Store without an Owner
The story of a personal crisis
During the Christmas season
one year, we held a party at our home for all of our team members.
The highlight of the party for our family was the announcement of
the anticipated arrival of twins at the Shay household in the following summer. During the party, we made a strong point to announce that
it was our intention to spend considerably less time in the store
for the next year. The comment from several team members was to
ask if I was only going to be in the store "part time", did that
mean only 40 hours per week?
In addition to creating some
family time, this was to have been an opportunity to challenge our
team to step up and operate the store without the boss being present.
Unfortunately, there were many projects and opportunities to face
during the spring and summer. The "part time job" never occurred.
During the past two years, the
growth of our staff had been tremendous. For over ten years, management
was always performed by one of the members of our immediate family.
When the rest of the family retired two years ago, it was necessary
to rearrange duties. There were many tasks that team members took
upon themselves so that we could explore and make plans for the
continued growth of our store. Most all of our business procedures,
and methods of operation, have been review with many of them being
changed.
On July 16, our family was blessed
with the birth of our twin sons, Darren and Blake. There was a period
of about ten days that the store was one of the last places we thought
of. But after that, we were back in the store.
On August 8, all
was changed as Blake was rushed to the hospital with a near fatal
heart malfunction. After spending four hours in the emergency room,
Blake spent more of the next two months in the intensive care unit
of All Children's Hospital than he spent at home in his crib with
his brother. There were many days and evenings spent in the hospital
as the pediatric cardiologists worked to find a medicine that would
lessen the chance of Blake's heart having another malfunction.
All
in all, there were three ambulance rides, three stays of varying
length in three hospitals. We spent more time in the hospital than
we did in the store or at home. Some of the warmest remembrances
of this ordeal, came because of the many individuals that worked
at the hospitals.
From chaplains to doctors and
nurses, and hospital orderlies to hospital officials, we had many
members of the medical team that we began to know by name, individuals
that we had previously only known as faces that shopped at our store.
On occasions when we went to
the hardware store, we found that often our team members were up
to date regarding Blake, because someone from the hospital had stopped
in to inform them.
To jump ahead a couple of years, Blake and Darren are at home enjoying each
other and being the center of attention for Mom and Dad and big
sister Amanda. The center point of the story is not Blake, but instead
the team members of our store that took charge.
One of the routine
tasks that we had always performed was that of payroll preparation.
As it turned out, there were more than one occasion where hospital
needs delayed our completing this task. On each occasion, Bob Sheridan,
one of our team leaders, made a point to check with all of the team
members and see who was in immediate need of money. Bob offered
to advance them the necessary funds, knowing that the payroll would
be completed within hours of the usual completion time.
All of the
work that is involved with accounts receivable, scheduling, sales
flyers, weekly inventory ordering and processing, as well as the
multitude of tasks that become taken for granted in hardware stores,
were handled with great skill. Sales continued to grow as that year was
our best year to date. We had even started to prepare our store
for scanning, a project that continued, although at a slower pace,
during our absence.
The last two quarters of the year
brought to us a new team member, Doug Daggy, an individual who had
management experience in hardware stores. Again, one of our team
management members had been introduced to Doug, and did the necessary
research to verify credentials, and make arrangements for his joining
our team.
Now that the family emergency
had been resolved, we were able to concentrate on our future5 plans.
One of our goals is an effort to reduce expenses. There would be
many hours of reviewing all aspects of our store. From our positive
experiences of these experiences, several team members have shown new leadership
skills. As we have sat together as a management team, there have
been new goals established for our store. Individuals have found
certain aspects of our goals that they feel they are best qualified
to handle, and began to make plans
to assume these responsibilities. As has been our experience, when
team members are allowed to be responsible for their ideas, the
quality of work improves quickly and dramatically.
During the first
quarter of the next yearthere will be more of the tasks and assignments
that had always been reserved for ourselves are now being assumed
by team members. And if we are going to grow our store, we need
to work so that our work resembles a ship at sea.
There are times
when we need to be steering, as well as times when we will be
working with our team members in the daily routine, or waiting
on customers. And as we work with our team members, we need to bring
them along, probably in the same manner that we were when we first
entered the hardware business.
But most important, is the need
for a substantial part of our time to be spent at our discretion
so that we can plot a course for the future of our business. And
while there are days that the store doesn't work right, it appears
that we have a team that has taken a step to assist our store
in fulfilling the requirements of management - that is to accelerate
the growth of its' team members.
