use of our val- ues, our leadership, our training," Luck says. "How we went about it was a testimony to values based leadership." Luck Companies communicated frankly and transpar- ently with associates about why the RIF was necessary. It set up a separate office off site for displaced associates. Workers were given assistance with creating resumes and posting them to job placement sites, and the office was AGGREGATES MANAGER December 2012 13