It's cliche but true... when leading a company through dramatic growth and change you need to surround yourself with extremely bright people and leverage their strengths and ideas.

But do you first devise a strategy and then look for the right people who have the skills to execute on that strategy, or do you first find the right people and then devise a strategy based on their input?  To use Jim Collins' often-quoted analogy (www.jimcollins.com), as a bus driver you can determine where you want the bus to go and then get the right people on the bus, or you can get the right people on the bus and then determine where you want the bus to go.

In the dramatic change and growth Fisher's Document Systems is going through, I can definitely attest to Collins' conclusion that you first need to get the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) and then determine where to take that bus.

We are in a dynamic industry that is not only facing competition from the traditional copier dealers, we are more and more facing IT companies, consultancies, and printer resellers.  Our strategy must be as dynamic as our industry and we MUST have a team on board who can roll with the dramatic change and add as much brilliant insight in tomorrow's world as they do in today's.

I have focused significant effort at Fisher's getting the right people on the bus... and our success is dependent on their ability to challenge and influence Fisher's strategy, execute on it, and then challenge it again.