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Vision, Innovation, and Teamwork

Written by: Stephen Goldberg

Article Overview: Vision, innovation, and teamwork are the components for success that this president has chosen for creating a high-performance organization.

Vision, Innovation, and Teamwork

Vision, innovation, and teamwork are the components for success that this president has chosen for creating a high-performance organization. Thinking big has always been a forte of Ivan Jivkov's, president of Jitech Fabrication Technologies Inc., a company specializing in computer drafting of steel components for the construction industry. When working for his previous employer, Ivan broke new ground designing an innovative workflow process with the goal of saving many hours in the detailing of drawings, thus paving the way for projects to be delivered faster and at a much lower cost.

Even though his first project was a resounding success, Ivan met with quite a bit of resistance to his new approach, not only from design engineers who felt threatened about losing billable hours, but also from his own colleagues. So he did what any enterprising young motivated professional might do: he struck out on his own. Since that time two and a half years ago, Ivan has successfully built a dynamic small business composed of ten employees along with a second business that cuts and welds steel plates, for which his drafting team creates the drawings.

Ivan was introduced to me by one of my clients and we decided to work together to create a high performance culture built on a framework of teamwork and continuous improvement.

The first step was to make sure we had the right team in place to move forward and that entailed doing some assessments and making some adjustments to the team make-up. Next we had everyone go through a team training program that consisted of seven half- day interactive workshops that was designed to build teamwork through mutual understanding and learning the principles of personal leadership and teamwork. This was a big commitment to make as it meant literally closing the business one half-day a week over the course of the seven-week training program.

Ivan and his team feel that the payoff is immediate and long term as well. They are working better together and projects are running smoother because of better collaboration, goal setting and planning.

The next step is to institute a performance management and coaching system based on mutually agreed performance commitments that were drafted on the last day of the training workshops. This will ensure that the principles of teamwork will continue to be applied on a day-to-day basis. As well, teams are being formed to work on improvement initiatives that were identified in the training sessions.

Ivan has bigger plans for the future, which consist of creating radically innovative machinery that could completely transform his industry through the use of robotics, and he has already embarked on developing the plan and technology to make it happen.

Great leaders are all great visionaries and Ivan Jivkov is one whose goal is to successfully combine innovative technologies along with a humanistic approach to business development and organization. Stay tuned for more about Ivan and his journey in the future.

Stephen Goldberg

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Article Tags: billable hours, construction industry, continuous improvement, design engineers, drafting team, fabrication technologies inc, high performance organization, interactive workshops, ivan, mutual understanding, new approach, new ground, paving the way, performance culture, personal leadership, resounding success, steel components, steel plates, teamwork, two and a half years



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