A Chat With Sue Landay, President, Trainer’s Warehouse

Which brings me to the second key point to our success. A collaborative approach. My dad in 1977 wrote a book called “Synergistic Management: Creating the Climate for Superior Performance.” The basis of that concept and the basis of synergy is establishing trust among employees. That’s critical to creating a synergistic environment. Once that trust is created, then creativity really can blossom. You can do a lot. I think that it’s an approach I probably internalized growing up, and it’s really critical to how we interact here. We communicate with each other about virtually everything. And we do have lots of conflict and we do challenge each other. Not in the spirit of criticism so much as really trying to challenge how we’re thinking so were can make the best decisions. Whether it’s a marketing plan, a financial plan or product development, our thought is that if we bring our minds together, and challenge each other, we’ll come up with a better solution. As good as the original idea might be, if I go to my father and discuss how we can improve it, it gets stronger. I think that’s key.