An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Everyone has something to say even those who don’t express it verbally. Listening takes patience and is the first step towards empathy. I like to listen to as many people as possible as each person’s input increases the chances of getting to the best outcome.
As part of our series about the “Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Leader During Turbulent Times”, we had the pleasure of interviewing Amadou T Agne.
Amadou T Agne is a West African Immigrant and entrepreneur with a diverse background in construction and technology. He has extensive international experience in the US and Asia Pacific. With a demonstrated track record of identifying innovative solutions to challenging business problems resulting in improved performance of organizations, Agne is the President and CEO of Koydol, a commercial flooring business and of Vogueboard, a B2b SaaS Platform.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
I am an Immigrant from West Africa who grew up watching my father employ an entrepreneurial mindset to lift my family out of poverty. I came to United States in 1999 after receiving my degree in France. When I moved to the U.S., I took a job at a trading desk in New York to learn better English and worked on receiving my masters at Cornell University in Engineering Management. 12 years of work and one permanent visa later, I registered Koydol in 2006.
I went on to eventually launch a commercial flooring business through Koydol while keeping my day job, work with manufacturers to transition my staff to estimators, and won my first bid in 2012. Koydol is the first franchise brand focused exclusively on commercial flooring, and the timing couldn’t be better with a booming housing market and demand for construction.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?
When I started out as a general contractor at Turner Construction Company, I was in charge of generating daily reports of activities that occurred on a given day. My language barrier caused my report to have some errors, which proved to be comedic relief for the group, but it also forced me to continue practicing and studying the English language so I could avoid those errors down the line.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
Both of my parents have been great inspirations to me and helped me achieve the success I have come to today. I come from large family with many siblings; there are 11 of us in total and I am right in the middle. My mom dropped out of high school when she had her first child and became a stay-at-home mom. Since we didn’t start school until the age of 7, my mom was my first teacher and gave my siblings and me our first form of education. She taught us how to count and memorize the alphabet among other things.
My dad was the sole provider for our family. He was a very hard worker and taught us perseverance to overcome challenges in life and in our professional careers.
In addition, I also benefited from the mentorship of many colleagues to help me get to where I am today.
Extensive research suggests that “purpose driven businesses” are more successful in many areas. When your company started, what was its vision, what was its purpose?
Purpose gives us drive, energy and inspiration to move forward no matter the challenges we face. When doubt settles in our mind, purpose helps us get out of that headspace and keep moving forward. Koydol’s vision has always been to become a leader in the commercial flooring market by having a strong brand name and a positive reputation of a customer-centric company. By doing so, we aren’t following the same approach as other businesses. We are instead finding new ways to resolve common problems. Our goal as a company is to make everything that we touch better.
Thank you for all that. Let’s now turn to the main focus of our discussion. Can you share with our readers a story from your own experience about how you lead your team during uncertain or difficult times?
The COVID-19 pandemic has been unprecedented for all of us, especially business owners. It was a time of great challenge. Leadership was needed to inspire and guide team members during difficult times. Each person on a team has different needs that need to be tended to, and the people who make a team should always be the number one priority. While the pandemic caused a lot of doubts and uncertainties amongst our team, they looked to me, their leader, for guidance and support. And that support can’t be a one-size-fits all approach. I had to individualize my solutions for each team member to make them feel secure and see the path forward.
Did you ever consider giving up? Where did you get the motivation to continue through your challenges? What sustains your drive?
There will always be times of great challenges, but to me, giving up is never an option. There will always be better options out there to explore even during the most desperate times. Our purpose and satisfaction of becoming the best motivates us to keep going.
What would you say is the most critical role of a leader during challenging times?
Providing guidance and inspiration to others is the most critical role of a leader during challenging times. You have to inspire your team members to unleash their potential and guide everyone to a path of victory.
When the future seems so uncertain, what is the best way to boost morale? What can a leader do to inspire, motivate and engage their team?
The focus should always be on the people on your team and figuring out ways to support them however you can. To boost morale, look at each person and assess their individual needs. Since there is not one approach that will work for everyone, think about how you can personalize your solutions so every team member feels valued.
What is the best way to communicate difficult news to one’s team and customers?
Always be transparent and straight-forward with customers and team members. Oftentimes when there is a problem, it’s best to make the people part of the solution to get the best outcome.
How can a leader make plans when the future is so unpredictable?
First, leaders should always have plans they are executing on. When certain challenges occur, you can modify and adjust those plans as needed. Just like you shift lanes on a daily commute when one lane isn’t moving, you have to switch gears and follow the path that will take you forward toward your goal.
Is there a “number one principle” that can help guide a company through the ups and downs of turbulent times?
Always do the right thing. Sometimes when challenges strike it’s tempting to find shortcuts. In the long run, those shortcuts are unsuccessful. Doing the right thing will help leaders make the best investment for their future. Regardless of the circumstances, you must do what is right.
Can you share 3 or 4 of the most common mistakes you have seen other businesses make during difficult times? What should one keep in mind to avoid that?
I believe we all have made mistakes during our entrepreneurial journey and some of them were even key to our later achievements. During challenging times mistakes are more impactful and it helps to avoid these common traits:
- Being shortsighted: The difficult times will eventually come to an end and a leader should always make sure the business is well positioned to benefit from the improved market conditions once things turn around. Decisions that are overly focused on the short-term needs can be detrimental to the medium to long term prospects of the business.
- Lack of Empathy: It’s tempting to rush to survival mode and strictly focus on business needs. However, the people are the ones who drive the business results. Improving their conditions and well-being will have an immediate impact on the business’ bottom line. Empathy will bring people and the business together during difficult times.
- Not being able to adapt: A lot of changes and disruptions in the market occur during difficult times as new players come in with innovative solutions and the market is pivoting accordingly. Not seeing those changes coming and not being able to adapt timely can lead quickly to irrelevance.
Generating new business, increasing your profits, or at least maintaining your financial stability can be challenging during good times, even more so during turbulent times. Can you share some of the strategies you use to keep forging ahead and not lose growth traction during a difficult economy?
In both good and bad times, it is always a wise idea to diversify your services, expertise and clientele. Diversification allows leaders to not only rely on one market segment or one customer. During the pandemic, a lot of segments in construction suffered, like office buildings and the hospitality industry. On the flip side, data center and warehouse construction has seen a major boom because of the digital economy and many things moving to the cloud. If you diversify and include more market segments, you can tap into bright spots that may have been overlooked.
In addition, always look for new opportunities as there will always be a way you can provide more services or cater to more clients. When things get tough, I also recommend looking at how you can improve efficiencies to keep operations running smoothly.
Here is the primary question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things a business leader should do to lead effectively during uncertain and turbulent times? Please share a story or an example for each.
Although most of us like to avoid them, difficult times offer great opportunities for change and improvements over the existing environment.
- Be present: The presence of the leader has a great impact on the team’s spirit. When people are looking for guidance and direction, it’s more important than ever to be there and available. That presence and proximity with the team gives the leader a deeper understanding of the situation and how best to address it. Elon Musk displayed great leadership when he camped on the factory floor for weeks to solve Tesla’s production woes.
- Communicate: It’s important to connect with the team and communicate, even overcommunicate. At times the same message has to be conveyed in many different ways to ensure it reaches each audience effectively. Communicating conveys to the team the message that their concerns are heard, understood and something is being done to address them. It’s no surprise that we turned in great numbers to listen to the daily briefings in the early days of COVID.
- Listen: Everyone has something to say even those who don’t express it verbally. Listening takes patience and is the first step towards empathy. I like to listen to as many people as possible as each person’s input increases the chances of getting to the best outcome.
- Learn: We should never stop learning. In this information age, the speed at which we need to learn is even more accelerated to stay relevant. An effective leader needs to make important decisions and in a short period of time. Gathering the necessary information, processing it and making decisions that could have profound impacts on peoples’ lives are more critical during turbulent times.
- Pivot: Listening to the people, the customers and learning from those interactions and feedbacks provide a great insight into what the future direction should be. Once the leader understands the core issues, it becomes an easier task to plan for the changes that need to occur. Pivoting to align the company resources and goals with the expressed needs will be a source of success for years to come. Today’s most successful companies are the ones that pivoted and changed when facing difficult challenges. Apple is a great example.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
My favorite life lesson quote is from Steve Jobs: the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do. Not only do I believe and live by this quote, but I also have it on the walls of my office to remind me that I am capable of my goals every single day. This quote pushes me to think outside of conventionalism and to not be fearful of my ideas. It reminds me to never let doubts keep me from moving forward.
How can our readers further follow your work?
https://www.linkedin.com/in/amadou-t-agne-b845a74/
Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!
Thank you very much for the opportunity!
Amadou Agne Of Koydol: Five Things You Need To Be A Highly Effective Leader During Turbulent Times was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
