Smart Business Magazine, June 2013

June 2013 Smart Business Philadelphia 13 What has been your biggest leadership challenge Tozour The biggest challenge and its always the challenge is finding really good people who can carry out the vision or can lead the charge Everybody wants to claim that they have got expertise and what not But finding expertise with leadership capabilities thats always a challenge What is your definition of success Duffy Theres a quote that I live by What we do for ourselves dies with us What we do for others remains immortal Thats a real focus When we can deliver financial success it gives us the flexibility to do great things for other people Tozour What is success to me First of all its being able to look back and see the results of our labor To have the financial wherewithal to do whatever I choose to do going forward To absolutely improve the life of others by giving back And to have grown enough that I have wisdom that I never thought Id be answering the questions youre asking me How do you help your leaders grow Duffy Its common for companies to develop their vision for five years out But we took it a step further We analyzed what does that organization look like What are the gaps What are the leadership elements were going to need in 2015 to be that company We went to about five different people in the organization and said we see you as a future leader here Were going to start challenging you with specific assignments to broaden your development As we grow we have organizational leaders weve brought up and trained and developed so that they are ready to assume a leadership role NAMES DOUG TOZOUR KEVIN DUFFY TITLE FOUNDER AND CEO PRESIDENT COMPANY TOZOUR ENERGY SYSTEMS The Tozour Duffy File You can also use your PR or marketing team to help make your hiring efforts more fruitful One of the great things weve done in the last few years is get our PR engine working to get the word out about some of the great things were doing in our community and some of the great innovations weve got in the marketplace Duffy says Weve got people knocking on our door constantly and the best compliment is weve got our employees inside that are constantly recommending and referring really smart people because they know we set the bar high Be a leader There is a big difference between management and leadership and those who fail to understand the difference will find it tough to grow their business Management is the cold hard facts Tozour says Heres how many visits we made how many proposals we made how many orders we sold and how many solutions we provided Leadership is the ability to inspire people to do stuff they might not do if left alone Management is important because its all about measuring quantifying and evaluating the results But if youre going to be a great company its all about leadership Effective leaders are proactively searching for both the good and the bad about how their organization works Duffy says Tozour Energy spent time last year developing a dashboard system to help people understand how certain activities led to certain outcomes Each of the business units developed a set of about five dashboard activities that we then meet about and discuss every Monday morning Duffy says We meet for a half hour to review how what we are doing will lead to results Those activities on average resulted in close to 15 to 20 percent business growth in each of the business units for those who implemented it and followed it One thing a dashboard does is provide tangible proof that people are responding to your leadership