Brad McClure uses the Waze Navigation App in his car every workday.
If an accident has occurred on his way to an appointment, the Dallas Business Process Consultant can reroute. If he needs to conduct business on the phone while sitting in traffic, he doesn’t have to think about his next turn.
“I use Waze pretty much everywhere I go. When you get to Downtown Dallas, it’s hard to get home without it,” Brad adds. “ It’s a great tool to have in the city.”
After all, there’s more than one way to get to a given destination.
Conversely, once technician JR Johnson's been to a customer once, he doesn’t need the Waze App.
This born-and-raised East Texan knows the rural highways lined by canopies of pine trees like the back of his hand. JR spends a lot of his day in the car, at one point traveling as much as 250 miles per day serving customers in the East and Southeast regions of Texas.
“I’m pretty much good with landmarks on the roads, I can judge depending on certain curves when I’m coming close to a town,” JR says. “I love the pine trees, just driving through the country.”
Managing subcultures is like planning a trip.
You plug your destination into the Waze App GPS, and discover that many optional routes appear. Marketplaces differ. Individual motivations vary. But when everyone is aligned on a destination, and understands what they need to accomplish, we accept and encourage different paths.
Brad and JR's routes are different. Their strategies differ based on their geography - not unlike the sales interactions in rural Arkansas vs. downtown Little Rock. Within the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex and rural East Texas lie two distinct subcultures, where both travel style and potentially style of business may vary, depending on client needs.
The more that Datamax grows, the more that subcultures become a reality. And while the routes may differ – the ultimate destination must remain the same.
Datamax Waze: 3 Questions that Ensure the GPS Destination Remains the Same.
1. Do you have the right job, right person, right relationship?
It’s a cornerstone for building successful people at Datamax. One employee might be a great fit under one manager, but a bad mix on another team. It’s about putting people in the right place to succeed.
2. Subcultures may be different – but are they aligned?
Make no mistake: Creating Raving Fans is the single mission.
“How David Holzhauer runs his team may be different than the way Clay Mills does, based on their personalities, and that’s OK,” Datamax Inc. President Barry Simon said. “But the direction is the same, and that’s that, ultimately, our overall goal here is singular: Creating Raving Fans.”
3. Is your department championing culture?
30 years ago, Simon was working as a sales manager for a team that was still selling mimeographs. Even though that equipment was far from the “latest and greatest,” before long everyone at the office wanted to be part of THAT team.
“Everyone wanted to sell what we had in our department. We trained a lot. I got everyone involved, and everyone felt like they were part of the team. They weren’t ostracized,” Simon said. “I think the key is that everyone has to feel that, whoever is their leader is taking them down a path that is going to be positive.”
Here, Simon points to individual managers at Datamax to do the same. Build up a subculture that gets a team excited. Lead them down a path of both pleasure and purpose in their work.
