Service entrepreneur: Robert W. Poorman Jr.

• Author: Johnson, J. Douglas
• Position: Indiana's Entrepreneurs of the Year

SERVICE ENTREPRENEUR

Robert W. Poorman, Jr.

Shepard Poorman

Communications Corporation

Indianapolis

There are no "employees" at Indianapolis-based Shepard Poorman Communications Corporation.

True, the company writes 340 paychecks a week and does $30 million in printing a year, but no employees work there. They are all "staff members," a distinction CEO Robert "Bob" Poorman instituted in 1978 to communicate the thought that "we are all members of the same team, working together to achieve a common goal."

A good incentive idea, sure, but does it penetrate more than bulletin board and company-newsletter deep? It does with Poorman as cheerleader and keeper of the corporate flame. As one staff member says, "He makes it fun. He makes it exciting. He inspires us to be our best. He pushes us into using talents we didn't even know we had.'

Staff members are divided into teams at the full-service communications company. There are 12 members in the executive group and I 1 teams in the plants with five to nine members each. Decisions are made by consensus, guided by a formal 11-point corporate philosophy, 31 short-term goals, 24 intermediate goals and 13 ultimate goals. The capstone is this corporate mission statement: "To professionally provide American business and industry a quality source of communication service from concept through fulfillment."

Less formal, and maybe more valued than the paycheck, is an Inky Pat," which is a memorandum from one staff member citing a...