Asheville's reputation as a boomtown for breweries keeps growing - and, these days, Highland Brewing Co. is one of its brightest stars.
Founded in 1994 as a craft brewery by majority owner and President Oscar Wong, Highland's reach extends throughout the Southeast. Its annual revenue is approaching $5 million. Perhaps most intriguingly, it embodies a collaborative approach to leadership that is gaining momentum in companies of all sizes and in all sectors.
Leadership has long been - and, in many organizations, continues to be - a strictly top-down affair. The chain of command issues orders, and people down the line are supposed to follow them. Along the way, good ideas get lost, internal rivalries harden, workers lose their incentive to innovate, and bottom-line performance suffers.
Think of the Detroit auto industry.
But even when leaders accept that more teamwork and fewer silos result in smarter decisions, they're often not at all sure how to get there. Research by Chris Ernst at Greens boro's Center for Creative Leadership shows that 86 percent of executives believe working across boundaries, such as business unit and regional divisions, is extremely important for business success. And yet, as Ernst documents in his forthcoming book "Boundary Spanning Leadership," just 7 percent said they are very effective at spanning those boundaries.
That's an alarming gap, and Wong's example offers a few proven ideas for closing it.
A longtime engineer with a penchant for reading about effective management, Wong spent much of his career focused on nuclear-plant safety and waste disposal. Living in Charlotte and looking to reinvent himself professionally in his 50s, he was approached about investing in a brewery. That sounded appealing to Wong, who had made home-brewing a hobby while in graduate school.
The brewing business, though, can be brutal with its relentless competition, long hours and expensive capital investments. Wong needed an edge. He found it by fully tapping into the individual talents of his people and, more important, getting them to work together. Though Highland has only 20 employees, its core team of leaders has stuck with the company since the late 1990s. Several of them started out as interns or entry-level workers before gradually moving into senior positions.
They learned about the importance of collaboration from day one through an experience all Highland employees share: short rotations through each of the company's divisions. A new employee in accounting, for instance, will spend two or three weeks on the production floor.All employees steep themselves in the realities of inventory control, packaging and distribution.
"This is a small company," Wong says. "It's important to have them learn what goes on in the other groups, so they really understand the business and can pitch in if someone goes on vacation."
At Highland, everyone has the authority to stop the production line if they spot a problem. Employees have the chance to speak up at staff meetings every Monday morning. Twice a year at company retreats, they're encouraged to share ideas for improving operations. They've used the opportunity, for example, to talk Wong into building a tasting room at the brewery so Highland can hold more events and build tighter relationships with customers - a move that employees believed was vital for keeping up with competitors.
Teamwork is of course more than a buzzword in many innovative organizations throughout North Carolina - and, together, they're showing how collaborative mindsets can bolster growth in any sector.
From Cape Fear Valley Health System in Eastern North Carolina to Quaintance-Weaver Restaurants & Hotels in the Triangle and the Triad to the barrier-smashing partnerships, such as CrossRoads Charlotte, that helped fuel the Queen City's rise, efforts to develop leaders at all levels of companies and to keep them connected across functions are driving improved performance.
Meanwhile at Highland, maintaining success also means keeping the thinking fresh - and that again makes a truly collaborative mindset crucial. Wong constantly seeks out provocative ideas and opinions from his people.
One consultant recently told him the climate at Highland is "way too demo cratic." Wong cheerfully reminded him that's the point.
"No matter how smart you are, if you get enough people on a problem, you'd be surprised at the good ideas that can come out of left field," Wong says. "If you look at a problem from enough aspects, the solution you come up with is less likely to have a fatal flaw."
