Company executives share financial information and other performance metrics at full-staff meetings every month, says Goldin, showing them what’s happened and talking about what could happen in the future. “Every one of our employees has the opportunity to affect profitability,” he says. Unified had its first retiree under the ESOP last year, he says, and “that takes some abstraction out of the process.”
“When you say ‘one of every three dollars is yours,’ that helps people understand,” adds Taylor.
Although ESOPs aren’t overly common in the integration world, Goldin thinks you might start seeing more of them. He had a lot of conversations about Unified’s setup during NSCA‘s 2016 Business and Leadership Conference in Dallas, he says. “A lot of small- and medium-sized businesses don’t have a transition plan in place,” says Goldin. “It’s really an awareness issue. More people are taking a liking to it and starting to consider it for their companies.”
Changing the Project Management Profile
Banbury, Pressley and Goldin have sought the advice of industry experts and consultants to improve internal processes and build their management team. This was not a one day seminar but a long-term approach to making changes.
In August 2014, Unified AV was at a point where company executives knew they had to make some major changes or run the risk of some serious consequences. Project management had become a big problem, with project managers overwhelmed by demands and unable to fulfill them, leading to internal and external issues.
Related: Unified AV’s Knoxville Office Opens Video Opportunities
“It’s become a bit of an industry epidemic that technical people are promoted to project managers because it seems like a logical next step,” says Goldin. “We decided to look at the lifecycle from cradle to grave and realized we had to do things a little differently. It became clear our project managers had a lot of things they needed to do, but they weren’t able to do all those things because they were out in the field on jobsites.”
“It’s become a bit of an industry epidemic that technical people are promoted to project managers becuase it seems like the logical next step.”—Barry Goldin, President, Unified AV Systems
Taylor agrees with the assessment. “We knew we had problems going from having no project managers to moving technical people into those roles,” he says. “But having the project manager involved in every step from the first sales call to the closeout of the punch list wasn’t sustainable for us. We realized project management doesn’t start until there’s actually a project to manage, so we started to change our habits. We had project managers tell us they belonged in the field.”
That led Unified AV to open a search for non-AV people to fill its project management roles, enhancing them with the company’s technical support team. Today, about half of Unified AV’s project managers are from outside AV, including construction and other low-voltage trades.
Goldin calls the new approach “a dramatic new way for us to manage the process and provide information to our customers.” In addition to making things better for its clients, the new structure has transformed how many employees approach their jobs today.
“It’s cool to see the project managers become more business-minded,” says Taylor. “It allows people to be really good at what they’re really good at.”
Goldin is pleased with how things are working out in the new structure. “We knew we’d be challenging some people but you can’t assure that, just because someone’s a good technical person, they can manage people and projects,” he says. Being a project manager means being able to handle budgets, project scope, communication, spreadsheets and much more, says Goldin.
Taylor, a former technician, says “it’s a lot less chaotic under the new structure.”
Goldin sees the changes as “a maturing of our project management practice. Promoting Tom Taylor to senior VP in charge of special projects and project management was a direct message on how important project management is for us. We wanted a more predictable, step-by-step process.” Development of the new project lifecycle process included a team of 15 people, with representation from each department.
“We made the misstep of promoting lead installation personnel to project management. We rectified the error and now have a professional approach to project management that serves our customers much better,” says Goldin. “The change has taken time, but moving project management to a business function instead of a technical function has proven to be a recipe for success.”
