There Should Be More Than One Face to the Company

Let your entire team know how important they are to the long-term success of the business.

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Someone once asked me, "Who is the face of your company?" Twenty years ago I would have said my grandfather, Ted, or father, Jim, were and would have thought it would someday be me. Well, you live and learn. 

The face of our company is that of our employees, all 60 of them and their families, no one more or less a face and representation of the company than another. We have a diverse family here at Ted Berry Company, and that diversity is what gives us our depth and strength. We have people who grew up on farms, people who spent their early adult years serving our country in the military, college graduates, engineers, the list goes on. By having a wide range of skills and experience we also have a wide range of personalities and specialties.

Our guiding principles every day for every crew are as follows:

Enhance company reputation and resume – By enhancing our reputation and expanding the company’s experience resume we gain credibility in the marketplace.

Future opportunity – We grow our business and our brand by delivering projects that meet or exceed customers’ expectations, nurturing customer relationships, and developing new service offerings consistent with our core business.

Continuous company improvement – By continuously improving the company, our processes, our people, and our standard procedures we continually improve our ability to earn in the future.

Financial profit – It allows us to reward the owners for their investment and the risks they take, and to invest capital back into the company and its employees.

By having these core guiding principles, each of our team members knows the importance of the face of the company and how crucial that is to our long-term mission.

When you see our employees you should see people who are passionate about their profession, who are committed to solving complex challenges and thriving on those challenges, who are fun to be around (we think it is OK to have fun at work; if you’re not smiling you are probably not doing it right), who are self motivated and proud of the work they do, who are adventurous and willing to both take a chance and to fail.

As a business owner and one of the people tasked with carrying forward the legacy of the Ted Berry Company — my grandfather, my father, and all of our current, past, and future employees — my greatest rewards are when I see our people succeed and get satisfaction in their work. When I chart the path and then have the courage to get out of the way of our people and let them be the face of Ted Berry Company, it is amazing to see what can be accomplished. 

About the Author
Matt Timberlake is president of Ted Berry Company in Livermore, Maine.



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