Best Places to Work: Leadership

Chris Billman’s workstation is the calm in the eye of the storm. A research analyst for Pepper Pike-based Majestic Steel, Billman sits in the center of four sales executives’ desks in the 20,500-square-foot headquarters. The staff buzzes around him, asking questions to assist with sales or requesting information to help customers.

Working at the distributor and processor of galvanized steel sheets, coils and other products is the 28-year-old’s first job out of Miami University.

But when he came up with the idea for a weekly report charting the supply, demand and cost of steel and other raw materials that would be distributed to the sales staff and other Majestic employees, Billman didn’t hesitate to approach senior managers.

His five years with Majestic had taught him a lot about the company culture. “We pretty much have interaction on a daily basis,” Billman says of the company’s leadership. “It’s not really a big deal.”

The weekly report, which was later titled the (C)ORE Report, was embraced by Majestic’s leadership and turned into a multidepartmental project. The company now shares the information with customers, associates — even competitors — who subscribe to the e-publication.

Interaction between company leaders and employees is encouraged at Majestic, says managing partner Todd Leebow, son of founder, president and CEO Dennis Leebow, who launched the company in 1979. The culture improves employee morale and is vital to keeping Majestic competitive in a volatile industry, Leebow says.

Majestic’s headquarters, built in 2009, was designed with communication in mind. Executive offices and meeting spaces have glass walls. There are numerous common areas with seating and tables for impromptu meetings. And employee workstations have dual monitors with wireless laptops that can be used anywhere in the building.

“We created an environment and a space that would allow for a culture of open communication,” Leebow says. “It’s often in those informal conversations where you hear something, or someone has an idea, and you take action on it.”

Employee lounges serve only one brand of coffee, such as Starbucks in one and Dunkin’ Donuts in the other. This requires brand-loyal coffee drinkers to travel to other areas of the building to fill their mug, encouraging more cross-departmental face-to-face discussions.

“I’m a Dunkin’ Donuts man,” Billman says. “You run into people from all over the company. I talk to people from production, accounting, credit. It’s an epicenter of activity.”

Other employee ideas have also made an impact at the company. For example, visitors to the Majestic headquarters sign in on an iPad rather than a pen and paper. Workers also pushed for the integration of more online collaborative software such as Microsoft’s SharePoint, which allows employees to access and manage files on a cloud server, and Yammer, a social networking site like Facebook, but where only employees are members.

Majestic holds weekly “Einstein meetings,” which began last year, where senior leaders and employees ask questions, gather feedback and provide direction. Even during employee recruitment and interviewing, senior managers are available to meet and ask questions of prospective staffers.

“When new people come into the company, there may be that level of fear between senior management and new associates,” Leebow says. “We want to break that ice right off the bat. We want them to feel too comfortable rather than not comfortable at all.”

For Billman, having his idea embraced by senior management assured him that he made the right choice for his first employer.

“It was encouraging,” he says. “To see an idea take root and grow into an actual product gives you confidence moving forward with other ideas.”