Video: Sharpening the Saw
Dennis Stine, President, Stine Lumber
HQ: Sulphur, Louisiana Employee Count: 550 2011 Pro Sales: $54.7 million
Engage Employees
Stine Lumber was rolling just before the recession. It had entered two markets with its new box-style retail store and drive-through lumberyard and had begun rolling out the model to the rest of its locations. The federal government was subsidizing post-Katrina business development on Stine’s turf. So it bet on continued growth and compressed its 10-year strategic plan—which included $65 million in capital expenditures—into three years.
Then the market crashed.
“We reduced training, we lowered morale, and [as a result] we lowered our customer and associate service scores,” company president Dennis Stine says. “What were we going to do to turn it around?”
Stine borrowed from McDonald’s “Plan to Win” playbook—a strategy designed to boost brand relevance through employee re-engagement. He called it “Sharpen the Saw.”
“We needed to develop a Stine brand that was worth fighting for, and we needed to train associates to be knowledgeable and flexible,” he says. “Nothing unnerves me more than getting a complaint from a customer who says, ‘I was about 15 minutes away from your store and I called and they said they were closing at 9 p.m. I asked them if they could stay open for about five minutes. They said, “No, we close at 9 o’clock.”’ What can we do to get that associate to find a way to say yes?”
To Dennis Stine, “culture comes first. If your organization doesn’t have a great culture, you can do all the things you want with respect to strategy, but it won’t work, I promise you.”
Stine Lumber now evaluates employees by group and holds each group’s individual assessments at the same time. Workers evaluate themselves with 30 questions developed by their team leader. Twice each year, employees grade management on leadership, coaching, and training. “It’s a powerful tool to keep our leaders on the straight and narrow,” Stine says, noting his own score is based on how employees rated their store. “Because guess who’s ultimately responsible: the CEO,” Stine says. “You can’t cut and run from that.”
