Management at One Smooth Stone

We produce business theater events for our clients, and theater is live, and that means you've got one shot to get it right.

Millions of dollars are on the line, that CEO is out and onstage, and the audience wants to hear the message and wants to be moved to action.

That's a lot of pressure, but pressure that we're ready for because of the great relationships we have with the clients and the great structure that we've got within our organization.

-Yeah. Now we just need to add a little life to this party, if you know what I mean.

-Business theater. What exactly does that mean?

It means that when a large corporation wants to hold an important sales meeting, client meeting or product launch, they call a company like One Smooth Stone.

Want a celebrity spokesperson at your meeting? A rock band? An impersonator? Do you want the

Entire show live? Or would you like some pre-produced videos?

Whatever the request, they can deliver.

Of course, there's much more to this than just putting on good theater.

To ensure proper ROI, or return on investment, for their clients, One Smooth Stone starts by listening to their needs. And typically these companies have a need for some type of marketing or an event that communicates in a broad fashion to a group of individuals, and we help them write the strategy, deliver the messages, help facilitate the production and deliver an event that's meaningful, that has some type of return on investment and that establishes a message out in the marketplace that people can have some type of action on.

-So who are these clients?

They range from companies like Motorola and Nortel to International Truck & Engine, Coast Pharmaceuticals, and others.

The meetings take place all over the world and are attended by thousands of employees who need to be educated and entertained.

-We have stopped the evildoers from doing that evil they do so evilly.

-As you meet some of the employees from One Smooth Stone in this video, one of the things that you'll realize is that their jobs require expertise not only in their own industry, corporate event planning, but in their clients' industries.

On a given week, you might find them studying up on anything from heavy-duty trucks to anti-cholesterol drugs.

-Koppel, spell dyslipidemia.

-D-i-s-demia.

-Wrong. MC, pronounce it.

-Dislapla.

-Wrong.

-So how do they do it all?

With patience, hard work and a good sense of humor, especially when asked to have a client logo tattooed on their arm or shaved in their head.

Don't worry, those were computer special effects.

These employees are dedicated, but they're not crazy.

So now that you understand what One Smooth Stone does for a living, let's examine how the company is organized.

We'll begin with a quick overview of organizational principles.

For example, one theory that was synonymous with the concept of management for many years was Fayol's principles of organization.

As many companies grew larger, often these principles morphed into actual rules and regulations.

The result was the formation of many rigid organizations that were unable to quickly respond to customer requests.

Max Weber added the following principles and developed the pyramid-shaped organization that became so popular in large firms.

At the time these were developed, they worked well because the workforce was generally untrained and uneducated, but today's workforce requires more sophisticated methodologies.

As One Smooth Stone has developed, we've realized that our industry moves very quickly, and particularly with what's going on in the economy and within the world, that we need to be responsive to that and at times even move forward and try to get ahead of that.

They achieve this by recruiting employees that are highly skilled and highly trained and who can be relied upon to think for themselves.

Organizational design, by definition, is the structuring of workers so they may best achieve the firm's goals.

In basic terms, the firm's goal at One Smooth Stone is to respond to whatever the client needs.

Since each event varies tremendously from client to client, project teams must be empowered.

Solving the client issues, first and foremost. No specific department owns that problem.

No specific department owns that philosophy.

It's one that everybody owns.

Because One Smooth Stone hires and empowers highly skilled employees and because of the customer-driven nature of their business, they are able to thrive under a decentralized, relatively flat organizational structure that employs a broad span of control.

-Our business structure at One Smooth Stone is very decentralized.

We don't have departments.

That allows our teams to for around the client, around the specific needs of the client, rather than pigeonholing a client to a specific department and pretending like we've got the solution that's already prepackaged.

Today, many companies like One Smooth Stone look to other, more specialized firms to outsource certain functions.

-But we're very selective about the freelancers that we bring onboard.

Those freelancers need to bring the right talent to provide the right solution for our clients, but they also need to embody the values of our company.

They're an extension of us, and although they may not work within our walls, when it comes to serving our clients, they're our representatives.

-When they choose these representatives, according to Gary, there are three categories that they look at.

-The first one is a person making sure that they have a great knowledge of the services that we provide, and second is making sure that they understand our culture and how we deliver those services, and third is making sure that their interpersonal skills and their personality matches up with our clients.

-Today's ultra-competitive business environment and changing economy have forced companies to consider restructuring and begin to consider total quality management and continuous improvement.

One Smooth Stone has created its own innovative approach to dealing with this issue.

-As soon as we sat down to write strategic plans, they became obsolete.

Instead of investing the time in that, we have incorporated a concept called strategic improvising into our company, into really the long-term mission and plans of our company, and we basically take our company and divide it into six different areas and create some ground rules and some things to focus on in the future and use that as our template to move forward.

-We've already discussed how One Smooth Stone has built its organization around serving the client.

When it comes to shared company values, however, this is just one part of a truly exceptional overall organizational culture where they take care to look at other things.

-Like how your culture is run, how you are maintaining your relationships with your clients.

What are the relationships like between employees?

What are you doing with your time to help others inside and outside of your company?

Those are the things that if you stay focused on, the finances come after that.

There's great success if you have those together.

-For Mark, an important part of this culture is the support that he receives from the top on down.

I'm well supported. I'm well supported by the values of our company. I'm supported by the freedom to get the job done in the right way, within the right timeframe for our clients. That's a lot of fun.

It makes the pressure of event delivery really enjoyable.

-Is this starting to sound like a great company to work for?

You bet it is.

Nice coworkers, strong ethics, travel, fun and creative projects, and a decentralized structure that supports empowerment.

What more could one ask for?

-One Smooth Stone has been, continues to be and will be successful for a long time to come, primarily because of its values.

We summarize those values in three words: smart, fast and kind.

If we can deliver things to our clients and to one another in a smart way, in a fast way, but most importantly, in a kind way, clients will keep coming back, and that's success for One Smooth Stone.