We continue the blog series excerpting my recently published book, Building a Brilliant Tomorrow, with the first part of the discussion around the fifth and final of Inovateus’ PEACE core values: esprit de corps, or team spirit. When people really work together toward a common goal, there’s a sort of magic that happens. We discovered early on at Inovateus that we would be more successful if we set aside our opinions, cleared the air and pulled together, keeping communication channels open and actions transparent. It may sound obvious, but teamwork is critical to the ongoing success of any organization—including ours.
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There are several meanings for the term esprit de corps, but the meaning I take away is “team spirit.” If there’s some magic in the world, it’s the magic that happens when people combine their talents and skills toward a common goal.
When we were formulating this core value, our former employee Tom Brown shared with me many examples of the teamwork concept that they studied and implemented in the armed forces (Tom had served in the U.S. Marine Corps). I was intrigued by the teamwork concept and knew we had to embrace the same idea as a business when we’re working together on solar-energy opportunities.
At Inovateus, the best example of what we mean by esprit de corps is a five-megawatt project for IKEA which eventually turned into many more projects with IKEA. In 2011 and into 2012, an opportunity came to us from Uni-Solar, which made lightweight, flexible solar panels. Uni-Solar had already completed some conversations with IKEA.
At that time, IKEA had a global solar-energy plan and wanted all of its buildings to have solar-energy systems. The company has two large distribution centers on the East Coast, one in Perryville, Maryland, and the other in Westampton, New Jersey. The buildings are large—so big, in fact, that the roofs are made of thermoplastic polyolefin (TPO), a single-ply, roofing membrane that can only withstand a certain amount of weight on top of it.
The larger of the two buildings, in Perryville, Maryland, encompasses 1.8 million square feet. It sits on roughly 40 acres near Chesapeake Bay. Cargo ships bringing IKEA products from Europe drop off their shipments in the port in Chesapeake Bay. Those items are then transported to the IKEA distribution center from where they are shipped out to IKEA retail stores throughout the country.
Since the building is so big and the roof can only withstand a certain number of pounds per square foot, Uni-Solar was a good solar product to use; the panels are lightweight and flexible, and they peel and stick right onto the roofing material.
However, as we were putting our bid package together, team members expressed varying opinions on how we should build the project and if we should even attempt to do it at all.
Those who wanted us to undertake the project included Tom Brown—at that time, a senior account executive—who thought that working with IKEA would be a great opportunity for Inovateus. He believed in our capabilities to design, install, and deliver the project to IKEA, regardless of its size and complexity.
However, our project-management team and the engineering and design team had concerns. Obviously, Inovateus is not a roofing company, but this project involved a lot of roofing construction, along with other things we needed to learn on the fly.
So there was a bit of turmoil inside the company, and things got a little heated. That’s when I realized that the major obstacle with the project was that we weren’t working as a team. To combat the situation and to turn things around, I called a meeting with approximately 10 people—in sales, engineering, design, project management, and other departments—to talk about the project.
Earlier, I said there’s magic when people work toward a common goal. Well, some sort of magic also happens when you get people together in person. With so much technology today, people can go a long time without ever talking face-to-face. When I sat everybody down together, all of a sudden, everybody magically became a bit more logical.
In that meeting, I was intent on focusing on the brutal facts. We went around the table to ensure that we got everything out. I wanted everyone’s thoughts, ideas, concerns, comments—everything, every detail. When the conversation went down a rabbit hole, or threatened to become laden with opinions, I’d bring it back to the facts and figures. By laying the facts and figures out on the table, some folks who weren’t as comfortable about things before we got together became more comfortable with talking about the reasons for their discomfort. And I think they felt the team understood where they were coming from.
At the end of the meeting, I went around the table one last time and asked for input on whether we should move forward with the project. I let everyone know it was okay to say no, because I would rather know about their disapproval up front than have people come back six months later and tell me that a problem we were facing was something that had worried them earlier.
In the end, everyone was onboard. All of them voted to move forward with the project.
After the meeting, the teams really began working well together. Everybody understood the initiative going forward, and communication was much better between the teams. This became crucial in overcoming some of the hurdles we faced on the project.
In the next blog excerpt from Building a Brilliant Tomorrow, I will wrap up the discussion of the final Inovateus’ PEACE core value: esprit de corps.
By TJ Kanczuzewski, president/CEO, Inovateus Solar
