because you're small, you can't build walls. You, you know, in small businesses, which most economy of communion businesses are less than 10, less than 20 even. Like we're we're one of the slightly larger ones. Many are, you know, two to five people. Um, so you can't build walls. So what we do with the younger staff is we try to crossrain them between the groups and they shift between these three or four large service areas we have to get trained to to to get educated to get experience so that they become more well-rounded and it allows us flexibility uh to you know if we're really slow in one of those particular areas uh the other areas can pick up the slack.
So uh but the you know what I often would say is that when in the early days and for many years I was involved in everything. You know you'd have uh the president anybody could come into my office at any time. They could ask questions. The younger staff wouldn't hesitate to come in. We didn't have this hierarchical structure that you would need permission to talk to different people. And that was very healthy. At some point when you get a little bigger you have to rely on a structure to to to do a lot of the day-to-day things you know whether whether you give them annual reviews of a different way of different type or or um or respond to different things.
So so we've tried not to make it complicated with with a 15 to 30 person firm. Uh but one thing we do do is that if when people have ideas, we kind of try to bring those ideas to the surface and then allow that idea to move forward and and that idea can come from uh can come from anyone. I I I remember one time in particular we were having a meeting and talking about the challenges of responding to a client's demands. they had this this you know problem and we were trying to solve it and so every single senior person in that meeting had their own idea and they were arguing I think we should uh solve it by this way and this person says no no no I think you're wrong and and by the way we find disagreements and arguments to be good in the company it it's a way of it's not something that becomes personal but we try to find the best kind of ideas and solutions well anyway that
particular day there was a young young staff in there a young woman and she had not said anything at all and eventually uh I stopped and I said you know I think we need to hear from everyone and so I asked her I said what do you think and she was real hesitant at first because you have all these senior people with uh a lot of experience and education uh giving their ideas and I said no just just tell us what you think doesn't matter.
And so she began to articulate a new thought that she had about how to service this client. And afterwards there was silence because everyone realized that was the best idea. And and to me that's part of the economy of communion. It's this idea that you know you know everyone can contribute to great ideas no matter what the the level in the company. And that this is a case where when you allow that to happen only good things can happen.
