A Piece Of The Pie

Smart Business Network:

Although he’s been selling Domino’s pizza for 35 years, Mike Orcutt still defers to his 1,200 employees before making decisions about his company.

“If the folks who are right there talking to the customers haven’t bought in to it and don’t think it’s a great idea, it’s not going to work,” he says. “It doesn’t have a prayer. Our customers aren’t going to outthink the people servicing them.”

Orcutt’s franchising company, Cowabunga Inc., owns and operates 79 Domino’s locations throughout Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina.

Smart Business spoke with Orcutt about how to align your employees’ goals with the goals of your company.

Q. How do you keep employees engaged?
We try to develop a process where everybody’s got some skin in the game. Essentially, everybody has a job that numbers are attached to. There is a constant self-evaluation going on with these people, and they really start to manage themselves a whole lot better.

When they prop themselves up and compare themselves to somebody else who is performing or not performing, it creates an environment where everybody is learning from each other.

Q. How do you attach goals to metrics? Continue reading.